Two main items hit the wire today, the short one being we now have a name for the upcoming content – “Echoes of the Dead.”  Sounds cool and fits in well with what’s going on as well as the mysterious relics.

The bigger item was the release of the Minstrel Class update Developer Diary.  I currently have a level 65 Minstrel that I’m more or less shelved purely due to a lack of time playing the game.  I just don’t have enough time to focus on all the characters I’d like to and currently my Minstrel and Captain are getting the short end of the stick.

For the most part I like the changes and for some I’ve wondered why it took so long to get them in place!  I find it interesting that just about every long cool-down skill has been tweaked and most were just reductions of the cooldown and not a trade in usability.  Hopefully this is a trend going forward as 15-30 minute cooldowns are just annoying.

I like what’s been done to further incentivize Minstrels to do more during fights then just spam heals.  The addition group-wide DPS buffs added to the tier 3 ballads and the power reduction tier up are both very welcome additions.  Previously we did have some outgoing healing boost per tier but without a pocket Loremaster, power can be a serious issue for Minstrels.  I also LOVE that they’re allowing more on the move capabilities and fixing the Chord of Salvation root!

As for the wait and see category with these changes, I’m really not sure how this will play out in PvMP.  I can see certain areas (the war-speech tail) being a bit of a problem when coupled with all the other damage and cooldown changes.  Also I’m intrigued by the changes to Raise the Spirit as the traited version looks incredibly appealing as a quick burst heal.  And now that Chord of Salvation is fixed, Minstrels should be able to put out some serious burst healing!

Probably the biggest disappointment for me is the change to Hopeful Heart, not because I don’t like the change but I don’t think it was enough to make slotting this Legendary useful.  Sadly I think all classes have their bad legendaries and this has just been bumped up to suck less.  I suggested in the feedback thread that maybe if they added some sort of defensive bonus to the hotspot it would be more appealing.  That way the tank sits in the hotspot and others can hop in/out to increase their damage output.  I would really like to have to struggle to pick which legendaries to slot or swap them out based on role, not just slot the overwhelmingly best three and ignore the others.

Overall I’m liking the changes and will certainly have to dust of my clarinet and bagpipes to see how these play out.

Tomorrow is the Burglar Diary of which I know nothing about, and the rumored third class updated is the Hunter so I wouldn’t expect a whole lot of in-depth analysis from me on those, that’s for sure!

 

Related posts:

  1. Interesting News Day for Turbine and LOTRO Two news items from regarding LOTRO today. I will admit, I was surprised to see...
  2. LOTRO News compilation So I’m pretty behind in a lot of this, and others have done a pretty...
  3. News for all EU LOTRO Players For those of you on the EU servers (and I know there are quite a...
  4. Good News for LOTRO Champions Just when we thought tank(ish) classes were getting let out in the cold, Orion posted...
  5. Interesting LOTRO Lottery News A couple of recent posts by Sapience point to some new cool toys coming out...