Raedwulf
04 Sep 2008, 18:21
This guide is more a general overview of the class, than a skill-by-skill analysis. It is intended to give people who haven't played one a better understanding of the class, as much as for the active minstrel.
A minstrel is not just for healing! The more you know, the better you'll be able to help the minstrel; or understand why what you're doing means we'll be struggling. And if that also cuts down on the incessant 'OMG heal plz' cries, or the people who blame a minstrel for their death when they do nothing to help remove the 4 enemies hitting the music man that are there because the person thought it'd be fine to aggro 5 enemies simply because there was a minstrel around... This will have happened to pretty much every minstrel at some point and is the main reason why most minstrels hate joining PUG's. Anyway, now that's off the collective Nimminas chest, on with the guide!
After the Disclaimer: This is still mostly written by Tarinas, added to & edited by Rafe. It has now been mostly overhauled for Moria, because so much has changed that affects what we do.
Minstrels
We heal, you thank us for keeping you alive or blame us when you fall. We could leave it at that really, but for lack of anything better to do, some elaboration seems in order...
Unlike some other classes, the duties of the minstrel are very recognisable. It becomes particularly obvious when you are succeeding or failing (failing being far more obvious, as is always the way) at your primary function of ensuring group survival. Interestingly, it is more often down to other classes whether or not you succeed or fail, but the attention always goes to the minstrel. Minstrels are the definition of squishy and once we take aggro, we have limited mechanisms for removing it, & are largely dependant on others to help in those cases.
Any decent minstrel should be able to control their aggro levels for the most part. However, it's worth noting that if other people are not doing their jobs' right (stun breaking comes to mind), then the minstrel has to heal much more often than they would like. That means extra aggro, few skills that will remove it (worth emphasising this - about the only way we can lose aggro we've garnered is to not do anything...), and relying on other people to help remove the enemies. So the next time you break a stun, rely on a minstrel to keep you alive with four elites hitting you, and then proceed to ignore the minstrel under attack or blame them for their sudden decline in healing output, kindly go to a prison shower and bend over for a prolonged period of time.
Healing
IMPORTANT NOTE: the vast majority of our decent healing skills, the ones we use most regularly, have an induction, as you probably know. When we are getting hit, induction completion is either delayed or outright cancelled. With 3 average speed enemies attacking a minstrel, it is just about possible to get off a heal, but it takes roughly 5x as long. With 4 people hitting a minstrel, it is usually enough to stop the inductions from ever finishing. As anyone who plays a creep on the ettens is likely aware of, even with shield wall or hammerhand keeping the minstrel from immediate death, the attacks are still interrupting heals. Another point to mention is that a minstrel should avoid doing anything for the first 15 seconds of a fight if possible (exception being tiering up to the ballads and anthems, but only if you use the skills not affected by smooth voice, as using these skills generates a fair chunk of attention). Simple enough concept - if you heal early, you get attacked early.
Chord of Salvation - instant heal, heavy power cost, 2 second animation after heal.
Quick to execute, strong single target heal, but has a long cooldown and the induction takes place after you use the skill rather than before, so takes you out of action for about 2 seconds. Oddly enough if followed by either of the spirit heals (raise the spirit or triumphant spirit) it seems to cancel the terminal induction, although relying on this combo can heavily draw enemy attention. Best used when you know an upcoming attack will kill a character if they don't have the morale (troll/keeper combo in The Rift is the perfect example) and when you know that the boost will keep them alive long enough for another minstrel to pull off a more potent heal.
Raise the Spirit - moderate heal to a single target, 1 second induction, 3 second cooldown.
The skill of choice along with chord of salvation for use when you are under attack as Bolster Courage becomes next to useless. Apart from this use sparingly as it costs roughly the same as Bolster Courage but heals for half the amount.
Bolster Courage - big heal to a single target, 3 second induction, no cooldown.
The spammable heal spell you all know and love (or at least love anyway). Heals for twice as much as Raise the Spirit at virtually no difference in power cost. As mentioned before, only reason to stop using this is if you are getting attacked or need to drop aggro - not counting the rarity that everyone is at full morale ;)
Inspire Fellows - moderate Fellowship heal, 2.5 second induction, 5s cooldown, heavy power cost.
In terms of healing / power, this is worthwhile, presuming that everyone is hurting (for a bit more than 3 times the power cost of RtS, it heals each individual for slightly less, so almost twice the H / P ratio, if everyone gets full benefit). It also grants an extra 1% mitigation to incoming ranged, tactical, & melee damage for 30s. It presumably also generates an appropriate amount of aggro - don't say you weren't warned...
Triumphant Spirit - Huge heal to group, 15 minute cooldown, moderate power cost, huge aggro generation.
Unless you learn the music associated with each specific minstrel heal (to be honest, even most minstrels don't bother doing this), this will probably be the most obvious heal you can spot being used. If multiple people are low on morale and suddenly they are all very much healthier, you can assume a minstrel just used this skill and will have generated a large amount of threat. It's a great skill because of its fantastic Healing / Power ratio. While the cooldown is 15 minutes, that doesn't mean you should refrain from using it if needed, just be prepared for the aggro and, if you get the chance, warn the Off-tank or Burglar that you might well be under attack shortly.
