Today Turbine released the next Dev Diary in line for its series of class changes, this one being for the Lore-master.
Hey folks! I’m Deviled_Egg and I’m going to fill you in on some of the goodies the Lore-master will be receiving in the Helm’s Deep expansion. The Lore-master will feature three distinct specializations, each one catering to a different play-style. The Keeper of Animals is the Lore-master’s pet line. Specializing in this line will make your pets stronger and tougher to take down, as well as offer new interactions between you and your pets. The Master of Nature’s Fury is the Lore-masters DPS Line. Traits in this line will give you the ability to wield Flame, Lightning, and Frost to great effect. Last, but certainly not least, is The Ancient Master. This specialization will give you a suite of debuffs and disables which can render your enemies’ attacks useless, or make them more vulnerable to the attacks of you and your allies. The Ancient Master also has the ability to restore the Morale and Power of allies.
Not a whole lot to note here, except that MONF appears to have a wider range of damage types, whereas on Live it’s mostly Fire with a hint of Lightning and Light(Frost is near non-existent). Also, it seems that The Ancient Master will be receiving the Morale and Power restoration potential currently located in the LMs Blue line.
Keeper of Animals
You may be aware of my feelings about the current blue line from my articles on the various pets. Overall I feel that the boosts given to our pets in that line are both dull and ineffective, and that sharing the line with healing ability meant that neither was reaching the potential that they could.
Fortunately the revamp aims to change that. Firstly the removal of the healing support means that this line is 100% focused on improving your pets ability as well as your interactions with it. Choosing the KoA specialisation gives your companion boosts right from the start, rather than requiring slotting blue traits later down the line. This is nice, but rather dependent on just how ‘boosted’ our pets are from this, as frankly they need one heck of a boost to be viable.
Something I am particularly glad to see is that the Coordination buff, an ability commonly found on blue line LM gear sets that removes the induction from your next skill when your pet scores a Critical Hit, is finally being added to the LM natural abilities. When it works(and it often doesn’t at the moment), this can greatly help you out when in a tight spot, so I’m looking forward to having this without needing a specific set of gear.
The Signs of the Wild skills, both Protection and Rage, are being converted to passive increases to the pet. Rage will retain the Damage and Attack Duration boosts that it currently has, but loses the Perceived Threat component. Protection will reduce your pet’s Incoming Damage like it does now, as well as contain the Maximum Morale boost that you can give it via an LI legacy. The Parry Rating boost appears to have been removed.
The idea of pet-master synergy is getting more attention, even in the passive boosts. One such example will increase the LM’s Tactical Mastery as well as boosting your pet’s Physical and Tactical Mastery. Stat boosts aren’t very interesting, but I love that we are going to have a greater connection to our companions, something that is woefully lacking as things are.
Now something that IS interesting is procs(and who doesn’t love procs, right?). Specifically, a trait called Loyalty will have the chance for your pet to heal youat the cost of its own Morale, under certain conditions. No specifics on what those conditions are, but I’d assume it would be either hitting a limit of your Morale pool, or upon receiving a certain type of effect. Either way, I’m looking forward to seeing this play out in action.
But let’s face it, what people are really looking forward to is the Capstone Skill for the Blue Line, the awesome sounding skill Sic ‘Em. This ability will ‘summon a host of animals to your side at once to swarm the enemy’. Presumably the host is made up of the pets that you can summon, which would make it 5ish depending on the status of the Legendary pets. Super excited to try this skill out, NPCs beware!
Overall I’m really liking the idea of these changes. I’m just hoping that on a stat level the buffs to our pets are enough.
Master of Nature’s Fury
MONF is probably the line that least needed work done to it. LM DPS is very sturdy, especially in terms of burst damage. Still, the line will be receiving some pretty noteworthy changes. As noted above, the new MONF will utilise multiple damage types, and the buffs from the specialisation will reflect that. But as the Developer points out, it’s ‘the new toys which are most exciting’. For starters, Lightning Storm will no longer require Ancient Craft to be used before it can be cast. More juicy is a trait called Fierce Lightning, which gives Lightning Storm the chance to create a ‘Improved Sticky Gourd’-esque firepatch where it hits.
Gust of Wind is getting a neat upgrade from the rather lackluster skill it currently is, in that it has the potential to spread the Burning Embers effect(whether it’s the slow, DOT or both is not clear) from one target to others. I love the sound of this, both in it’s potency and in the idea of a more complex skill rotation that MONF is currently lacking in.
The Capstone for MONF is a brand-new skill appropriately called Nature’s Fury, which summons a FREAKING TORNADO that has the chance to strike the enemies within with LIGHTNING. I only hope the animation for this is as cool as the text.
Overall while I think the Red Line is in a good place, I also feel that these changes should make it more involved and frankly even awesome-r than it already is, as well as making us even more deserving of the nickname, ‘Lag-Masters’.
The Ancient Master
The Yellow line isn’t really in a bad spot per se, but it really needs some sprucing up to make it more exciting to run with. The upcoming changes seem to intend to do just that, with the idea of upgrading your debuffs already present on the target(s) by using different combinations of elemental skills(Fire, Frost and Lightning presumably). Power restoration is built into this line with an augment to Gust of Wind(an apparently quite popular skill with this revamp) allowing it to restore Power to your whole fellowship when it crits. CC is as ever a part of this line, with one trait increasing the duration of stuns.
Aside from KOA, this set of changes intrigues me the most, as right now I feel that debuffing as an LM is rather dull. Use a handful of debuffs with long durations and long cooldowns, then move on to other things until they come back up. It’s not engaging at all, and by the look of these changes, the very best debuffing LMs will become invaluable to their fellowship.
Conclusion
As a whole, I like where the revamp seems to be going. There’s isn’t really anything that surprised me in it, and unlike previous Diaries there wasn’t much mention of speccing into other lines. However, some of these skills(especially Sic ‘Em) and particularly the increased interaction with your pet for the Blue line has me really hyped up for these class changes. Bring ’em on!
Loading ...
It sounds like the LM is getting a more significant revamp than some of the other classes (Guard-Champ) and it’s going to be interesting to see how the trait trees work. I see myself running with a red solo build and a combination yellow/blue build for groups.
My concern with these changes has always been what do we get standard with the class without investing in trees. You’ll note that in the diary, DE says
It doesn’t say the AM can do *more* restoration, just that they can at all. Will I be unable to heal or give power to others if I’m not invested in AM? It also sounds as if debuffs are entirely in the realm of AM now. No mention of debuffs in any of the lines. Unlike other devs, DE made no mention of what was easily accessible in the trees either.
When Turbine said they wanted classes to specialize more at the cost of utility, I was greatly concerned. LMs, captains, and burgs ARE utility. While the individual lines do not sound bad by any means, I need the full picture and this dev diary failed at that.
When I first read the diary, I thought they were going to do away with CC completely! They spent so much time talking about the debuffs that I completely missed that they said anything about stuns. It wasn’t until my 2nd readthrough that I picked up that CC was in the AM tree. The diaries have certainly not been all-inclusive. All communication on HD seems to err on the side of caution.