Lord of the Rings Online MMO News, Guides, and Features at Ten Ton Hammer

Game developer Tim "Raskolnikov" Lang details a number of changes being made to the Lord of the Rings Online's healing class, largely in response to community feedback:

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.

Going through the list of proposed changes, some of them are relatively minor - the glowing-hands effect from Warspeech, for example, which has been sorely missed by many players since it was removed due to a minor technical glitch, will be returning. 

Some of the changes are useful and address issues that have been plaguing players for a long time, such as the "tailing" effect of dropping War-speech, which leaves the Minstrel in a "dead zone" for 10 seconds, unable to heal fully and unable to use War-speech skills. The War-speech tail effect will instead allow players to continue using War-speech skills for the 10 second period after War-speech is toggled off.

There are a few changes that are really, really good. Making Soliloquy of Spirit stack with itself once per caster, for example, turns this questionable skill into something useful, and making Piercing Cry an interrupt once again puts the Minstrel on the same level playing field as every other class. 

Additionally, there are planned improvements to Minstrel traits and additional legacies for Minstrel legendary items, added utility for a few of the anthems and a few other things. In general, better heals, better buffs and improved damage output overall.

The changes listed in this Dev Diary will be implemented during beta testing for an upcoming update, either attached to a book update or one of the other planned content updates.