Soliloquy of Spirit - small Heal Over Time, 30s cooldownlow power cost. The new one. Also, rather crap. It's principal plus point is that it can be used on the move. It might keep you (or someone else) alive if you're having to run or kite, but it heals less than RtS or IF, and takes 30s to do even that much. Be aware of it, don't rely on it for anything much.
Anthem of the Free People - +1400-odd morale regen for 30 seconds (45 if traited).
A very big in-Combat Morale Regen bonus which should not be taken lightly. Keep this going as much as possible as it effectively counts as a very slow acting Triumphant Spirit, but with no threat generation. Although tiering up to it can be a hassle (all anthems usually require 3 skills to be used successfully before they can be applied), it is well worth doing whenever you have a spare moment from healing as it reduces your need to heal and thus your aggro generation. Quite often goes unnoticed by the group, so ignore all the cries about why you are not healing. :) Use this in combo with a traited Anthem of the Valar to keep this buff up almost permanently. Just remember that AotV is also an AoE attack, so be careful!
Fellowship's Heart - Cures 3 fear effects on target, heals for 500+ initially, then the same every 3 seconds for 30 seconds, 2 second induction, 30 minute cooldown.
The grand-daddy of healing spells. Over the course of the move, not counting any crits, it'll heal the entire fellowship for a whopping 6000-odd morale each. No aggro generation for 30 seconds is extremely nice and I've yet to see a situation that would be otherwise survivable where this skill has failed to keep everyone at full morale. Highly recommended for slotting if you've a Legendary to fit it in, as it's basically an invincibility mode for 30 seconds, or a chance to go get a quick snack.
Healing Summary
We have a vast assortment of healing techniques, as you would expect, but each one has a specific use and they all generate some level of threat. However, there are a few things that will stop us from healing you:
- Being stunned
- Being out of power
- Being silenced
- Being attacked
Preventing the first two is the responsibility of the LM and the third is the responsibility of Captains & LM's. The last one? If there's a Champion in the party, it's down to him. The Champion has AoE, DPS, Glory stance, Rising Ire. If they can't pull the mobs off you, they ought to be able to distract & kill enough to save you. Make sure your Champion knows what you expect of him. Alternatively, a Warden, if they're not Main Tanking, ought to have no trouble rescuing you. Failing a decent CHM/WDN, a Captain, Burglar with enrage, or a Guardian (but they're often busy with the nastiest mobs around) can save you, but even an LM can be the difference between living & dying. Mind you, if your party is clued up, you'll probably never be in this much trouble; if they're not, you're screwed anyway.
If any LM's read this and take nothing else away, remember this: it is your role to watch the minstrel's power and your responsibility to keep them anti-stunned & audible (& wound / disease-free) if stunning / silence (etcetera) is a remote possibility. We have had far too many runs recently with this role being done half-heartedly, so we're just reinforcing how important it is.
Tales
Buffs that cost power per second to keep active and provide a buff to the entire fellowship, every Minstrel should have one up at all times. It's worth noting, though, that being hit with a silence effect will disable any tales. This is one set of skills where Moria has changed the order of precedence for sure...
Tale of Battle - +50 vit and +1558 wound resistance to the group.
Helpful if you are in a group with low morale players, or in a raid and your side does not have a captain and you need a small boost to morale. The wound resistance also makes this the tale of choice in certain battles with devastating wounds (against Narnulubat in The Rift, for example, this is highly recommended for the minstrel on the main tank, as those wounds he gives out can overwhelm your ability to keep the tank alive). Having said that, in any fight against mobs that you know are capable of dealing wounds, this is a good bet. To give you some idea, in SoA, with a L50 cap, the bonus was +7% WR, which is pretty substantial. Mostly, wounding mobs of an equal level will inflict DoT at least equal to a Bolster Courage; or effects, such as slowed attacks, of an equivalent power. Bolster Courage generates aggro. Tale of Battle doesn't, & may also save the LM some power on wound-wiping.
Tale of Heroism - +60 will +60 fate
Default tale to be used by base stats alone. The regen and added power pool is very nice. Not much to say about this, it's useful until there is more of a reason to use one of the others, as it offers more cumulative stats with the lowest pps cost of the three (3, as opposed to 4 power per second for the rest).
Tale of Warding - +10 radiance and +720 AC buff to the group
Formerly the weakest of the three, the changes to AV now make this hugely useful, usually the default option. The changes to mitigations, most notably the fact that AV no longer affects only Common, means that this is now of immense benefit. The boost to AC is around +20% for a light armour class. It's useful still for medium armour users, a bit redundant for the heavies but not entirely useless, & the +10 Rad can still be useful, though it does not stack with Hopeful Heart, hope tokens (though with radiance armour around, they are not used with anything like the same frequency), nor with the bounders cap. There will be times when ToB will be more useful, but otherwise this is better than ToH more often than not.
Tale of Frost & Flame - The new one. An afterthought. Since there is nowhere I, Rafe, can think of where you will run into both Fire & Cold damage, half of this tale's mitigations are always wasted. And the buff is pish anyway! Tari disagrees, says there are some situation where it is useful (Forochel for cold damage; places like Fil Gashan or the Forges, where there's lots of Fire). You'll have to make your own minds up - there is no right way to do things after all, just things thing that work better or not so well - but it remains very situation specific & therefore not one you'll routinely use.
