Lore-Master Changes Developer Diary

Hello Lore-Masters,

Tim “Raskolnikov” Lang just released his latest Developer Diary about the upcoming Lore-master changes. Read all about the reasoning on the new skills, trait changes and consumables.

You can read it all here.

I’ll be commenting on the changes throughout the next few weeks, before the patch is launched on the live servers.

Post Edit: Actually, the Developer Diary is from Ken “Graalx2” Burd.

Early Patch-Notes are Up!

So, earlier this afternoon, Turbine showed us the November patch notes. I must remember everyone that these are still temporary and may change before the November release.

The notes are located in the lotro forums, so click here to read them.

There will also be a Developer Diary in the coming weeks explaining the Lore-master changes.

In the meanwhile, I’ll just paste the Lore-master related notes:

Lore-master & Minstrel Fellowship Manoeuvre changes
Lore-masters and Minstrels will now use the tactical versions of the “Ent’s Strength” and “Spider’s Guile” fellowship skills instead of the melee versions, just like Rune-keepers. This means that any time a Fellowship Manoeuvre is triggered, Minstrels and Lore-masters will no longer need to be in melee range to contribute.

Skills/Classes
General

• Lore-masters and Captains now have a new skill on their Companion’s skill bar immediately to the left of their active skills. This new skill, “Return to Master” for Lore-master and “Rally” for Captain, will summon an existing companion to the character’s location. It is not useable in combat and has a 5 second cooldown.
• Player Pets and Soldiers now get the benefit from the following
  • Hunter skill “Find the Path”.
  • Minstrel Tales.
  • Rune-keeper “Rune of Restoration.”
  • Captain’s Banners
  • Lore-master’s Raven’s “Shield of the Raven’s Wing” and the Eagle’s “Nobility”.

Lore-master

• The trait “Dúnedain-learning” now shows specific numbers for what it modifies.
• Trait tooltips have been cleaned up to reveal Stats and improve readability.
• The Trait “Knowledge of the Past” now affects all skills (it was previously not affecting “Staff-strike”, “Warding Knowledge”, and a few other skills).
• Lore-masters have a new skill available at level 30: “Staff Sweep.”
• Lore-masters have a new skill available at level 40: “Frost-lore.”
• The trait “Hardy Bear” has been converted to “Hardy Companion.”
• The Improved Warding Lore skills have been modified to affect “Drakes & Ancient Evil”, “Creatures of Nature & Beasts”, and “Dead, Men, & Orc-kind”.
• “Sign of Power: Vigilance” is now a self-anchored Area of Effect skill.
• “Blinding Flash” will now interrupt inductions even if the monster is immune to Daze effects.
• The Nature-friend Legendary Trait will now grant the Lore-master a new skill, “Combat Summoning”, in addition to “Friend of Nature.” This new skill will allow the Lore-master to summon any animal companion during combat for the next 10 seconds.
• The damage over time portion of “Burning Embers” will now stack from multiple Lore-masters.
• The Lore-master’s raven will now apply the Flanked effect to target when the Raven is low level.
• Fire-lore can now be used on all monster types; including the Dead.
• “Call to the Valar” now resets the cooldown for “Dispel Corruption” and provides a 10s immunity to induction setbacks caused by damage.
• The sound FX for Flanking effects is now controlled by the Combat Sound volume
• The visual indicator that signals when a pet has flanked its target will now only be shown to the Lore-master whose pet successfully flanked their target.
• “ Inner Flame” has been upgraded as follows:
  • It will heal much more than previously.
  • The Lore-master will not be interrupted while channeling the skill.
  • The Lore-master’s pet will take a small portion of the Lore-master’s threat for each pulse of healing.
  • All other aspects of the skill are the same.
• The following frost damage Legendary Item Titles are now useable by Lore-masters.
  • Cold-heart
  • Frost-reaver
  • Ice-fist
• “Knowledge of the Lore-master” has been changed in a couple of ways.
  • It now places a minor 60 second debuff to resistances on the target.
  • The skill cannot be used in combat and requires you to face the target.
  • The skill cannot be resisted.
• The Legacies which reduce an enemy’s resistance have been re-organized to affect skills more intuitively:
  • Target Resistance (Damaging Skills): This now affects ALL Tactical skills which deal damage:
    • Burning Embers
    • Sign of Battle: Wizardry
    • Test of Wills
    • Gust of Wind
    • Cracked Earth
    • Light of the Rising Dawn
    • Storm-lore
    • Lightning-storm
    • Sign of Battle: Wizard’s Fire
    • Sticky Gourd.
  • Target Resistance (Fire Skills): This now affects ALL Tactical skill which deal Fire damage:
    • Burning Embers
    • Cracked Earth
    • Sign of Battle: Wizard’s Fire
    • Sticky Gourd.
  • Target Resistance (Debuffing Skills): This now affects ALL skills which debuff the enemy:
    • Sign of Power: Command
    • Blinding Flash
    • Fire-lore
    • Wind-lore
    • Power of Knowledge
    • Bane Flare
    • Herb-lore
    • Frost-lore
    • Ancient Craft
    • Dispel Corruption.

