Minstrel Developer Diary

By Tim “Raskolnikov” Lang

When I started working on updates for the Minstrel, I began by reading through the giant community feedback thread on the forums and recording all of the feedback I found there. Next, I looked through all of the Minstrel’s Skills, Traits, Trait Set Bonuses, and Legacies for any rough edges or anything else that I had found annoying when playing my Minstrel on live. Finally, I talked to several people around the office who play Minstrels and got feedback from them.

Once I had all of that information I began to have a clearer picture of what I wanted to try and fix:

• Internal Feedback: Replace some of the Minstrel’s sub-par Traits with more desirable ones.
• Community Thread: Attempt to address the concern that all Minstrels do in instances is spam Bolster Courage.
• Community Thread: Attempt to address the desire for a Power return of some sort.
• Internal Feedback: There’s little reason to go up the Ballad chain when most Anthems are on cooldown.
• Community Thread: Make the Legendary Skill “Song of the Hopeful Heart” feel Legendary again.
• Community Thread: Attempt to address the perception that the skill “Soliloquy of Spirit” is a bad skill.
• Personal Opinion: Other than “Ballad of War”, Tier 3 Ballads are unimpressive.
• Personal Opinion: Long cooldowns are annoying and discourage usage of those skills.
• Community Thread: The War-speech Tail effect induces rage in many players.
• Personal Opinion: Clean things up.
  • Polishing things is good, but as a System Designer working on a project that has already shipped before I started working on it; it’s very difficult at times to prevent myself from changing things around “because this is how I would have done it.” One quality that most Systems Designers posses is the desire to impose order on the chaotic systems of our game (more specifically, our personal version of order), and it’s hard to fight that sometimes. Still, I try to be good and stick with polishing/tweaking things rather than completely re-working them. Did I go too overboard, or not far enough? Who knows, you tell me!

With the above bullet points in mind, let’s see what I was able to address [Spoiler Alert: I wasn’t able to get to everything I wanted to]:

General:

• Cleaned up Skill, Trait and Legacy tooltips.
  • This is something I did for the Lore-master which I enjoyed doing. I’m of the opinion that we should reveal as much information as possible to players. Also, this gives me a chance to clean-up the way some our data is organized behind-the-scenes. That way the next designer to come along and make changes to the Minstrel won’t go, “What a rat’s nest! How does any of this even work!?”
• The “glowy hands” from War-speech will now remain while you are in War-speech and go away when you are not.
  • Back by popular demand! I believe the original reason this was changed was because the FX didn’t always go away when the Minstrel exited War-speech. With some under-the-table help from our FX artists we were able to resolve that issue.

Skill Improvements:

• Tier 3 Ballads from multiple Minstrels will now overwrite each other intelligently: Weaker versions will not overwrite stronger versions.
  • This type of problem originally came to my attention because of the Hunter’s skill “Find the Path.” Some Hunters had the Legacy which improved it while others did not, which caused problems when those Hunters would run in and out of one another’s Auras. I fixed that particular issue (as well as some similar Lore-master issues) in a very data-intensive way. Seeing my pain, the Engineering team came to the rescue with some pretty sweet tech which I’m now able to take advantage of. So as I discover more cases of ‘weaker’ effects overwriting ‘greater’ effects I’ll keep fixing them.
• The “Ballad Healing Bonus” has been removed from the Ballad Tier effects. Instead, when a Minstrel plays a Ballad (of any tier) they receive a “Ballad Healing Bonus” buff which increases Outgoing Healing and reduces Power Cost on the next Heal skill used. Each time a Ballad is played, this buff is incremented to the next tier (to a maximum of three). When the Minstrel uses a Heal skill this buff is decremented by one.
• The original implementation (putting a Healing bonus on the Ballad Tier effects) was an attempt to address the concern that a Minstrel’s healing rotation is pretty bland; there’s no reason to play Ballads when healing. Unfortunately, maintaining each of those Ballad Tier effects in order to receive the full bonus (9% - 15%) takes too much effort and Power. I still liked the idea of providing a bonus to healing through Ballads, the implementation just needed to be tweaked. While this new implementation isn’t revolutionary, it’s an incremental change which can (hopefully) provide an occasional variance in healing rotation if a Minstrel wants to build up to a bigger/cheaper heal when they’re not under pressure. If you have any feedback on how to further improve this mechanic, I’d love to hear it. War-speech: Minstrels are now able to use their War-speech skills (and receive the same bonuses) during the 10s ‘tail’ effect when War-speech is turned off.
  • Personally, this always bugged the hell out of me with War-speech. I understand the design decision behind implementing the ‘Tail’ effect of War-speech (wanting players to make a choice before combat: “Do I start in War-speech or not?” and add a gameplay element in the middle of combat: “Anticipating how the battle will progress, when should I exit War-speech?”), I just didn’t like the ‘dead zone’ we put players in. While in War-speech Minstrels are nuking people from orbit (it’s the only way to be sure), and when out of War-speech they’re healing until the cows come home, but during that 10s tail effect what’s the Minstrel doing? They’re not healing, nor are they dealing the damage they just were. Minstrels are left plinking away with a couple of Ballads, just waiting. This felt overly punishing, so while Minstrels still have to anticipate when they might want to begin healing again, at least they can nuke people while they wait.