Buffs
Smooth Voice - If you are looking to help your group out with other things besides healing, this trait is the way to go. This makes your Vigour (+Vit) & Balance(+Evade) Ballads group effects, alongside the usual others. Along with the others that are group effects untraited, they help the fellowship and thus reduce the amount of work you need to do. :) Most importantly, SV allows you to use a Tier 1 & Tier 2 Ballad without targetting an enemy. That opens a Tier 3 Ballad, & that opens up your Anthems. And that can all be done before you even enter combat!
Anthems - These require tier 1, 2, & 3 ballads to be used first. Once you've used the Anthem, your ballad counter gets reset. Nevertheless, your Anthems are of crucial importance. Anthem of Compassion decreases threat from healing by 40%, Anthem of the Free People increases in-combat morale regen for your fellowship by over 1400. Traited Anthem of the Valar gives the same iCMR buff with 221 Light damage to up to 3 targets on a shorter CD. You can equip the Glorious Anthem trait, which increases Anthem duration by 15s, or you can equip Battle Hymn, which gives AotV the iCMR bonus. Or, perhaps, both. Whatever you choose, do not neglect your Anthems!
Call to greatness - Gives a unique buff depending on who you use it on
Burglar - +15% damage to positional attack skills. Surprise Strike is recovered every 5 seconds.
Captain - Grants a defeat event. Grants the Battle-readied state every 5 seconds.
Champion - Grants a defeat event and 2 Fervour. Grants 1 Fervour every 5 seconds.
Guardian - +25% threat generation. Grants the Guardian's Ward effect every 5 seconds.
Hunter - +10% threat generation and grants 3 Focus. Grants 2 Focus every 5 seconds.
Lore-master - +3% chance for enemies to resist Blinding Flash. Recovers Blinding Flash every 5 seconds.
Minstrel - +10% to healing done. Recovers Chord of Salvation every 5 seconds.
Wardens - +10% threat generation, +5% damage
Runekeepers - +10% Power costs, resets cooldown on Self-Motivation every 5 seconds
Tari considers the best 3 classes to use this on are minstrels (i.e. yourself), guardians and LM's (provided they're not red line traited), as they all benefit quite a lot more than the other classes. Even if this is a lot to remember and take in, just remember what it does for you and possibly the guardian and feel free to use when applicable.
Aggro
Still as Death - Fall over and move a surprisingly large amount for a dead guy, 30 second max duration.
This does not drop aggro when used, you just fall over, they walk off for a bit, then when you get up the aggro level is restored and if no-one has done anything to help in the meantime, you get attacked again. This is the last skill you should use if you are under attack and need to drop aggro fast. While in this state, you can neither heal or be healed or use song of soothing to lower threat, and you are entirely dependent on other people knowing which enemies were attacking you and attracting their attention.
Lay of the Hammerhand - 1 damage to morale is converted to 0.5 damage to power, costs 10 pps to keep up.
This is useful in emergencies, and for allowing others to take aggro off you, but they have to know you are being targeted otherwise they will look at your unchanging morale and assume you are fine. If you have an in-combat power regen of about 800 or so, you generate enough power to keep the hammerhand buff up without losing power (techniques dependant on this skill rely on a high power regen). Remember to try and take this off before your power hits zero as a minstrel without power is useless. The one major weakness is that any stun will deactivate this. In a major fight where stuns are common, you may want to save this.
Song of soothing - AoE threat reduction.
Highly useful skill that reduces threat on the target and surrounding enemies by a considerable amount, although it has its drawbacks. If you are in a raid and you use this, chances are that everyone attacking you is going to run straight over to the other healer, so make sure they are not under attack before using this. It takes about 5 seconds to execute, so getting past the induction while under attack from two enemies will take a bit of time, when under attack from 3 enemies may not be possible without using a racial skill (the elf parry one springs to mind). Despite these shortcomings and a moderate cooldown, this is really your best bet for threat reduction in the heat of a fight. If you think you'll need to use it, do so when you have the chance, before others need healing and you are unable to help.
Anthem of compassion - 40% reduction in threat generated by healing.
Now this is the point where Tarinas & Rafe actually start disagreeing & threaten each other with Death by Epic (No! Interminably long poems; not interminably dull & awful plotlines!). Tari says:
If you have Smooth Voice equipped, then use this just before a tough fight and reapply as needed, otherwise try to keep this going as much as possible for obvious reasons. This is one of the major reasons why i keep Glorious Anthem slotted: increasing the anthem duration to 45 seconds means you can keep this going for 45 seconds out of a minute (not to mention the reduction in healing you need to do from AotFP being active for longer).
Rafe says:
What tosh! Yer drunk, man! ;) If a fight is going to last long enough for aggro to matter, AoC is worth nothing at the start. By the time it lapses after 30 or 45 seconds, you won't have used any healing worth mentioning. If you traited AotV & used that first, you probably won't have needed to heal anyone at all. The exception is the occasional boss fight, if he's dealing out huge hits from the word go. In those situations though, you're probably concentrating Bolster Courage on your main tank, & actually won't attract too much attention anyway.
