November Update Rune-keeper Changes

By: Brian 'Zombie Columbus' Aloisio!

Welcome, Rune-keepers and Rune-keeper enthusiasts, to The Lord of the Rings Online™’s November update! We have a lot of things planned, so let’s not delay. The Rune-keeper currently sits at top tier in both damage and healing output. Because of this, the goals we have set for this update did not focus on increasing or decreasing net effectiveness, but on adding variety, customization and more dynamic skill interaction to achieve these results. In other words, our goal was to add more “advanced” into this “advanced” class. To achieve this, we enhanced underused skills, scaled back overly potent skills, and introduced more options into skill rotations.

Four Trait set Bonuses

Confession time: the four Trait Set Bonuses were bugged and don’t work. Some people knew this, but now everyone who reads this diary will. Fixing them was a high priority for this update, but in the end, we decided that remaking them was the best option. This allowed us to give out a bonus that was more appropriate and (in the case of fire) needed, while avoiding giving a buff that would likely throw balance out the window (in the case of light-ing). The individual buffs we’ve added are listed below. Remember, these are 100% additions; the bonuses you’ve seen written in the live tooltips were not having any effect in game.

Fury of Storm

Lightning-based Rune-keepers are in a very strong place right now. While fire can churn out more damage over time, lightning damage is very high, can be delivered on the move and is highly power efficient. Unfortunately, the skill rotations to achieve these strong results are rather bland and do not allow room for much variety. Because of this, the goals we set for lightning were to add variety into the skill rotation while keeping net effectiveness where it is now.

• New Skill – “Sustaining Bolt”
  • High damage, high power cost, 30 second cooldown, requires 6 Battle attunement, -10% power usage for 15 seconds
  • New Chisel (more in Chisel section below) allows skill to cost zero Power
• 4 Trait Set Bonus
  • -15 seconds to ”Sustaining Bolt” cooldown
  • +3% base movement speed
• “Essence of Storm”
  • Increase base damage
  • Reduced cooldown from 10 to 8 seconds
  • Reduced attunement requirement to 3 Battle
• “Scribe’s Spark”
  • Reduced Power Cost
  • Reduced base damage
• “Tale of the Storm”
  • Increased application chance from 10% to 20%
  • Reduced duration from 30 to 15 seconds
  • Removed power reduction

Taken together, these changes keep damage and power usage very close to what they were, while opening up a lot more variety in skill orders. The buffs to “Essence of Storm” and the high damage “Sustaining Bolt” can lay down are balanced by the adjustments to “Scribes Spark.” This redistribution gives lightning Rune-keepers more options for trading off between damage and power usage. Lastly, “Tale of the Storm” was doing a little too much, so the power savings it represented now require timing with Sustaining Bolt uses.

Wrath of Fire

In optimal circumstances, fire Rune-keepers can deal more damage than lightning with lower power usage. However, a perfect storm of minor issues pile up that keep this theoretical superiority from kicking in: badly timed resistances, bosses removing DoT’s during transitions, monsters dying too fast in group fights and general bugs. Our focus here was to clean up those issues and provide some minor buffs .

• New Skill - “Essay of Flame”
  • Applies a Tier 3 “Writ of Flame”.
  • High power cost
  • 60 second cooldown
  • Requires 6 Battle Attunement
  • Has a 6 second induction
• 4 Trait Set Bonus
  • Increased resistance penetration
  • Reduced induction time on “Essay of Flame” to 1.5 seconds
• “Scathing Retort”
  • Debuff reworked. It will now linger on a foe for an amount of time based on how long you channel for
• “Writ of Flame”
  • No longer occasionally becomes resisted and dispels on tier up or down (same for Writ of Cold)
• “Frost-Burn”
  • No longer decreases the damage on Writ of Flame

Words of Grace

Healing-focused Rune-keepers have shown that they are more than capable of healing through any content in the game. Their weaknesses in spot healing are more than covered by their potent healing throughput and low power usage rates. They do lack some variety in non-healing options though. As a result, our focus was on giving them some more spot healing, adding some non-healing options, and increasing power usage while leaving net healing ability alone.