• “Soliloquy of Spirit” can now stack once per caster.
  • This was basically a maintenance fix (and a minor attempt to impose order). SoS probably should have been stacking per caster from the beginning, but it’s an easy mistake to make. As a general rule, I would rather see buffs from multiple players stack. Granted that can’t always be the case, but it’s the simpler solution, both from the player’s and implementer’s perspective.
• “Fellowship’s Heart”:
  • Can now stack once per caster.
  • Is now part of the skill group “Healing and Motivation.”
  • Is now buffed by the Legacy “Healing and Motivation Skills Healing.”
    • Same as SoS above with some more of me forcing my version of order on things. i.e.; All healing skills should be under the same skill group.
• “Chord of Salvation” is now useable while moving.
  • This is a mini-panic button, so forcing Minstrels to come to a complete halt seems silly.

• “Piercing Cry” can now interrupt inductions.
  • This is a good change, though there will be some players that bemoan the ‘homogenization’ of all the classes. That is not the case. This change (and the previous change to Lore-master’s Blinding Flash) is an attempt to provide the same basic tool to all classes: Induction interruption (Corruption removal is another one of these basic tools). When all classes don’t have access to the same basic tools it makes it very difficult to design encounters that are fairly balanced from class to class. Disagree? Sweet. Hit me up on the forms, I like talking about game design.
• “Anthem of the Valar” now removes a Corruption from each enemy hit.
  • Similar to the above, the Minstrel’s only Corruption removal was via Herald’s Strike. This is all well and good for solo, but for groups I thought having an AOE Corruption removal on an Anthem with a decent cooldown was interesting but not overpowered.
• “Anthem of the Wizards” has had its Cooldown reduced from 10m to 5m.
  • This means the Warrior-skald 4-set bonus has been adjusted from reducing the Cooldown of Anthem of the Wizards by 7m to reducing it by 2.5m.
    • I don’t like long cooldowns. And in this case the 10m cooldown seemed especially unnecessary since this is a Legendary Skill.
• “Anthem of the Wizards” now has the proper FX.
  • This looked to be a communication error. There were two nearly identical FX files, one of which had sweet FX in them and one of which didn’t have any. Guess which one has been hooked up to “Anthem of the Wizards” this whole time.

• “Ballad of Unshakeable Will” is now “Ballad of Composure”: In addition to the existing buff to Fear Resistance, the skill now provides a 5% buff to Ranged Damage.
  • There is now a Minor Legacy on the Minstrel’s Class Item which can increase this bonus by 5%.
  • A Tier 3 Ballad which provides a buff to Fear Resistance. Yeah, that can be better. The forums also asked for “Ballad of War” to provide a bonus to Ranged and Tactical damage. Rather than making one of the Tier 3 Ballads unbelievably good, I spread those bonuses out to some of the less-than-stellar Tier 3 ballads. Why only 5% and not the 10% that “Ballad of War” provides? These Ballads already provide a benefit, so players are getting this new buff on top of that one. But more importantly, it’s easier to buff a skill later than it is to nerf it later. We’ll see how testing and Beta goes, but I could see this bonus for “Ballad of Composure” get bumped up since it really only affects one class (Hunters), but we’ll see.
• “Ballad of Flame”: In addition to the existing buff to Fire Defence, the skill now provides a 5% buff to Tactical Damage.
  • There is now a Major Legacy on the Minstrel’s Class Item which can increase this bonus by 5%.
  • Pretty much the same as the above, with one exception: I’m unlikely to increase this buff above 5%. The Minstrel already has a Ballad which provides them with a bonus to Tactical damage (as well as ways to buff that Ballad), so even getting another 5% for free is a pretty sweet deal.
• “Gift of the Hammerhand”:
  • Now blocks all Damage, not just Common Damage.
  • Cooldown has been reduced from 15 minutes to 5 minutes.
  • The ratio of Morale Damage -> Power Damage has been improved from 1 -> 2 to 2 -> 1.
    • The Rift Set bonus has been changed so that it further improves the ratio to 3 -> 1.
  • This skill is now useable while moving.
  • Poor “Gift of the Hammerhand,” nobody likes you. I can’t speak to the original design of this skill, but to me it looks like an attempt to provide the Minstrel with a “bubble-an-ally” skill (a worthwhile goal). My goal with these changes is to make the skill go from “unusable” to “situationally usable”. Have I accomplished that? Please let me know. I would love to get this skill to the point where it’s desirable (hopefully without a complete redesign).
• “Lay / Lyric of the Hammerhand” are now useable while moving.
• “Call to the Fellowship” has had its Cooldown reduced from 10m to 3m.
  • Have I mentioned that I don’t like long cooldowns?
• “Song of Aid” has had its Cooldown reduced from 10m to 5m.
  • Have I mentioned that I don’t like long cooldowns?