If you take Glorious Anthem, you get 45s of AoC (CD 1m), & 45s of AotFP (CD 2m); if you equip Battle Hymn, you use AotV first (30s of AotFP effectively, plus damage that'll hardly be noticed, aggro-wise, at the start), AotFP next (30s dur, 2m CD), AotV again (30s, 1m CD), 30s of no iCMR buff during which you you use AoC for 30s (CD 1m) now that you've probably started healing; then go round again. Suddenly you have the iCMR bonus for up to 75% of the fight, instead of less than 37.5%, & AoC to cover you for the rest. My gut feeling (and Tari & I are your No.1 healers in The Rift) is that I suffer less with unwanted aggro than he does. I'm sure he'll argue the toss, but that's just because he can't help himself. :P Which is why I usually have to... ;) But that slightly different Anthem set-up has quite a bit to do with it. Of course, if you think you can spare the trait slots to equip both GA & BH, so much the better.
War Speech
Solo, you should be on your red-line trait, in which case you'll be in WS. In FS, people will scream at you to turn it off and will be quick to blame you if they die. That doesn't mean they know what they're talking about. They're not Minstrels, after all...
Any Minstrel who starts a fight out of War-Speech is sub-competent at best. Basically, in the first half-minute of almost any fight, all classes, at least theoretically, start with maximum health & maximum power. Until you are 30s in, there's no real need for a MNS to be doing any healing. So what are you doing in the meanwhile? Standing around with a full bar of power? What a waste!
If you're red-line traited, WS is the default unless there's a real need to drop it. In group, you should have SV up. You can still afford to begin combat in WS. With SV, you can pre-start with 3 Tiers of ballads (at next to no cost) so that you can get AotV up, & spam round W-S skills once. You've added a small but important contribution to damage output (both of yourself & through various buffs) at virtually no cost to yourself in aggro, or power (because your iCPR will eat up the usage in no time). If you then fire off AotFP, you might be able to go round your W-S skills a second time, all the while your healing skills unneeded because active use of your Anthems has covered you. Remember, though, that your TWO W-S attacks (don't forget Call of the Second Age) are both AoE, so time their use right. Also remember to switch W-S off when real healing is needed, or you'll be the biggest idiot in the group!
Others
Cry of the Chorus - Activates all tiered skills and cures silence
Song of Aid - Opens up all response moves for the fellowship while being used, duration decreases if taking damage
SoA is useful for getting off the anthems in the middle of a heated battle quickly, but it is more important as one of two skills that can instantly remove silence from yourself, which stops a minstrel doing almost anything. SoA takes a little longer (roughly 2 seconds of use before the responses skills are all unlocked) than CotC, but benefits the FS as well. It has its uses, but they are fairly sporadic as if you have time to wait for the 2 second induction, then whatever you need the tiers open for is likely not too essential as you can pretty much get up to tier 2 in the time it takes this skill to activate. On the other hand, as Eldiron points out, with the Song of Aid active, a LM (if traited for it) has a huge insta-cast no cd heal, making him an even better single target healer than a minstrel! Usefull if the LM knows the tune, or is being told the song is played.
Song of the Hopeful Heart - AoE 4 hope in about a 10 metre radius from where it is cast, 5 minute duration, 10 minute cooldown
Useless most of the time, but the niche times it is useful just so happens to be on Mordy, Thorog and the Rogster, so it is almost permanently kept slotted late-game. Its very important to note that the area covered by Hopeful Heart, although it now comes with a visiable circle / glyph, remains hard to see at times, especially in a major fight. To overcome this, it is best placed at a physically identifiable location, best bet would be a captain's banner. The reason its so useful is the hope buff cannot be removed (if you get a hope wipe, move out of the HH area, then back in to get 4 hope again). As this stacks with the DP hope and the +3 hope unlooked for, you can easily get 5 or above hope that is non-wipable, which stops cowering for every single fight in the game so far. The trick with this skill seems to be getting people to understand that they need to move out and into the area again, as every single group I've been with has had someone shouting that the move is not working despite everyone else using it right. Unfortunately, you just need to put up with this.
Regen
While this is an arguable subject for most classes, for minstrels at least, it's generally agreed that without power you are effectively useless. A large power pool and high power regen are of the utmost importance. Since a minstrel should have a decent total power naturally, it's the power regen in particular you need to concentrate on and be aware of how it works.
The basics are quite simple. Power regen on an item tells you the amount of power it offers per minute. Power regen with regards to fate is a trickier subject to discuss due to the nature of diminishing returns. Diminishing returns in this case refers to the decrease in positive effects you will see for every point you increase a stat (will/fate/vit etc) beyond a certain point. This seemed to be about 380 in SoA; now? 480, presumably...
At low levels of fate
1 fate = 1 in-combat power regen
1 fate = 1.5 in-combat morale regen
At high levels of fate
1 fate = 0.66 in-combat power regen
1 fate = 1.5 in-combat morale regen
While there is no change in morale regen, that is a bit of a moot point as you'll be increasing fate to benefit tactical crit and power regen above all else.