• New Skill – “Master of Writs”
  • For the next 15 seconds Writs may be cast regardless of attunement. Such writs will cost 50% additional power.
  • 15 second cooldown.
  • New Chisel (more in Chisel section below) can reduce the power penalty to as low as 20%
• 4 Trait Set Bonus
  • -5% threat generation from all sources.
  • “Master of Writs” becomes a toggle skill
• Terse Narrative
  • No longer applies “Prelude to Hope”
  • Places a short duration buff on the Rune-keeper that reduces the induction time and power cost of “Epic for the Ages”
• Mending Verse
  • Up front healing is increased
  • Healing over time is decreased
  • Power cost is increased
  • “Memorial Prose” power reduction is decreased from 15% to 5%
• Writ of Health
  • Decreased power cost.
• Class traits
  • Required skill plays for some Rune-keeper healing traits have been reduced

“Mending Verse” was the most power-efficient heal in the game on a class that already had ample power reduction abilities, while also being the second best healing per second skill in the game. Since reducing Rune-keepers’ net healing ability wasn’t on the table, Mending Verse’s power efficiency had to come down. As power cost increased, Mending Verse’s ability to be a maintenance heal came into question, so we transferred some of its healing throughput away from the pulses and into the front of the skill, making it a more potent spot healing tool. At the same time, “Epic for the Ages” has been changed (via its trait “Mending Verse”) to be able to act as a maintenance heal.

Then there is “Master of Writs.” This skill is technically a balance skill, so offensive Rune-keepers can use it to sneak in a few Writs of Health (the duration of 15 seconds is just long enough to get a tier 3 Writ active). However, the real power of this skill is seen when traiting it into a toggle. When active, healing Rune-keepers will be able to begin tiering up “Writ of Health” at the beginning of combat, bypassing the need to spam unneeded heals to get to 3 attunement. In addition, healing Rune-keepers can now maintain Writs of Cold and Flame while healing.

Chisels

The Rune-keeper’s ranged slot item is getting a big update. 5 new types of ranged slot items have been added at each level range, in addition to some above level 60. The existing crafting recipes for chisels have been turned into multi-output recipes which will be able to create 2 of the chisels. The other half are actually not chisels, but rifflers, which are for healing focused Rune-keepers.

• Chisel - The currently existing chisel (for comparison)
  • Increases resistance penetration
  • Increases Tactical damage rating
• Chisel of Fire
  • “Fiery Ridicule” induction becomes harder to knockback from damage
  • Increases Tactical damage rating
• Chisel of Lightning
  • Occasionally during combat, the Charged buff will appear on the Rune-keeper. This will increase critical damage by 5% and make the next usage of “Sustaining Bolt” cost zero power.
  • Increases Tactical damage rating
• Riffler
  • Reduces threat generation from healing
  • Increases healing rating
• Riffler of Hope
  • Grants “Prelude to Hope” additional HoT pulses
  • Increases healing rating
• Riffler of Writs
  • “Master of Writs” Power penalty reduced
  • Increases healing rating

General Updates

There are a lot of skills that are not lightning, fire or healing! The rest of the updates don’t fit neatly into those categories, so here they are.

• “Fall to X” skills work properly with DoTs
  • These skills would often dispel without dealing their damage when they were triggered by damage over time effects like “Writ of Flame.” These issues have been fixed.
• “Weapon of X”
  • These skills can now be used on Soldiers.
• “Icy Discourse” was not working as expected when it encountered damage over time effects. This has been corrected and the skill should now function properly when interacting with DoTs.
• “Do Not Fall This Day”
  • The revive buff will now be placed immediately upon clicking the skill, as opposed to after the animation plays

Cosmetic Satchels

Lastly, we’ve added Satchels to the cosmetic tab. All Rune-keepers will be able to pick which of the satchels they’ve collected to be displayed at their hip. We’ve added satchels to the LOTRO Store, as well as introduced four new Store-exclusive looks. We toyed with the idea of letting all classes equip the cosmetic satchels, but it did not pan out in time for the November Update.

We think these changes help round out a class that was in pretty solid shape to begin with. We hope you agree!