Wednesday saw the first of (probably) many href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro">the Lord
of the Rings Online Dev Diaries to come with the
announcement of several proposed changes to the Minstrel class,
scheduled to arrive with the next major update, titled "Echoes of the
Dead." Today
saw the second class-specific Dev Diary, detailing href="http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/1016-update-2-burglar-developer-diary">Upcoming
Changes to the Burglar Class. However, unlike the Minstrel
changes, the Burglar changes seem... rather less outstanding. According
to Ken "Graalx2" Burd: 

Well, we decided that allowing Mischief in combat
would be
contrary to our ideas of the whole purpose of the skill. Instead what
we decided on is not one, but two new stances that Burglars can choose
from in addition to Mischief. While these new stances share a cooldown
with Mischief and cannot be toggled in combat, they can be used in
Stealth.

So Burglars will be given more options for stance-dancing,
but they must continue to do so out of combat. Additionally, the
magnitude of "simple" Fellowship Manouevres (Flushes) will be reduced,
while the more "complex" FMs (Straights) will have their magnitudes
increased. Damaging FMs for higher-level groups will do more damage,
but restorative FMs for low- and mid-level groups will return less
morale and power. Furthermore, there is a big fat "NO" in regards to
increasing in-combat power regeneration for Burglars, the idea being
that the class is better played smarter, not harder.

On the plus side, a system is currently in the works to allow
bleeds to do weapon-type damage rather than common damage. High-level
mobs tend to have very high mitigation against common damage, making
bleed-inducing attacks much less effective. Now, bleeds will do the
same type of damage as the weapon that caused them, bypassing some of
that mitigation and making bleeds much more effective. Some tweaks were
also made to a few skills, trait lines and legendary item legacies that
were awkwardly-implemented, and a couple of new skills were thrown into
the mix. 

So far, the community response has been mixed - many are happy
with the fixes, while others compare the update unfavorably to
the Minstrel changes, or believe that the update does nothing to
address a number of perceived issues. 

To close out the week, Turbine is offering all players an
extra 5% XP from monster kills over the weekend. Plus, for the same
period, all mobs have a chance to drop barter tokens which can be
exchanged at specialty vendors for gift boxes. These perks will be
active until Monday February 7.