• “Song of the Hopeful Heart” is now “Symphony of the Hopeful Heart”:
  • Cooldown has been reduced from 10m to 5m.
  • Duration of the Hotspot has been reduced from 5m to 2.5m
  • Size of the Hotspot has been reduced from 10m to 5m
  • In addition to the +4 Hope for standing within its bounds, there is now a 10% bonus to Incoming Healing.
  • Additionally, if a player remains standing within the hotspot for a few seconds and then exits the hotspot, they receive a 30 second buff to Resistance Penetration and Avoidance Penetration for all applicable skills.
  • This was the fun one! (Which means I’ll be sad if players don’t like it) My goal with this skill was not only improve it to the point where it’s usable once again, but also to introduce gameplay around the hotspot. Do you just stand in the hotspot because you want more healing, or exit so your skills will land more often? It also may help to serve as a rallying point in fights: If the Minstrel sees you standing over there he can pop you with a heal while you “charge up.” I like this skill quite a bit and would love to hear feedback on it.
  • I’ve begun receiving feedback on this skill, so out of all of the changes listed in this Dev Diary this one is the most likely to see some changes before it goes live. I’m unsure what changes I may or may not make, but don’t be too surprised if the patch notes for this skill look a bit different than they do here.

• The trait “Tempo of Bravery” has been changed to “Improved Echoes of Battle” which provides +10% Damage to the skill “Echoes of Battle” (as well as the War-speech version “Timeless Echoes of Battle”).
  • This was an internal suggestion. There were several dud Minstrel traits that I tried to improve. I wasn’t able to un-dud-ify all of them, but there’s always time in the future to revisit some of the stinkers. Once again, I’d love to hear feedback on any Traits you feel are “never take”.
• The trait “Glorious Anthem” has been reworded to “+50% Anthem Duration” in support of the new skill “Anthem of the Third Age”. This change has no effect on existing Anthems.
  • This previously said +15s, but considering the duration of the new Anthem of the Third Age has a duration of only 10s I really didn’t want to have that buffed up to a 25s duration.
• The trait “Power of Song” has been given a new functionality: Each time a Minstrel uses a heal skill, there is a 10% chance to unlock a War-speech Call skill for a single usage with zero Power Cost.
  • Some more Trait improvement on a sub-par trait. The benefit this trait provides attempts to address the complaint Minstrel’s have about their Healing rotation, that it’s the same thing over and over again. While this trait doesn’t help you heal any better, it does let you kick out some free damage every once in a while. When designing this trait I went back and forth on a bunch of ideas: maybe it would unlock Tier 3 Ballads (or even Anthems), maybe it would make it so the next casting of “Inspire Fellows” didn’t have an induction, or maybe I should implement all three as set-bonuses for each Trait line? In the end I wasn’t sure how this type of mechanic would be received, so I decided to start simple and see what players thought. Do you like it? Do you hate it? Do you want to see this idea expanded? Let me know.
• The trait “Improved Cure Fear” has been replaced with “Improved Raise the Spirit”. The benefits from “Improved Cure Fear” have been put directly into the Cure Fear skill.
  • Lots of (justifiable) complaints on the forums on Cure Fear, so this was an easy choice.
• The new trait “Improved Raise the Spirit” has the following benefits:
  • “Raise the Spirit” has its Cooldown reduced from 1.5s to zero seconds.
  • “Raise the Spirit” has its Induction Time reduced from 1s to 0.5s.
  • I spent a lot of time thinking about the Minstrel’s healing rotation (BC, BC, BC, etc), and trying to think of different ways I might solve that. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed when I decided to sit down and look at the role of each heal. Why is “Bolster Courage” used almost exclusively? Because BC is the big heal (healing-per-second) as well as being a very efficient heal (healing-per-power). So where does that leave a skill like “Raise the Spirit?” Sitting on the shelf collecting dust. So, what if BC wasn’t the best heal to use if players cared about pure HPS? That would mean players would have to choose based on their current situation: is now the time for HPS or the time for efficient HPP? This trait is a tentative step in that direction. Unfortunately (for me as a designer), “Bolster Courage” is so good at what it does that it’s difficult to make “Raise the Spirit” win out in the healing-per-second fight. We’ll see what feedback I get to see if I need to adjust any of the numbers. One final note: I always try to minimize, as best I can, altering how things currently work in game. If some players like to just spam BC, BC, BC then that’s fine. They can continue to do that and get the same results they had before. I just want to provide different ways to excel for players that want more choice. Once again, let me know if I’m wrong or if you think I’ve missed the mark.
• The trait “Lyrics of Bravery” has been given a new functionality: “Ballad of Composure” now provides a bonus to Shadow Defence.
  • Tightening up another sub-par trait as well as addressing a complaint on the forums.

