I like the idea of loremaster being an offensive support similar to red captain. I just don't like the fact that they seem to be trying to make it a clone of what the red captain can do, rather than a unique spec in and of itself.
It seems like they’re trying to make most classes into a bit of a Venn diagram. A blue Lm or a red captain. A yellow beorning or a (presumably) blue minstrel.
I'm really not happy with the state of lore-master. I also really don't like the idea of blue lore-master becoming like the red captain. Why can't we just have a proper pet spec?
Because SSG lacks any form of actual creative design so all they do is duplicate skills from other current classes and rename them, or remove spec lines all together.
Red lins is fine for DPS, yellow line is fine for support, blue line is amazing for survivability on lower levels but as pets stop scaling properly around Rohan/Gondor it gets useless on higher levels. ALL they need to do is make Pets scale, is this so hard?? Like seriously?
It isnt hard, but LOTRO likely only has a single employee in charge of all updates and content, and theyre likely an unpaid intern, so for that kid it IS hard since they have no experience and are also probably a child and SSG doing typical american child labor. Hyperbole, but this is likely the truth. MMO's on "maintenance mode" get low level newbie employee(s) in charge of the entire game. That's why it can take over a year to get the tiniest update.
That's not all they need to do. You set the bar far too low, imo. It's permissible to make comparisons with other classes, and the LM just comes up short on all counts.
Is it really that hard for them, to just make Blue Line pets to scale better? Do really we need a total revamp, or god forbid another passive tree. I don't want classes to start feeling the same, or be streamlined.
Yeah I like the idea of giving some of the pets more usage depending on the situation that you're in. But I think some of these will be more OP depending on what the future raids look like. For the current cycle I can see the one where LMs are able to do an aoe corruption skill as being very useful and powerful, especially in Gwathrenost where mobs won't die if they have corruptions on them. Takes over one role that the Burgs have, but it would be nice to have a second class also have that ability.
Imagine a world where wizard's fire is changed based on pet for example. Like AoE with sabertooth, single target with lynx, debuff with raven, heal with spirit ball
100% get rid of pet cycling. They’re supposed to be your friends, not a single use tool. Regarding induction, I’d almost like to see a “longer induction but bigger effect” down one line and quicker induction but less effect down another.
I always hoped for LM to have a Healing role. Yellow for Support, Red for Elemental DPS/Pet DPS and Blue for Healing, maybe Blue being focused on the Spirit pet and water spells.
That would be pretty cool, if they could integrate healing into the blue line it would make it much more useful. As blue is currently I can't play it because I'm not a fan of just letting my pet do all the work. I also hate doing all the work myself (yellow line), so I feel as though red strikes the best balance.
I like the blue line because I'm casual and distracted so I want my pet to do everything. Yes, it's the only class that has this so I don't want it to go away. Just wish the pets worked better especially with a friend.
We should lobby for your direction: more pets and more power for them, maybe give them the ability to temporarily attach to others in group, maybe make them much more customizable -- even special quests for the pets... places to keep them in off hours at the house, etc.
An easy fix, give hi level LM a skill that applies all debuffs from all pets long cooldown. This rotation crap needs to go away completely. NO LM likes summoning pets over and over rather then calling down lightning.
The forums have been super rough lately with what feels like half of the people just fighting and the other half is twitch spam, but there are some hidden gems in that thread with wonderful ideas for how not to destroy blue LMs
Louey7, thanks for sharing your views. My 140 LM has been blue since launch and is a solo player. Perhaps others don't care for the spec, but I have enjoyed exploring Middle Earth with my entire menagerie even though my lynx gets the most action. I don't know anything about red captains but from your comments and those posted by other viewers, it seems I wouldn't care much for the proposed changes that make a blue LM very similar to a red captain. Also, as you mentioned, we LMs have enough going on in our toolbars already, so no thanks to adding more spells specifically to direct our pets. Finally, you've said it before and I agree: We should be able to play the spec we want without being excluded from group content. This is a large part of why I play solo - nobody needs a blue LM. If LMs are meant to be supporting roles in group content, then make the blue LM attractive enough for people to want to play it as such, without making it a clone of red cappy. Someday I would like to try group content, but I don't have the time or interest to master a new spec only to be invited as a background helper. As always I appreciate your insight. Please tell the kitties Domingo says hi!
I've always really enjoyed red LM personally. The gameplay loop of having your bear gather up mobs and then burning them all up in a wildfire is just cathartic to me personally, and no I am not a pyromaniac lol 😂 !
The fellowship buffs with blue line based on pets is awesome. I especially love the bear and lynx buffs, letting the loremaster be tankier and more offensive. A large portion of Loremaster's dps is in its auto attack, which is melee. Which hits instantly every time inbetween abilities. What they need is to focus more on the sword, either for red or blue. Red has the sword stun and lightning, which is great. That and auto attack is it though. One more ability would be nice. But the main problem I have with LM is how much burning embers is at its core. I dislike that ability but love all others. Yet BE is the core of LM's in many many ways.