In conclusion, early in the game the abundance and the benefit of fate items compared with regen items makes them much more favourable. However, later on when you start getting diminishing returns, you'll want to focus more heavily on power regen items, as even before you take diminishing returns into account, there is no item that offers 90 fate, which would be required to offer the same power regen as the numerous end-game items offering +90 in-combat power regen. Ideally you want to have above 800 power regen as this gives you almost limitless power in heavy healing battles and allows you to keep Hammerhand on yourself and still gain small amounts of power instead of losing it heavily. Either that or make sure you have Angrenel, Notiane, or some other decent LM in the party... ;)
Traits
This is one of the biggest changes that Moria introduced. The combat changes & the extra trait deeds that made L10 reachable on all Virtues have made a significant difference to what you will want to equip. But you can read the Virtues Guide for hints there. Moria has also introduced 3 trait sets for each class, new deeds, & 3 new Legendary traits. For the Minstrel particularly, there is a profound impact. Here's some opinion on the current worth of the traits & sets...
Regardless of your class, generally speaking red line traits revolve around damage, blue line traits are helping your fellowship (healing, tanking lines), yellow are AoE / CC type effects. As you equip more traits in a line (2/3/4) you get an increasing number of extra related benefits, & slotting 5 makes that line's Legendary (or capstone) trait available.
For the Minstrel, the Red line is a really nice DPS set. The Legendary is very good, making slotting 5 well worth while in solo play. If you're planning on being a main healer, don't take this into fellowship / raid situations though! Remember to re-trait. In rough order of desirability, Powerful Voice leads; Unrelenting, Light in the Dark, & Harmonious Melody follow in a bunch; personally, I take Medium Armour Use (which raises your light armour mitigation cap) over Herald's Hammer for the 5th if I'm looking to equip the very useful Legendary Call to War. The other two traits in the line are a waste; don't bother!
If you're looking askance at MA, consider this: with the new system, damage mitigation has been capped by armour type. Equipping MA grants you the medium cap, a 10% improvement over Light. If you are running the Protector of Song (yellow) build or just using Ballad of Steel a lot, you'll be hitting the light cap pretty much from the moment you enter Moria. Even if you don't equip a single piece of medium armour, you'll likely increase your common damage mitigation by at least 4%, closer to 7% with ballad of steel, which makes a notable difference to your survivability. Putting it in perspective a little - you'll have a higher base common mitigation value than just about everyone not in heavy armour.
The Yellow line Legendary is an interesting one. It takes your 4 Tales and places them in two pairs i.e. whilst you can still only have one tale active, that tale is actually two combined. Since having 4 yellows slotted boosts the effects of one tale in each pair, this naturally holds true for the Legendary, so Wound Resist & Armour Bonus are much enhanced. On the other hand, Rafe says he'd find it hard to justify slotting more than 4 yellow traits at any one time, but regards Strength of Voice & Battle Hymn as must have's at all times; Smooth Voice is if you're in Fellowship; Glorious Anthem (changes Anthems from 30s to 45s duration) would be nice if you could spare a slot. The other 4? Don't use them. There are better choices.
Blue line is your healing line. Even more than Yellow, it's hard to justify equipping 5 of this set. The Legendary is... pretty crap, for a start! Apart from that, again several of the traits are pretty worthless anyway. However, if you're Main healing, you'll certainly want 3 of this set, & the bonus for having 4 is not bad. Life Singer, Focused Performance, & Subtle Movements are must haves; if you want the fourth trait, Graceful Demeanour boosts Rally; again the remaining traits are pretty un-useful.
Though Tari says: Silver Tongue from the blue line gets a recommendation from me - knocking 6 minutes off FH's CD is very nice to have - especially when groups are sitting about waiting for said cooldowns (of lesser note is knocking several minutes off Song of Restoration which also has a slight impact on raids without the need to waste legacy points that could be better spent elsewhere). Subtle Movements, I feel, is less important (assuming AoE is going on, pretty much a given in Moria instances...) for the same reason that Anthem of Compassion isn't much use at the start of fights anymore (Rafe: Anymore? It never bloody was - see above! :P). If you have to heal early (first 7 seconds or so), then you'll be getting the unaggroed enemies - lowering your threat by 5% doesn't matter much when you're the only one on their hate list. The only advantage is the enemies will be easier to take off you, but often a single attack will do the job.
From the tactical point-of-view... 5 red, 2 yellow is fantastic for soloing in War-speech. Your healing is nowhere, but most stuff doesn't live long enough for that to matter. If you're not being a killing machine, you're being a healing machine. In that latter case, it's an even toss-up between 4B / 3Y and 3B / 3Y / 1R (PV); 4Y / 3B is another, perhaps slightly less, useful combo.
Tarinas, in a little more detail on Solo trait builds: You have two distinct choices, often based on how strong the enemies are.
Build 1) 5 Skald and capstone trait. Likely less impressive come book 8, but the damage output is fairly ridiculous compared to other trait arrangements - potentially 2500 damage on 6 targets if you have the right legacy is just fun to see. Load up on crit items (LI legacies go without saying) to max out your chances: rift helm, dawn rings of tactics, ettens necklace spring to mind. While they cut your morale/power by a fair bit, you'll be killing faster and therefore taking less damage (goes great with the DP out of combat regen perk), which is the goal of this type of build.