• Major Legacy on the Minstrel’s Class Item which can increase the Tactical Damage bonus on “Ballad of Flame” (as previously stated above).
• Minor Legacy on the Minstrel’s Class Item which can increase the Ranged Damage bonus on “Ballad of Composure” (as previously stated above).
• Major Legacy on the Minstrel’s Weapon which decreases the duration of the War-speech tail effect by up to 5 seconds.
  • Note: At the time of this writing, this does not work and will need tech to make it work. Unknown if it will be in for Book 3 currently.
  • I wasn’t going to do this originally. Originally, I had a great idea about how I was going to ramp down the War-speech bonuses over the 10s duration of that tail effect and at the same time ramp up the Healing. However, once I started digging into it and trying to figure out how I was actually going to accomplish that I quickly realized it was going to take a lot of effort for something that (while I thought it’d be awesome) might not even be that well received. The irony is that I put all of the work into getting this new Legacy up and running only to find out it doesn’t work and that I will need Engineering to give me a hand. If it turns out this doesn’t ship for Book 3, I’ll definitely try and get it in a later release.

• “Anthem of the Third Age”: When not in War-speech, provides a 10s buff to Outgoing Healing and Induction Time. When in War-speech, provides a 10s buff to Damage for War-speech Call skills. The Cooldown for this skill is 1 minute.
  • This came from some internal feedback that running up the Ballad chain didn’t do a whole lot when most of your Anthems were on cooldown. Partial Solution: Add another Anthem! I only gave this Anthem a 10s duration because I like the idea of the player feeling pressure to take advantage of the buff while it lasts. Ie; Kicking off all the War-speech skills in a row, or spamming two or three different heals in a row.

Goals Not Accomplished

You might have noticed that despite all of my changes I didn’t touch on two of my goals heading into this update: a Power return of some sort & the perception that Soliloquy of Spirit stinks. As a designer, even though I don’t necessarily agree 100% with players’ perception on these issues, I still want to try and address their concerns if possible. I struggled with these two issues for quite a while, bouncing around different ideas that could potentially solve both problems at once. Two of the random ideas I had are:

• Idea #1: The Minstrel gets some Power back when they heal a target that already has SoS on them.
  • But what if the Minstrel just spammed “Raise the Spirit”? Do they get power back every time?
  • Wouldn’t this result in the Minstrel only putting SoS on the main tank so that every heal gets power back?
  • “Soliloquy of Spirit” is intended to be a maintenance heal for people that need to be topped off on the fly. Does this change mesh with the functionality? No.
• Idea #2: When SoS is on a target there’s a chance of an event similar to the Lore-master’s pet’s “Flanked!” that the Minstrel can react to and get power back.
  • The Minstrel is trying to pay attention to the main tank and others taking damage, do we want them have to watch for this other event now?
  • What would the feedback for this “event” be? A tiny icon somewhere?

In the end, I didn’t feel comfortable with any of the changes and I didn’t want to force in a change that I would later regret. A lot more could be said about the specifics of a Power return or various changes to Soliloquy of Spirit, but I’ll save that for the forums.

It’s also debatable whether or not I’ve “fixed” the concerns about the Healing rotation. I feel it’s always best to step cautiously at first, so I’ll be taking a look at all of the feedback for these changes and see how I can further address this concern.

Potential Future Changes:

As I was doing this work I wasn’t able to get to everything I might want to have done, so here’s some food for thought. Let me know what you think. Are these good ideas or terrible ideas? We’ve got an expansion coming up and that leaves a lot more room than usual for some interesting changes:

• Sub-par Traits: “Enduring Morale”, “Harmonious Melody”, “Silver Tongue”, “Subtle Movements”.
• Should these stay, should they go? Let me know!
• As I mentioned above, I like the idea of each Heal skill having its own purpose. Do you like my changes with the new trait “Improved Raise the Spirit”? Is this a good direction to go in?
• As I talked about above, the change to the trait “Power of Song” is an attempt to break up the Healing rotation, but there were several ideas for what bonus to provide. Do you like how “Power of Song” works? Do you want more options for this type of functionality? Are you still not going to use “Power of Song”?
• One idea I had that I almost implemented was this: All of the Minstrel’s Tier 1 and Tier 2 Ballads now affect your fellowship. Good idea / bad idea? If you like it, how should you acquire this ability? Armor set-bonus? Legendary? New toggle?