Blue Line should have a Melee Emphasis, and make the LM tankier while giving bonuses on Melee abilities based on pet choice. This lets Loremasters who love their DW Staff+Sword use it more, while making Red/Yellow not at all reliant on melee. Wisp - Sword-strike heals fellowship Bear - Staff Strike increases mits Lynx - Staff strike gives Dmg bonus Or just have it be more Sword focused in general. Forget the buffs. Just give an extra Blue Line sword ability that gives the LM more armor and heals with each strike, and when paired with Staff Sweep and Sword Strike, can replace Burning Embers for rotation. Or replace 1-3 induction abilities with melee abilities with sword animations. Burning Embers becomes Burning Sword. A stun becomes Blinding Staff. A heal becomes a morale boosting sword move. Like how the Blue Line hunter is radically different by removing the need to stay still.
They shouldnt even be able to buff. The buffs should be coming from the character because these kinds of animals are not magical. The pets should be made more animal like. Ala give the birds an eye peck skill to temp blind an opponent (cc), Give bear a roar to shock/stun an opponent. Spirit could actually cause fear since its...a spirit instead of just tossing out an occasional heal. :Let Bog's bee swarm, swarm and not just cause a DoT...nobody is going to be continuing to fight if they are being swarmed by bees!
@@thomasjones4570 "The buffs should be coming from the character because these kinds of animals are not magical. " The Captain, Minstrel, and pretty much everyone but Loremaster (Gandalf) aren't magical. So not really sure what this means. In Tolkien, to be honest, the animals are probably even more magical than most things, as is shown with the Elves/Astari & their connection to animals, as well as Beorn's House, Eagles, talking birds, nefarious bats, et. al. If the Captain can "Inspire" a buff with a speech or banner, then I see no reason literally anything couldnt give buffs. But I get your point, as your suggestions for improvement are a lot better than what I've seen so far. Really great ideas.
@@nowayjosedaniel Well that is not exactly true. In Tolkiens notes and short stories the Wizards, Dark Lords, Balrogs, Dragons, Nazgul and Elves were magical beings. Dwarves were capable of setting magical spells into items (weapons, door of Moria), Men were capable of using magical items and if they had some Elf blood in their line, use magic itself. Hobbits were only capable of using magical items. What game did was play loosely with who could become an LM and what an LM is. The class is based on Elrond, who could use magic (made the waters of the Bruinen rise to sweep the Nazgul away, could talk to animals). But only a Wizard can call lightning, fire and such and they are the Malar who are spirit beings, Saruman, Gandalf...
Keep blue line as a pet based spec. I have both a level 140 LM and a level 140 Cappy. I use my pet more on my LM. I have used the bear as a tank in group content when we could not find a tank (back in Moria days).Or as a off tank (imagine that, a light armour class as an off tank).
I just honestly don't see such a blue LM being popular enough to get picked over a red captain, considering damage output and survivability. LM is my main, I love playing him, but I never play the blue line because frankly, it's just a much weaker red line because the damage output for pets is not good enough. So I'm happy with them increasing pets' damage, and most of the proposed changes to red and yellow I'm OK with. But I just don't see how this type of blue LM is going to be viable. I'd much rather have exactly what you say, I solid pet specialisation. Or, if they do want to make them a buffer, then at least different types of buffs, so it would make sense to have both a red captain and a blue LM in a raid. The only thing I can think of as to why they might want this is to free up the captains - at least on my server you usually would only get 1 or max 2 captains in a raid, and those would be used as tanks and healers. But yeah, I'm not a fan. I will be interested to see what happens, though, and I am very happy they are revamping LM.
Blue LM should not only NOT become like red captain but especially not with mutually exclusive buffs. I seriously hope they go back on this because this is one of the worst class revamp ideas that I have seen thrown out by SSG
Having a dedicated, usable pet spec feels like a no-brainer. Classes/builds like Beastmaster Hunter and Demonology Warlock in WoW, Pet Sorcerer in Elder Scrolls Online, etc., are very popular with a segment of the MMO gaming population. Especially in games that allow for dual specs, these builds let people who love to play ranged classes have a more viable soloing experience. Additionally pet classes also make for a great accessibility option in MMOs. One of the reasons I play a Pet Sorc in ESO is because the game has a 1.0 second GCD and optimal play for lot of builds requires weaving in OGCD attacks and bar swaps in between those 1.0 second attacks. That is *a lot* of Actions per Minute - more than a sizeable chunk of the potential customer base can sustain. Playing a pet class slows down the game and allows for fewer APMs, which then means that folks like me with arthritis can play the game decently, if not optimally. Decent enough to not get flattened automatically in pvp or group content and progress through the open world. I've enjoyed my time in LOTRO (enough to pay for two Premium accounts and to subscribe to TH-cam channels on it) but I have had a hard time settling in on a class to take beyond level 20 or so, just because I haven't found a class/spec that I click with. A Blue line LM that was truly viable as a pet based spec would absolutely be the thing that would get me to play the game more often and keep an active sub.
I'm even more scared of what they're doing to blue hunter. It's my favorite class and they're stripping it of its only high damage ranged skill to buff red hunter, which is already too strong relative to the other lines. It doesn't make any sense.
