Hello everyone, there are some Lore-Master news on the horizon. Raskolnikov (trough the other Lotro developer, Orion) has given us a sneak peak at his Lore-Master proposals for levels 66-75 trough the Isengard expansion. You can check out his official blog entry over here.
Heres the breakdown of the proposal and my thoughts on them:
Skill Consolidation
Warding Knowledge is collapsed into 1 skill and it now affects all Genus via the Ancient Master 4-set bonus.
A good change, since it condenses 3 skills into just one. Still trying to understand how this will affect the skill when you are not 4 deep into Ancient Master.
Tend the Sick and Leechcraft are collapsed into a new skill Knolwedge of Cures
Knowledge of Cures removes 3 disease and 3 wound effects, can be used in combat. Cooldown is 10 seconds and it will have an increase to the power cost. It will not provide a buff to Resistances.
Level 62 upgrade will remove the induction and the trait Proof Against Ills makes the skill and AoE skill.
This one is a little bit tricky. Condensation is good (again, our quickslots are already overfilled, so any screen real estated freed is a good thing). Being able to cure wounds in combat, without a trait is also a strong point. Since the first inception of the Leechcraft skill that Lore-master’s only way to remove wounds in combat was trough the Proof Against All Ills trait. The removal of the resistance buff is bit of a letdown, even if resistances don’t work so well as pure mitigation, is never good to see a skill be less effective, even if it is something thats not that strong. The part that worries me is the 10 second cooldown on the skill. There are some deadly wound and diseases in this game (raiding specially) that give huge debuffs or damage every few seconds. Don’t get me wrong, the removing of the induction makes us cure faster, but there’s nothing worst than having a fellow die on us with a skill on cooldown. I think i would rather keep the cooldown and induction as it is.
Sign of Battle: Wizardry and Sign of Battle: Wizard’s Fire are combined into 1 skill that is nearly identical to Wizard’s Fire. The skill cannot be resisted, although the DoT component’s individual ticks can be. § This is so reacting to ‘Flanked!’ cannot be resisted. The level 54 upgrade removes the cooldown. The trait Improved Sign of Battle now provides +25% damage to the skill.
Overall, this is a good change. 90% of the time i would use Wizardry would be when i got a flank heal resisted with Wizard’s fire. Not being resisted anymore makes it a little more redundant. I would only use Wizardry as an offensive skill in enemies immune or highly resistent to Fire Damage. This also raises the question about our level 54 skill if Wizard’s Fire is getting moved to the early levels.
Usability Changes
Back from the Brink has its range increased from 5 meters to 25 meters.
A good change, but it still leaves us with the worst revive skill of the whole game. Still not usable in-combat, has a big induction, needs a consumable item, leaves a 1-minute long debuff on the revived ally. At least it has some range now.
Blinding Flash is no longer restricted by Genus.
A little background on this change and my stand on it: The Burglar class received a similar sneak peak to their daze skill, Riddle. Riddle was unusable on non-sentient creatures like beasts and creatures of nature. Recently, on an blog update for Isengard, one of the proposals was to remove the genus restriction, so Burglars would be able to Riddle Beasts and creatures of Nature, like trees (huorns), which makes no sense at all.
I’m against this change. I would prefer to leave some kind of specialization on the class skills, burglars and Lore-Masters are already pretty similar in role (Debuffs, Crowd-Control) and to muddle the waters even more is, in my humble opinion, counter-productive.
Ancient Wisdom is now a permanent toggle (without an upkeep cost.)
A small change. Nothing to serious since the buff already lasts a considerable amount of time. It would be interesting to see another skill that could rival Ancient Wisdom (maybe a Fate buff?) so that there is a choice involved.
Post 66 skills
Improved Sign of Power: Command – Becomes an AoE which can affect multiple targets.
This one is a good upgrade. Altough SoP: Command has a quick cast and cooldown, sometimes is annoying to be selecting multible enemies and applying it.
Improved Staff-sweep – For each target hit, the Lore-master receives a stacking buff increasing critical hit chance of their next Fire skill by 33%. Upon scoring a crit strike with a Fire skill, the buffs are removed.
This upgrade can be huge, almost borderline overpowered. I can only imagine hitting 3 enemies in the same sweep, stacking 99% crit change and then launch Ents go to War or Improved Sticky Gourd for a guaranteed AoE nuclear strike.
Friend to Aurochs – Summons an Aurochs as a pet.
Will hold judgment until i can see more about this pet.I think it’s lore-appropriate, but the size of the beasts might make them undeseriable in grouping or raiding scenarios (unless you can cosmetically use one of those baby Aurochs). Also waiting to see on its role.
I was hoping for a pet that could augment when we are on Crowd-Control/Raiding duty where you want to keep your pet at bay. Maybe a pet that does minimal or no damage at all, but can provide buffs to the Lore-Master and the rest of the group.
Improved Sign of the Wild: Rage – Now also provides 10% Damage bonus,
Pet damage is somewhat minimal, 10% increase will still be low…
Improved Burning Embers – The DoT portion of the skill can now stack multiple times.
This is a good change. And can increase Lore-Master’s DPS immensely if the legacy that increases Burning-Embers damage over time duration up to 35 seconds.
Conclusion
Some solid upgrades, but I’m a bit worried by the 10s cooldown on Knowledge of Cures and the generalization of the Daze mechanics across classes. Was expecting a bit more “hoomph” but so far all changes are solid, ecpet for the Improved SoW: Rage which seems very weak to me.
A special note to the lotro developers: thanks for keeping us updated and including the playerbase on your decision process. Communication is key and you guys are excelling at it!
Staff Strike! 
Nice review. Looking forward to see these changes. Thanks
Just pointing out that although you would have a 10s CD on wound removal, some classes (e.g., Guardian) got their own would self-removal skill. On balance, it may come out to be equal when considering all removals of all classes.
sorry but u have no idea about Loremasters
Can you expand on that? It would be curious to know on what you think i could improved.
Pfff..
No pet Ent going to Isengard? an Auroch instead?
Pfff.. what a missed opportunity!
You already have an Ent, if you’ve traited for it.
I don’t know what the heck I’m going to do with an Aurochs, but I’ll give it a try at least.
Nice review! Thanks 🙂
I am a one-class show, and the LM is all I play. I too, am not liking the cooldown on the wound removal, also that it is no longer a resistance buff which is really handy in a lot of situations. A lot of the new instances, not just raids, the wound and disease resistance/removal is vital. So, I don’t know, we’ll see I guess. Also, the plus resistance buff legacy thing I put on my book and it’s tiered up all the way, so I wonder what will happen with that?
I like that we can now mez dead things, besides using bane flare, that’s going to be really helpful. Although I really don’t CC all that much anymore because I love blowing things up with my fire (improved sticky gourd) too much 😉
The auroch should be interesting, looking forward to that for sure! If you’re looking for a pet that provides a buff, I use my eagle for the icpr. If I’m worried he’ll die, I just set him on passive. I’m sure you know that already though.
Ok, take care guys!
Fckin awesome things here. I am very glad to see your article. Thanks a lot and i’m looking forward to contact you. Will you please drop me a mail? gcafedededce