Small additional points that fit well here - first, your goal in this build is to never drop warspeech to heal (granted its not always possible, but it remains the goal nonetheless). To this end, in tougher places, you'll want to ensure that you have Battle Hymn slotted (which is one reason why Rafe never drops it) and that it's used as soon as it is off CD. That iCMR is most of the healing you can rely on if you intend to fight with War-speech. You can sometimes use Cry of the Valar (fear) to give yourself a chance to knock off a couple of Bolster Courage. In WS & full Red, you don't get a huge amount back from that, but it's usually enough.
Secondly - if you can move safely without dragging more enemies into the fight, then do so. Very few offensive minstrel skills need you to stand still, Anthem of the Valar is the only one that really comes to mind, maybe Anthem of the Wizards too. Make full use of this: after getting Orome and Resonance up (should be always on the target to maximise light based damage), follow up with Second Age or Wizards (if you slot it) to make you faster than the enemies. Then just run around as much as you can, strafing to keep facing your opponent whilst avoiding damage, Piercing Cry for that near guaranteed stun if the speed difference is removed before they drop low enough on morale to start limping. Very easy to get through fights with 3 enemies without losing more than 300 morale, a lot of times without even being hit.
Build 2) 4 Song, 2 or 3 skald (medium armour and piercing cry at least). Improved Tale of Warding, plus medium armour mitigation caps, plus a few relics/jewellery with melee/ranged damage mitigation equals a very hard to kill minstrel. This build kills about 30% slower than the skald line if Tari remembers correctly (source escapes him, but will be irrelevant with book 8 anyway as this gap will decrease somewhat). This build just doesn't die, more akin to the minstrels of olde, before the nuclear hands were introduced. This is better suited for taking down bigger enemies (where the skald traited line can lose out, due to power drain, or being forced to drop war-speech, which leaves you worse off than this build). This build might be feasible to actually have a L60 mace with maxed out DPS about the place somewhere, just so you can get the most out of autoattacks.
Legendaries
Weapon Legacies
* Anthem Damage
Ballad Threat
** Call to Fate Critical Damage +
*** Call to Oromë Damage +
* Call to War Skills Resistance Chance
Call to the Fellowship Damage and Healing
Call to the Second Age Targets
Lay of the Hammerhand Power Per Second Cost
*** Piercing Cry Damage
###Rally! Cooldown
# Soliloquy of Spirit HoT Pulses (reluctantly) (no +!)
Still as Death Duration
** Tier 1 Ballad Damage
** Tier 2 Ballad Damage
###Triumphant Spirit Recovery Time (++)
Songbook legacies
* Echoes of Battle Resistance ++
Cry of the Chorus Cooldown
Target Ballad Resist Rating +
### Bolster Courage Healing
Song of the Dead Skill Recharge (+nope)
Chord of Salvation Cooldown
Raise the Spirit Healing (+)
## Ballad of War Magnitude (+nope)
Ballad of Unshakable Will Fear (+nope)
### Healing and Motivation Skills Morale Healing
# Inspire Fellowship Healing
Cure Fear Range
Song of Restoration Cooldown (+nope)
Ballad of Flame Fire Defence
Song Resistance
* - Tari's recommended offensive legacies
# - Tari's Recommended healing/buffing legacies
+ - Rafe's, where different from Tari's
Notes - at time of writing, no-one knows what 'Ballad Threat Down' actually does, although it seems likely it reduces the threat blallads cause, there is a second point of view that using ballads actually decreases your overall aggro
Imprimis
The first & most important thing to be said is that, for Minstrels, dps and, to a lesser extent, item level are unimportant. It is the legacy & the Tier that are the most important factors in the usefulness of a minstrel LI. It is entirely possible that you will be using at L60 the item you received when you completed the initial LI quest.
All LI's follow the same progression; all legacies can be raised the same number of levels. The base level of the item determines the base level of the legacy; the tier determines the ocst of progression. Therefore, although a L60 item may have a greater maximum, the Tier progression cost means that a higher level item may not be as useful. Since your inital LI is hugely biased towards giving you high Tier legacies, it may be that it makes more sense to hang on to that, if the legacies are good & high level.
As far as offence goes, you can rattle off ballads so fast that auto-attacks scarcely get a look in. Either that or, as a group healer, you won't be involved in the melee anyway. Whichever it is, LI weapon points spent on dps are a waste. So... concentrate on your legacies, and on their levels...
Secundus
Healing
You'll be after two legacies on your songbook, namely 'Healing and motivation skills' (which represents a group of skills, namely every healing skill except fellowship's heart) and Bolster courage (note, if you want to try and make something of Soliloquy of Spirit {Rafe says you're an idiot} the legacy is found on weapons, not songbooks). Obviously the more healing skills you have the better as you receive a bonus even if you never improve the legacy once, but as these two stack and 95% of the time bolster courage will be your skill of choice, you get most impact out of these two. While you won't be able to max both of these on any L30 third age book, you can still get close; you'll end up with with roughly a 17% increase to bolster courage heals (with 10% to all other heals) and have enough leftover points to get a third legacy up a fair few ranks.