Just like LM, I wasn't planning on doing a video on the Hunter at this point (esp since I talked about that so much on streams a while back), but also just like the LM, I likely will be recording a similar format one on the Hunter in the next couple. I have similar concerns with the direction of blue hunter!
B-LM wish list 1) Critical Coordination would be Fellow buff. 2) Wisdom of the council would be a Fellow heal + stun buff. 3) Loyalty would be an AOE heal. 4) After Battle Treat could be a group buff/heal. 5) Inner-Flame could be a group heal and buff. 6) Feral could be a group buff pending the pet you use. 7) All pets have a taunt toggle with the bear lasting the longest in Blue tree. and so much more ... I think a Blue LM could create it's own identity without displacing captains.
Makes sense for redline to be improved on dps, and yellow to be support. With that said, I want blue to stay pet focused. They could even improve that and make it even more focused on pets for soloing. I do enough raiding and dungeons on eso and ffxiv, so Lotro is my, relax by myself and enjoy the story and rp mmo. I really have enjoyed my man beastmaster trained by the blue mages, and don't want that line to become passive. I would like each class to have one line designed mostly for soloing, and I feel like I get that with the blue line on LM. And I do enjoy the pet focus.
I agree that they should just make blue LM an optional DPS spec with a pet-based focus. If they want to add a new red cappie alternative they should make blue burg that.
pvp and people who raid all the time have far too much influence on the dev team, these groups are always feking moaning about something which always affects solo players detrimentally.
I like some of the changes but I honestly run blue when I'm doing a hard fight for survivability and I don't get why they can't just scale the pets instead of changing the entire system
I got worried when you got to the community reactions 'cause I and then some other people got involved in stupid arguments. lol x_x (I'm Mistlos in the forums which is my main LM on Landroval.)
Pet rotation can reduce the cool aspect of blue LM having companion allies to little more than skills. A small amount of cycling is ok but less is more. Hi Piper
Or they could remove the buffs from the pets that shouldnt even have them and make them into a skill for the being with the actual magical powers. Allow the pets to be what they are supposed to be, an animal being called in to aid the master of animals in need of them.
I don't like the idea of the LM getting some Captain stuff purely because all the Captain buffs have the theme of "Motivating" and "Inspiring". That isn't a Lore Master's shtick. The Minstrel or even the Warden would have been better options for getting all that stuff.
I personally really enjoy red line loremaster gameplay a LOT but blue and yellow aren't for me. Then again, I don't do dungeons very often and mostly just quest and craft. It's really fun to just group up half a dozen enemies with my bear and burn the living hell out of all of them with crazy burst damage and DOT's. Another class I oddly enjoy a lot are yellow line captains, you basically never die and can solo basically everything but end-game content. Sure, their damage is god awful and probably the worst in the game actually but you feel like an indestructible tank and every enemy you kill heals you almost half of your health bar. Throw a Noble mark on a boss and set up a standard and you are just completely unstoppable. Blue Burglars are a lot of fun as well! I've tried every class up to 40 and those are my top 3 by far but I haven't tried Brawler or Beorning yet. I pretty much go with Red LM if I want to melt faces, Yellow Captain if I want to feel like a god wielding a pool noodle, or Blue burg if I want a bit of both. To be fair I HATE red line captains though so SSG turning blue LM's into red line captains would make them unplayable for me, not a fan of blue LM's though either.
LM needs their skills culled above all else. Give me half as many skills, that are actually useful in most situations, half inductions and reduce CDs by 80% so I can actually use my skills when I need them! Gameplay is ridiculously convoluted compared to playing Champ, Hunter, Guardian, RK or even Warden, once you know your top rotations - and for considerably lesser effect! Also pets need a speed boost and should jump to action the moment the induction starts, not when the enemy is already halfway to me. Culling of useless, or overly situational skills however should be priority 1. For example Burning Embers, Sticky Gourd and Wizard's Fire should be one skill with 4s CD, Wizard's Frost gets combined with Gust of Wind, also 4s CD (for reasons of cutting down on the number of buttons and CDs you need to manage, and because, on their own, most of those skills do not even justify casting), Cooldowns of Ents go to War and Lightning Storm down by at least 75% - and you would STILL be a worse Champion in solo content, because inductions limit your dps, and base damage is laughable. MMOs started out differently, but unless you are in a longterm clan, and you are at max level, 99% of the gameplay is solo-play - and LM is just soooo bad compared to my other characters.
I'm a little frustrated that you completely ignored the suggestion to break blinding flash for any but yellow spec, removing the crowd control to focus on the interrupt. I play a lore master as cc first and that would pretty well trash the level 1-80 gameplay of the class for me. It matters a lot to be able to keep two mobs locked down and an occasional 15sec mez on a third. Likewise removing the root component from cracked earth unless I'm a yellow base spec again trashes the survivability of lower level blue lore masters. Are you so deep into red mobile ae nukes as to ignore cc entirely? Or am I misreading Omm's commentry?