Cooking

• New pet food recipes are now available from Novice/Expert Cook vendors, as well as Lore-master trainers.

Jeweller

• All existing Lore-master amulet recipes have been converted to produce new skill-granting Lore-master talismans. Brand new multi-output Lore-master talisman recipes can now be found in treasure.
  Prospector.

User Interface

• “Show Dispellable Effects Only” and “Show effects cast by me” options in the Social Options Panel are no longer mutually exclusive.
• The Lore-master Pet Quickslot bar is now correctly hidden when mounted.

Still digesting some changes. When Bullroarer (test client) is up, i’ll have some deeper comments on the update.

As allways, you can also follow my posts at the lotroreporter network.

More news on the LM update

Yesterday the Executive Producer for LOTRO, Kate “Nereid” Paiz addressed the players with an open letter. From that letter there are some news for us Lore-masters. The next update, that will bring the mentioned Lore-Master changes, is slated for a November launch! You can read the full letter here.

Also, the developer who’s in charge of the Lore-Master revision, Tim “Raskolnikov” Lang, has hinted a few more on the changes to the class. So, besides the changes i mentioned in my earlier post, it is suggested that the trait “Hardy Bear” could be changed to “Hardy Pet”, although that’s not confirmed there is a strong hint leading to that conclusion in the forums (check the bold letters).

Also, in the recent Warcry Dev Chat, Rask said:

Question: The class revamp month’s will we see buff’s to each class or nerf’s? for example currently I find my Minstrel lacking compared to the rune-keepers ability to keep the group healed for less power usage.
Raskolnikov Mostly buffs! I can’t speak to specific changes for the Minstrel (as we haven’t gotten to that class yet). But having made a lot of changes to the Lore-master, I can say that 90% of those changes have been buffs. Our goal is to polish each class, and nearly all of the time when we polish it’s by buffing a class (because nerfing stinks, even though it is sometimes necessary).

So, 90% are buffs… that leaves 10% for nerfs? This is what Rask answered:

We’re not nerfing Lore-masters because of Cold-bear.
We’re not nerfing “Master of the Staff”.
We’re not nerfing “Sword and Staff”.

The only reason I’m not saying “We didn’t nerf anything,” is because I’m sure some people will perceive something as a nerf. “I can’t believe you nerfed ‘Knowledge of the Lore-master’ so that it can’t be used in combat anymore!”

That’s that mean the the Knowledge of the Lore-master skill will be made out of combat only? Or was that just an example? Let’s hope it’s the later, since i use that skill a lot when doing new dungeons.

Also, and maybe more important, there was a hint to new skills in an earlier Sapience post. Ever since the recent “skill upgrades” that came with levels 62 and 64 (which most Lore-masters found to be, at the very least, uninteresting), the forumites took that sentence with a grain of salt. Biggest concern was that the new Summoning Appearance Skills would be the new skills hinted and, as such, would not bring anything new to the Lore-master combat arsenal. This is what Rask had to say:

The “new skills” are not just the pet appearance skills.
Also, if you’re looking for more clues about what will be in the Dev Diary, just read through the “Tell the Community Team – Lore-master Feedback” thread. That’s where we got most of our ideas.

The “Tell the Community Team – Lore-master Feedback” thread is here, if you are interested. There are some good ideas there, so I’m hopeful.

As always, I’ll try to keep you posted if any more news come up.

One more thing. Yesterday i forgot to mention, but you can also follow the Staff-Strike’s posts at the Lotro Reporter site.

Lore-Master changes on the way and some blog news.

Hello everyone.

Recently i was blessed with the gift of fatherhood, with two gorgeous baby girls. That’s the biggest reason for the slowdown on blog posts. And it has been worth every second. 🙂

Altough my posting time has been lowered, i still try to be on top of Lore-master (and Lotro) related news.

Yesterday, there was a very interesting post at the oficial LOTRO forums, by Sapience, when someone asked about the next patch contents:

Funny you should ask! There are a lot of great changes coming for the LM in the next update. Graalx2 and I were just discussing the dev diary this morning in fact. You’re going to have to wait a little bit to read it, but we both think LM’s are going to be really happy with the changes (and new skills!).

So now you know two things due in the next patch. Vault updates (you should see the Developer Diary for that on Thursday) and Lore-master changes (Dev Diary probably a couple weeks from now). I’ll even throw you a bone and let you know Rune-keepers will get some attention this update as well.

So, seems like the Lore-master is next in line after the last patch updates to the Hunter and Captain classes. There where already a few tidbits of information flowing out from the devs. This is what’s already planned:

– The diferent Lore-master pet appearances will be changed to a skill. So no more using necklaces for that appearance you love so much.

– Blinding Flash will have an interrupt component to the skill. So even if a creature is immune to mezzing (Bosses, for example) they can still be interrupted. But there is a catch: The regular Blinding Flash immunities will apply, meaning that the Dead and Creatures of Nature will still be immune to the interrupt.

– New pet food. I was digging around the Lorebook and found these little items: Cut of Lean Meat, Handful of Hearty Seeds and Bowl of Fresh Water. I would guess that they will work just like the Honey and Oats work on the Bear pet.

Let’s wait on the Dev Diary in a couple of weeks.