As far as weapons go, find one with Rally! at a decent rank. Triumphant Spirit is a bonus. If you can get Ballad Threat Down as well (however it works) that's about all you can get out of a healing weapon.
Damage
Call to Orome is probably the best legacy to have... says Tari as it's the most regular part of your warspeech damage rotation. Rafe doesn't agree. He says T1 and / or T2 ballad bonuses are as much, if not more, useful. You can kill without using Orome; you won't kill without using Ballads.
Piercing cry, while on a longer cooldown, will be critting 80% of the time with unrelenting slotted, making the impact of this legacy much higher than it would initially appear. Other legacies worthy of note are as follows:
Echoes of battle resistance - Despite how useless it sounds, is actually an increase to the cry/song effect, not the base application rate, which has its uses.
Call to war resistance - Similiar to the above, lets all your war-speech skills hit more often. Less important post book 7, but still has its use. Best served by just being on a book rather than investing points in it though.
Ballad of War Magnitude - Boosts the group melee damage buff from 10% up to a possible 20+%. Even if you don't have it on your main book, raise another with this on, then when you're going to use it, equip the book, use the skill then re-equip your other book. To this end, Tari actually recommends a second book with all three tier 3 ballad legacies on them - they can really make a difference in certain places.
Minstrels can count too..
Maths stuff
Side note for anyone interested, healing works by a combination of two formulae
Multiplier = healing legacies * (outgoing healing bonus + target's incoming healing bonus) * (tactical crit magnitude)^CRIT
Heal = base heal strength * Multiplier
Where CRIT = 1 for a critical heal and 0 for a normal heal
Only thing that's interesting to take away from this is that the multiplier bonuses are multiplicative instead of additive, so you'll be getting percentage of percentage increases, instead of just percentage increases. Just like how the burglar +25% crit multiplier is misleading, this too means your healing factors are probably having less impact than you would think. Makes Tari question if the Turbine Devs can actually do maths :p
In Conclusion
Minstrels heal people, anyone who doesn't know this hopefully is still under L5 on their first character. However, playing just as a healbot is lazy, harmful to the group overall, and a sign of a poor player when you have so much more to offer the group. You can offer a wide range of buffs to the group and increase their morale regen so you don't need to actively heal them and generate aggro. And, although it goes against the nature of the class, in times of emergency you must be prepared to sacrifice players from the group for the greater good of the group (which does mean keeping yourself alive).
A minstrel is not just for healing! The more you know, the better you'll be able to help the minstrel; or understand why what you're doing means we'll be struggling. And if that also cuts down on the incessant 'OMG heal plz' cries, or the people who blame a minstrel for their death when they do nothing to help remove the 4 enemies hitting the music man that are there because the person thought it'd be fine to aggro 5 enemies simply because there was a minstrel around... This will have happened to pretty much every minstrel at some point and is the main reason why most minstrels hate joining PUG's. Anyway, now that's off the collective Nimminas chest, on with the guide!
After the Disclaimer: This is still mostly written by Tarinas, added to & edited by Rafe. It has now been mostly overhauled for Moria, because so much has changed that affects what we do.
Minstrels
We heal, you thank us for keeping you alive or blame us when you fall. We could leave it at that really, but for lack of anything better to do, some elaboration seems in order...
Unlike some other classes, the duties of the minstrel are very recognisable. It becomes particularly obvious when you are succeeding or failing (failing being far more obvious, as is always the way) at your primary function of ensuring group survival. Interestingly, it is more often down to other classes whether or not you succeed or fail, but the attention always goes to the minstrel. Minstrels are the definition of squishy and once we take aggro, we have limited mechanisms for removing it, & are largely dependant on others to help in those cases.
Any decent minstrel should be able to control their aggro levels for the most part. However, it's worth noting that if other people are not doing their jobs' right (stun breaking comes to mind), then the minstrel has to heal much more often than they would like. That means extra aggro, few skills that will remove it (worth emphasising this - about the only way we can lose aggro we've garnered is to not do anything...), and relying on other people to help remove the enemies. So the next time you break a stun, rely on a minstrel to keep you alive with four elites hitting you, and then proceed to ignore the minstrel under attack or blame them for their sudden decline in healing output, kindly go to a prison shower and bend over for a prolonged period of time.
Healing
IMPORTANT NOTE: the vast majority of our decent healing skills, the ones we use most regularly, have an induction, as you probably know. When we are getting hit, induction completion is either delayed or outright cancelled. With 3 average speed enemies attacking a minstrel, it is just about possible to get off a heal, but it takes roughly 5x as long. With 4 people hitting a minstrel, it is usually enough to stop the inductions from ever finishing. As anyone who plays a creep on the ettens is likely aware of, even with shield wall or hammerhand keeping the minstrel from immediate death, the attacks are still interrupting heals. Another point to mention is that a minstrel should avoid doing anything for the first 15 seconds of a fight if possible (exception being tiering up to the ballads and anthems, but only if you use the skills not affected by smooth voice, as using these skills generates a fair chunk of attention). Simple enough concept - if you heal early, you get attacked early.
Chord of Salvation - instant heal, heavy power cost, 2 second animation after heal.