More likely that I just missed this in the video - perhaps I need to make this more clear that these are reaction reviews as it's my first time seeing most of the details! (I noticed a missed a similar level detail in the Beorning revamp video, for example). That said, I would not be in favor of Blinding Flash becoming a yellow exclusive For Cracked Earth, I interpreted that as a trait shallow into the tree. With the tons of trait points at high levels, this would (under this assumption) be a low cost option to lower DPS and increase CC.
I think they should just buff the pet. Making blue line a support line doesnt sound like a lot of fun. If the pets scale better, or maybe at higher level beeing able to summon 2 pets at the same time could be some ideas to make the blue line more usable at max level
Blue Line should realy focus pets! Bear shoud aoe and agro better so you could control trash mobs or focus on single target agro single target mode. You should be able to toggle diderent stance in each pet for that flexebility. Why would you have a bear that cant just force taunt a mob for a few seconds and then cant hold it unless you resummon and spam taunt again... ? I would like to be able to fight out some trash mobs while team is focusing on others instead of just making mobs sleep and deebuff them with a repetitive spam rotation of pets. Feels like the pet is just there for cosmetic and deebuff. If a Tank player dies we should be able to direct bear to do something while team recovers. Blue LM does not Need crazy damage but if the pets could buff or support selected targets would be great. Some pets should have damage skills , others , tanking skills, and others buffs or deebuffs . Those skills should be used only of those pets where out there. I like to take on harder stuff solo or small team and with LM feel like pet doesent help you in anything other than just use a skill and dismiss him... Beorning calss can be TANK, DPS, HEAL if geard for it. Whats the problem of having similar tools with the pets on blue line? If Pet dies in combat you should lose them for some time untill it recovers and gets back into fight! Well i hope you get the idea that what a pet could do in my opinion.
I don't think this blue LM rework is a good idea. I remember the old blue LM as a balanced class, and I first created the LM character long ago because of its unique characteristic. After I returned to this game last year, I am not playing my LM anymore because the stat-inflation after Mordor expansion ruined the blue line tree. Abandoning the former decent uniqueness of the old class while developing a new class doesn't seem right to me. It is somewhat different from getting rid of dull minstrel yellow tree or integrating former red and yellow warden. I wish SSG shall reconsider.
Tough to see why they can't get a pet class right. Sooo many mmo's have pet classes that have decent functionality - CityOfHeroes/Villians, Age of Conan, WoW, DAoC, GW2 to mention a few.
Especially since there are so few screws to adjust. Effective HP, damage and, maybe a single pet-specific buff. Any intern could tinker around for a month until it feels good, and presto.
Red doing in good direction more damage! Blue needs to be pet based buff pets i like the idea of more than 1 pet. Just make Yellow a secondary spec its boring and that can give the LM a debuff/cc vibe at all times for group content without messing up solo play.
Why do pets need to be buff based? They are not magical animals. Those pets should be a skill the LM casts. Make the animals more animalistic and stronger. It will allow the LM to use what kind of animal is needed in the fight instead of making them a cheap gimmick for a buff. Buffs make pets useless.
All I know is, if they make blue passive or turn it into red captain, I am finally done with this game. The continued push to make classes only 2 roles and all for end game elitists is really making me sick to my stomach. This game has never been about end game, this game has never had a large or even decent sized elitist player base. About all they need to do to blue line is give the pets the old +3 level boost they used to have and perhaps revamp one or two of the skills to give them a slight power boost. Then to make them what they are supposed to be, the Master of Animals, remove the buffs from the pets, make the buffs an LM skill. This makes the pets a thing that is used for the FIGHT and not just some cheap gimmick for a buff. Imagine having a bear out because you need a bear, and not some stupid buff a non-magical animal shouldnt be casting anyway. There is no rational reason to make classes so there are only 2 specs and force them all into some narrower view. This can only come from a total lack of imagination or listening to a vocal elite minorities complaints. They already sucked the love I had for Warden out of me, Yellow was my spec, they killed it. The only other 2 classes I play are LM and Hunter. and Hunter can get boring quick which is why I have been re-rolling LM as often as I have. LM level 1-90 is some of the best gameplay this game has to offer. These devs are out of their minds doing things like this in such an old game, the classes are what has been keeping us playing all these years.
I like the idea of loremaster being an offensive support similar to red captain. I just don't like the fact that they seem to be trying to make it a clone of what the red captain can do, rather than a unique spec in and of itself.
It seems like they’re trying to make most classes into a bit of a Venn diagram. A blue Lm or a red captain. A yellow beorning or a (presumably) blue minstrel.
I would love for there to be a spec of LM that fits that description, but personally I am more concerned with the LM's solo capabilities.
I'm really not happy with the state of lore-master. I also really don't like the idea of blue lore-master becoming like the red captain. Why can't we just have a proper pet spec?
Because SSG lacks any form of actual creative design so all they do is duplicate skills from other current classes and rename them, or remove spec lines all together.
Red lins is fine for DPS, yellow line is fine for support, blue line is amazing for survivability on lower levels but as pets stop scaling properly around Rohan/Gondor it gets useless on higher levels. ALL they need to do is make Pets scale, is this so hard?? Like seriously?
