Pumping Irony

Turbine published another Developer Diary today with links to the latest articles on class advancement in the Mines of Moria expansion, this time for the Champion, Minstrel and the new Rune-Keeper class.

My primary alt is a minstrel so of these three articles, that’s the one of interest to me.

Highlights (for myself anyway) include:

• Three new trait sets for each corresponding sphere of the class: dps, heals, and buffs.
  • Warrior-Skald: more traits focusing on War Speech and dps. Many minstrels who focus their efforts into dps keep the medium armour trait, but I’ve noticed all of the minstrel-specific end-game sets are light armour. It will be interesting to see if Turbine ever makes a medium minstrel set for those warrior-minstrels. Traits within the Warrior-Skald set will improve morale, further increasing the class’ solo ability, as well as increasing crit chances.
  • Watcher of Resolve: in addition to important new threat-management abilities, the minstrel gets its first Heal over Time! In Shadows of Angmar, HoT’s were solely the realm of captains who could trigger a HoT only after a critical hit or upon the death of an enemy. The new rune-keeper class also has at least one HoT (though I get the impression that it is further up the heal-attunement line and not immediately available), and now the minstrel will be getting a single light HoT ability which can be used from the beginning of a fight.
  • Protector of Song: new buff-oriented traits focus on power conservation as well as improving the duration of the minstrel’s buffs. A fellowship frost mitigation buff is a new ability, and a legendary trait will allow the minstrel to combine tales to have the effects of two tales at the same time.
• Legendary weapons and songbooks! I mentioned in the previous article my disappointment that (it seems) lore-masters only get a legendary staff with no option of also having a legendary sword even though most of us dual-wield sword and staff. Minstrels will have both legendary weapons available to them as well as songbooks which will probably function similar to the various lore-master books to affect certain abilities and cooldowns.

As with the lore-master advancement, I am very much looking forward to taking my minstrel to level 60 and into the depths of Moria and beyond. I’ve been delighted with the class’ design and truly having a blast with it and have developed my own personal play styles. While solo, I am primarily in War Speech with a drum for increased dps at the expense of higher power use and half-strength heals. In a pinch I can switch to a harp for reduced power usage, or if I’m overwhelmed I can drop out of War Speech for full heals to keep myself alive, though doing less dps. In groups I typically stay out of War Speech and use a theorbo for reduced healing threat unless I foresee a power issue then I’ll equip a harp. I’m always examining the situation to see if I think I’d be able to fire off some buffs or not, which means I have to fight. The way I’m currently traited, the first fellowship-wide buffs come from Ballads (tier 3) then Anthems (tier 4), so I have to decide if I can afford to time — and power — to get through the first two tiers in order to trigger a Ballad. Usually I’ll go for Ballad of War which gives the group a buff to melee damage, though if we’re fighting drakes I’ll use a fire mitigation buff or a fear resistance buff when fighting undead. If I’m able to get to tier 4 Anthems my two favorites are Anthem of the Free Peoples which gives the group increased in-combat morale regeneration (which thereby allows me to work less at constant healing) and Anthem of Compassion to further reduce threat from healing. Sometimes I am able to get the ballads and anthems to help the group, other times I have to forego them for a bit and just heal if the group is getting beaten upon. Still other times I’ll start the sequence to attempt a ballad and anthem but the mobs will resist enough times that I’m in need of power and the group is in need of heals so I have to change tactics. I also have to keep in mind that if I do trigger an Anthem, it resets my ballad progression all the way back down to tier 1.

I find it a refreshing change of pace from other games where healers just stand in the back and heal while everyone else has fun. To help the group with buffs (and even some dps anthems), I have to fight, so in that sense it’s similar to how Warhammer has their healers fight in order to rank up their next heal, even though the mechanics themselves differ greatly between the two games.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 at 2:27 pm and is filed under LOTRO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.