It isnt hard, but LOTRO likely only has a single employee in charge of all updates and content, and theyre likely an unpaid intern, so for that kid it IS hard since they have no experience and are also probably a child and SSG doing typical american child labor.
Hyperbole, but this is likely the truth. MMO's on "maintenance mode" get low level newbie employee(s) in charge of the entire game. That's why it can take over a year to get the tiniest update.
Actually I found it easier because of the skill choices and available skills as a B-LM
That's not all they need to do. You set the bar far too low, imo. It's permissible to make comparisons with other classes, and the LM just comes up short on all counts.
Is it really that hard for them, to just make Blue Line pets to scale better? Do really we need a total revamp, or god forbid another passive tree. I don't want classes to start feeling the same, or be streamlined.
100% agree!
They are listening to the very vocal minority who want everything made for their end game content.
You're not the only one who is concerned, Louey.
Yeah I like the idea of giving some of the pets more usage depending on the situation that you're in. But I think some of these will be more OP depending on what the future raids look like. For the current cycle I can see the one where LMs are able to do an aoe corruption skill as being very useful and powerful, especially in Gwathrenost where mobs won't die if they have corruptions on them. Takes over one role that the Burgs have, but it would be nice to have a second class also have that ability.
Imagine a world where wizard's fire is changed based on pet for example. Like AoE with sabertooth, single target with lynx, debuff with raven, heal with spirit ball
@@iiillliii9971 can't be worse than the warden gambits lol.... but yeah I can see how it could be a slippery slope.
I like this type of longer-form class discussion type content
100% get rid of pet cycling. They’re supposed to be your friends, not a single use tool.
Regarding induction, I’d almost like to see a “longer induction but bigger effect” down one line and quicker induction but less effect down another.
I always hoped for LM to have a Healing role. Yellow for Support, Red for Elemental DPS/Pet DPS and Blue for Healing, maybe Blue being focused on the Spirit pet and water spells.
That would be pretty cool, if they could integrate healing into the blue line it would make it much more useful. As blue is currently I can't play it because I'm not a fan of just letting my pet do all the work. I also hate doing all the work myself (yellow line), so I feel as though red strikes the best balance.
I like the blue line because I'm casual and distracted so I want my pet to do everything. Yes, it's the only class that has this so I don't want it to go away. Just wish the pets worked better especially with a friend.
We should lobby for your direction: more pets and more power for them, maybe give them the ability to temporarily attach to others in group, maybe make them much more customizable -- even special quests for the pets... places to keep them in off hours at the house, etc.
An easy fix, give hi level LM a skill that applies all debuffs from all pets long cooldown. This rotation crap needs to go away completely. NO LM likes summoning pets over and over rather then calling down lightning.
The forums have been super rough lately with what feels like half of the people just fighting and the other half is twitch spam, but there are some hidden gems in that thread with wonderful ideas for how not to destroy blue LMs
Louey7, thanks for sharing your views. My 140 LM has been blue since launch and is a solo player. Perhaps others don't care for the spec, but I have enjoyed exploring Middle Earth with my entire menagerie even though my lynx gets the most action.
I don't know anything about red captains but from your comments and those posted by other viewers, it seems I wouldn't care much for the proposed changes that make a blue LM very similar to a red captain. Also, as you mentioned, we LMs have enough going on in our toolbars already, so no thanks to adding more spells specifically to direct our pets.
Finally, you've said it before and I agree: We should be able to play the spec we want without being excluded from group content. This is a large part of why I play solo - nobody needs a blue LM. If LMs are meant to be supporting roles in group content, then make the blue LM attractive enough for people to want to play it as such, without making it a clone of red cappy. Someday I would like to try group content, but I don't have the time or interest to master a new spec only to be invited as a background helper.
As always I appreciate your insight. Please tell the kitties Domingo says hi!
I've always really enjoyed red LM personally. The gameplay loop of having your bear gather up mobs and then burning them all up in a wildfire is just cathartic to me personally, and no I am not a pyromaniac lol 😂 !
The fellowship buffs with blue line based on pets is awesome. I especially love the bear and lynx buffs, letting the loremaster be tankier and more offensive.
A large portion of Loremaster's dps is in its auto attack, which is melee. Which hits instantly every time inbetween abilities.
What they need is to focus more on the sword, either for red or blue.
Red has the sword stun and lightning, which is great. That and auto attack is it though. One more ability would be nice.
But the main problem I have with LM is how much burning embers is at its core. I dislike that ability but love all others. Yet BE is the core of LM's in many many ways.
Blue Line should have a Melee Emphasis, and make the LM tankier while giving bonuses on Melee abilities based on pet choice.
This lets Loremasters who love their DW Staff+Sword use it more, while making Red/Yellow not at all reliant on melee.
Wisp - Sword-strike heals fellowship
Bear - Staff Strike increases mits
Lynx - Staff strike gives Dmg bonus
Or just have it be more Sword focused in general. Forget the buffs. Just give an extra Blue Line sword ability that gives the LM more armor and heals with each strike, and when paired with Staff Sweep and Sword Strike, can replace Burning Embers for rotation.
Or replace 1-3 induction abilities with melee abilities with sword animations. Burning Embers becomes Burning Sword. A stun becomes Blinding Staff. A heal becomes a morale boosting sword move.
Like how the Blue Line hunter is radically different by removing the need to stay still.
They shouldnt even be able to buff. The buffs should be coming from the character because these kinds of animals are not magical.
The pets should be made more animal like. Ala give the birds an eye peck skill to temp blind an opponent (cc), Give bear a roar to shock/stun an opponent. Spirit could actually cause fear since its...a spirit instead of just tossing out an occasional heal. :Let Bog's bee swarm, swarm and not just cause a DoT...nobody is going to be continuing to fight if they are being swarmed by bees!
@@thomasjones4570 "The buffs should be coming from the character because these kinds of animals are not magical. "
The Captain, Minstrel, and pretty much everyone but Loremaster (Gandalf) aren't magical. So not really sure what this means. In Tolkien, to be honest, the animals are probably even more magical than most things, as is shown with the Elves/Astari & their connection to animals, as well as Beorn's House, Eagles, talking birds, nefarious bats, et. al. If the Captain can "Inspire" a buff with a speech or banner, then I see no reason literally anything couldnt give buffs.
But I get your point, as your suggestions for improvement are a lot better than what I've seen so far. Really great ideas.
@@nowayjosedaniel Well that is not exactly true. In Tolkiens notes and short stories the Wizards, Dark Lords, Balrogs, Dragons, Nazgul and Elves were magical beings. Dwarves were capable of setting magical spells into items (weapons, door of Moria), Men were capable of using magical items and if they had some Elf blood in their line, use magic itself. Hobbits were only capable of using magical items.
What game did was play loosely with who could become an LM and what an LM is.
The class is based on Elrond, who could use magic (made the waters of the Bruinen rise to sweep the Nazgul away, could talk to animals).
But only a Wizard can call lightning, fire and such and they are the Malar who are spirit beings, Saruman, Gandalf...
Keep blue line as a pet based spec. I have both a level 140 LM and a level 140 Cappy. I use my pet more on my LM. I have used the bear as a tank in group content when we could not find a tank (back in Moria days).Or as a off tank (imagine that, a light armour class as an off tank).
I just honestly don't see such a blue LM being popular enough to get picked over a red captain, considering damage output and survivability. LM is my main, I love playing him, but I never play the blue line because frankly, it's just a much weaker red line because the damage output for pets is not good enough. So I'm happy with them increasing pets' damage, and most of the proposed changes to red and yellow I'm OK with. But I just don't see how this type of blue LM is going to be viable. I'd much rather have exactly what you say, I solid pet specialisation. Or, if they do want to make them a buffer, then at least different types of buffs, so it would make sense to have both a red captain and a blue LM in a raid. The only thing I can think of as to why they might want this is to free up the captains - at least on my server you usually would only get 1 or max 2 captains in a raid, and those would be used as tanks and healers. But yeah, I'm not a fan. I will be interested to see what happens, though, and I am very happy they are revamping LM.
Hey, thanks for the comment and becoming a member! *If* they went buffer, I would also definitely prefer the buffs be unique and different.
@@Louey7 thank you for all your great content!
Agreed, B-LMs should be unique and not displace Red Captains.
Blue LM should not only NOT become like red captain but especially not with mutually exclusive buffs. I seriously hope they go back on this because this is one of the worst class revamp ideas that I have seen thrown out by SSG
wait - captain and LM have the same buffs and can't stack?! thats insanely bad.
@@nowayjosedaniel That's what the dev is proposing for the LM revamp
Having a dedicated, usable pet spec feels like a no-brainer. Classes/builds like Beastmaster Hunter and Demonology Warlock in WoW, Pet Sorcerer in Elder Scrolls Online, etc., are very popular with a segment of the MMO gaming population. Especially in games that allow for dual specs, these builds let people who love to play ranged classes have a more viable soloing experience.
Additionally pet classes also make for a great accessibility option in MMOs. One of the reasons I play a Pet Sorc in ESO is because the game has a 1.0 second GCD and optimal play for lot of builds requires weaving in OGCD attacks and bar swaps in between those 1.0 second attacks. That is *a lot* of Actions per Minute - more than a sizeable chunk of the potential customer base can sustain. Playing a pet class slows down the game and allows for fewer APMs, which then means that folks like me with arthritis can play the game decently, if not optimally. Decent enough to not get flattened automatically in pvp or group content and progress through the open world.
I've enjoyed my time in LOTRO (enough to pay for two Premium accounts and to subscribe to TH-cam channels on it) but I have had a hard time settling in on a class to take beyond level 20 or so, just because I haven't found a class/spec that I click with. A Blue line LM that was truly viable as a pet based spec would absolutely be the thing that would get me to play the game more often and keep an active sub.
I'm even more scared of what they're doing to blue hunter. It's my favorite class and they're stripping it of its only high damage ranged skill to buff red hunter, which is already too strong relative to the other lines. It doesn't make any sense.
Just like LM, I wasn't planning on doing a video on the Hunter at this point (esp since I talked about that so much on streams a while back), but also just like the LM, I likely will be recording a similar format one on the Hunter in the next couple. I have similar concerns with the direction of blue hunter!
B-LM wish list 1) Critical Coordination would be Fellow buff. 2) Wisdom of the council would be a Fellow heal + stun buff. 3) Loyalty would be an AOE heal. 4) After Battle Treat could be a group buff/heal. 5) Inner-Flame could be a group heal and buff. 6) Feral could be a group buff pending the pet you use. 7) All pets have a taunt toggle with the bear lasting the longest in Blue tree. and so much more ... I think a Blue LM could create it's own identity without displacing captains.
Makes sense for redline to be improved on dps, and yellow to be support. With that said, I want blue to stay pet focused. They could even improve that and make it even more focused on pets for soloing.
I do enough raiding and dungeons on eso and ffxiv, so Lotro is my, relax by myself and enjoy the story and rp mmo. I really have enjoyed my man beastmaster trained by the blue mages, and don't want that line to become passive.
I would like each class to have one line designed mostly for soloing, and I feel like I get that with the blue line on LM. And I do enjoy the pet focus.
I agree that they should just make blue LM an optional DPS spec with a pet-based focus. If they want to add a new red cappie alternative they should make blue burg that.
In think all classes should have 2 specs and 1 passive tree.
pvp and people who raid all the time have far too much influence on the dev team, these groups are always feking moaning about something which always affects solo players detrimentally.
spot on
I like some of the changes but I honestly run blue when I'm doing a hard fight for survivability and I don't get why they can't just scale the pets instead of changing the entire system
I got worried when you got to the community reactions 'cause I and then some other people got involved in stupid arguments. lol x_x
(I'm Mistlos in the forums which is my main LM on Landroval.)
Pet rotation can reduce the cool aspect of blue LM having companion allies to little more than skills. A small amount of cycling is ok but less is more. Hi Piper
Or they could remove the buffs from the pets that shouldnt even have them and make them into a skill for the being with the actual magical powers. Allow the pets to be what they are supposed to be, an animal being called in to aid the master of animals in need of them.
I would love to have animals accessed across all lore master classes but fire lightening and frost damage or something along those lines
I don't like the idea of the LM getting some Captain stuff purely because all the Captain buffs have the theme of "Motivating" and "Inspiring". That isn't a Lore Master's shtick. The Minstrel or even the Warden would have been better options for getting all that stuff.
I'd like the bear to have an AoE threat roar in blue.
I personally really enjoy red line loremaster gameplay a LOT but blue and yellow aren't for me. Then again, I don't do dungeons very often and mostly just quest and craft. It's really fun to just group up half a dozen enemies with my bear and burn the living hell out of all of them with crazy burst damage and DOT's. Another class I oddly enjoy a lot are yellow line captains, you basically never die and can solo basically everything but end-game content. Sure, their damage is god awful and probably the worst in the game actually but you feel like an indestructible tank and every enemy you kill heals you almost half of your health bar. Throw a Noble mark on a boss and set up a standard and you are just completely unstoppable.
Blue Burglars are a lot of fun as well!
I've tried every class up to 40 and those are my top 3 by far but I haven't tried Brawler or Beorning yet.
I pretty much go with Red LM if I want to melt faces, Yellow Captain if I want to feel like a god wielding a pool noodle, or Blue burg if I want a bit of both.
To be fair I HATE red line captains though so SSG turning blue LM's into red line captains would make them unplayable for me, not a fan of blue LM's though either.
LM needs their skills culled above all else. Give me half as many skills, that are actually useful in most situations, half inductions and reduce CDs by 80% so I can actually use my skills when I need them! Gameplay is ridiculously convoluted compared to playing Champ, Hunter, Guardian, RK or even Warden, once you know your top rotations - and for considerably lesser effect! Also pets need a speed boost and should jump to action the moment the induction starts, not when the enemy is already halfway to me.
Culling of useless, or overly situational skills however should be priority 1. For example Burning Embers, Sticky Gourd and Wizard's Fire should be one skill with 4s CD, Wizard's Frost gets combined with Gust of Wind, also 4s CD (for reasons of cutting down on the number of buttons and CDs you need to manage, and because, on their own, most of those skills do not even justify casting), Cooldowns of Ents go to War and Lightning Storm down by at least 75% - and you would STILL be a worse Champion in solo content, because inductions limit your dps, and base damage is laughable.
MMOs started out differently, but unless you are in a longterm clan, and you are at max level, 99% of the gameplay is solo-play - and LM is just soooo bad compared to my other characters.
I'm a little frustrated that you completely ignored the suggestion to break blinding flash for any but yellow spec, removing the crowd control to focus on the interrupt. I play a lore master as cc first and that would pretty well trash the level 1-80 gameplay of the class for me. It matters a lot to be able to keep two mobs locked down and an occasional 15sec mez on a third. Likewise removing the root component from cracked earth unless I'm a yellow base spec again trashes the survivability of lower level blue lore masters. Are you so deep into red mobile ae nukes as to ignore cc entirely? Or am I misreading Omm's commentry?
More likely that I just missed this in the video - perhaps I need to make this more clear that these are reaction reviews as it's my first time seeing most of the details! (I noticed a missed a similar level detail in the Beorning revamp video, for example). That said, I would not be in favor of Blinding Flash becoming a yellow exclusive
For Cracked Earth, I interpreted that as a trait shallow into the tree. With the tons of trait points at high levels, this would (under this assumption) be a low cost option to lower DPS and increase CC.
@Louey7 Granted but by the high levels there are also lots of alternatives. First a new lore master has to be willing to play to 50.
I think they should just buff the pet. Making blue line a support line doesnt sound like a lot of fun. If the pets scale better, or maybe at higher level beeing able to summon 2 pets at the same time could be some ideas to make the blue line more usable at max level
If I have to cycle my pets I might delete my loremaster. I do like the idea of being offensive support.
The game is too easy for you to have to do anything. Min/Maxing is not necessary in most MMO's bc they are so easy.
Can you post link on forum next time please?
Oops, thought I did! Here is the link: forums.lotro.com/index.php?threads/u37-beorning-refresh-dev-notes.1599/
Blue Line should realy focus pets!
Bear shoud aoe and agro better so you could control trash mobs or focus on single target agro single target mode. You should be able to toggle diderent stance in each pet for that flexebility.
Why would you have a bear that cant just force taunt a mob for a few seconds and then cant hold it unless you resummon and spam taunt again... ?
I would like to be able to fight out some trash mobs while team is focusing on others instead of just making mobs sleep and deebuff them with a repetitive spam rotation of pets. Feels like the pet is just there for cosmetic and deebuff.
If a Tank player dies we should be able to direct bear to do something while team recovers.
Blue LM does not Need crazy damage but if the pets could buff or support selected targets would be great.
Some pets should have damage skills , others , tanking skills, and others buffs or deebuffs .
Those skills should be used only of those pets where out there.
I like to take on harder stuff solo or small team and with LM feel like pet doesent help you in anything other than just use a skill and dismiss him...
Beorning calss can be TANK, DPS, HEAL if geard for it.
Whats the problem of having similar tools with the pets on blue line?
If Pet dies in combat you should lose them for some time untill it recovers and gets back into fight!
Well i hope you get the idea that what a pet could do in my opinion.
I don't think this blue LM rework is a good idea. I remember the old blue LM as a balanced class, and I first created the LM character long ago because of its unique characteristic. After I returned to this game last year, I am not playing my LM anymore because the stat-inflation after Mordor expansion ruined the blue line tree. Abandoning the former decent uniqueness of the old class while developing a new class doesn't seem right to me. It is somewhat different from getting rid of dull minstrel yellow tree or integrating former red and yellow warden. I wish SSG shall reconsider.
Tough to see why they can't get a pet class right. Sooo many mmo's have pet classes that have decent functionality - CityOfHeroes/Villians, Age of Conan, WoW, DAoC, GW2 to mention a few.
Especially since there are so few screws to adjust. Effective HP, damage and, maybe a single pet-specific buff. Any intern could tinker around for a month until it feels good, and presto.
Sounds like pets are going to be able to do similar dps to a sword and board guardian 😅
every single LM skill i like you want to change! all the skills i dislike you want to keep as is!
Red doing in good direction more damage! Blue needs to be pet based buff pets i like the idea of more than 1 pet. Just make Yellow a secondary spec its boring and that can give the LM a debuff/cc vibe at all times for group content without messing up solo play.
Why do pets need to be buff based? They are not magical animals. Those pets should be a skill the LM casts. Make the animals more animalistic and stronger. It will allow the LM to use what kind of animal is needed in the fight instead of making them a cheap gimmick for a buff. Buffs make pets useless.
Make natures fury and ring of fire not ground targetable leave it the way it is … just make ring of fire (dot) that’s it.
Just make the blue line a healing spec.
Looks like an Update to the old LM imo
Dear God, please, no pet cycling
lotro game design 2023: just copy captain skills 100% and give them a new icon... done. really dissappointing
All I know is, if they make blue passive or turn it into red captain, I am finally done with this game. The continued push to make classes only 2 roles and all for end game elitists is really making me sick to my stomach. This game has never been about end game, this game has never had a large or even decent sized elitist player base.
About all they need to do to blue line is give the pets the old +3 level boost they used to have and perhaps revamp one or two of the skills to give them a slight power boost. Then to make them what they are supposed to be, the Master of Animals, remove the buffs from the pets, make the buffs an LM skill. This makes the pets a thing that is used for the FIGHT and not just some cheap gimmick for a buff. Imagine having a bear out because you need a bear, and not some stupid buff a non-magical animal shouldnt be casting anyway.
There is no rational reason to make classes so there are only 2 specs and force them all into some narrower view. This can only come from a total lack of imagination or listening to a vocal elite minorities complaints.
They already sucked the love I had for Warden out of me, Yellow was my spec, they killed it. The only other 2 classes I play are LM and Hunter. and Hunter can get boring quick which is why I have been re-rolling LM as often as I have. LM level 1-90 is some of the best gameplay this game has to offer. These devs are out of their minds doing things like this in such an old game, the classes are what has been keeping us playing all these years.