Quick to execute, strong single target heal, but has a long cooldown and the induction takes place after you use the skill rather than before, so takes you out of action for about 2 seconds. Oddly enough if followed by either of the spirit heals (raise the spirit or triumphant spirit) it seems to cancel the terminal induction, although relying on this combo can heavily draw enemy attention. Best used when you know an upcoming attack will kill a character if they don't have the morale (troll/keeper combo in The Rift is the perfect example) and when you know that the boost will keep them alive long enough for another minstrel to pull off a more potent heal.
Raise the Spirit - moderate heal to a single target, 1 second induction, 3 second cooldown.
The skill of choice along with chord of salvation for use when you are under attack as Bolster Courage becomes next to useless. Apart from this use sparingly as it costs roughly the same as Bolster Courage but heals for half the amount.
Bolster Courage - big heal to a single target, 3 second induction, no cooldown.
The spammable heal spell you all know and love (or at least love anyway). Heals for twice as much as Raise the Spirit at virtually no difference in power cost. As mentioned before, only reason to stop using this is if you are getting attacked or need to drop aggro - not counting the rarity that everyone is at full morale ;)
Inspire Fellows - moderate Fellowship heal, 2.5 second induction, 5s cooldown, heavy power cost.
In terms of healing / power, this is worthwhile, presuming that everyone is hurting (for a bit more than 3 times the power cost of RtS, it heals each individual for slightly less, so almost twice the H / P ratio, if everyone gets full benefit). It also grants an extra 1% mitigation to incoming ranged, tactical, & melee damage for 30s. It presumably also generates an appropriate amount of aggro - don't say you weren't warned...
Triumphant Spirit - Huge heal to group, 15 minute cooldown, moderate power cost, huge aggro generation.
Unless you learn the music associated with each specific minstrel heal (to be honest, even most minstrels don't bother doing this), this will probably be the most obvious heal you can spot being used. If multiple people are low on morale and suddenly they are all very much healthier, you can assume a minstrel just used this skill and will have generated a large amount of threat. It's a great skill because of its fantastic Healing / Power ratio. While the cooldown is 15 minutes, that doesn't mean you should refrain from using it if needed, just be prepared for the aggro and, if you get the chance, warn the Off-tank or Burglar that you might well be under attack shortly.
Soliloquy of Spirit - small Heal Over Time, 30s cooldownlow power cost. The new one. Also, rather crap. It's principal plus point is that it can be used on the move. It might keep you (or someone else) alive if you're having to run or kite, but it heals less than RtS or IF, and takes 30s to do even that much. Be aware of it, don't rely on it for anything much.
Anthem of the Free People - +1400-odd morale regen for 30 seconds (45 if traited).
A very big in-Combat Morale Regen bonus which should not be taken lightly. Keep this going as much as possible as it effectively counts as a very slow acting Triumphant Spirit, but with no threat generation. Although tiering up to it can be a hassle (all anthems usually require 3 skills to be used successfully before they can be applied), it is well worth doing whenever you have a spare moment from healing as it reduces your need to heal and thus your aggro generation. Quite often goes unnoticed by the group, so ignore all the cries about why you are not healing. :) Use this in combo with a traited Anthem of the Valar to keep this buff up almost permanently. Just remember that AotV is also an AoE attack, so be careful!
Fellowship's Heart - Cures 3 fear effects on target, heals for 500+ initially, then the same every 3 seconds for 30 seconds, 2 second induction, 30 minute cooldown.
The grand-daddy of healing spells. Over the course of the move, not counting any crits, it'll heal the entire fellowship for a whopping 6000-odd morale each. No aggro generation for 30 seconds is extremely nice and I've yet to see a situation that would be otherwise survivable where this skill has failed to keep everyone at full morale. Highly recommended for slotting if you've a Legendary to fit it in, as it's basically an invincibility mode for 30 seconds, or a chance to go get a quick snack.
Healing Summary
We have a vast assortment of healing techniques, as you would expect, but each one has a specific use and they all generate some level of threat. However, there are a few things that will stop us from healing you:
- Being stunned
- Being out of power
- Being silenced
- Being attacked
Preventing the first two is the responsibility of the LM and the third is the responsibility of Captains & LM's. The last one? If there's a Champion in the party, it's down to him. The Champion has AoE, DPS, Glory stance, Rising Ire. If they can't pull the mobs off you, they ought to be able to distract & kill enough to save you. Make sure your Champion knows what you expect of him. Alternatively, a Warden, if they're not Main Tanking, ought to have no trouble rescuing you. Failing a decent CHM/WDN, a Captain, Burglar with enrage, or a Guardian (but they're often busy with the nastiest mobs around) can save you, but even an LM can be the difference between living & dying. Mind you, if your party is clued up, you'll probably never be in this much trouble; if they're not, you're screwed anyway.
If any LM's read this and take nothing else away, remember this: it is your role to watch the minstrel's power and your responsibility to keep them anti-stunned & audible (& wound / disease-free) if stunning / silence (etcetera) is a remote possibility. We have had far too many runs recently with this role being done half-heartedly, so we're just reinforcing how important it is.
Tales
Buffs that cost power per second to keep active and provide a buff to the entire fellowship, every Minstrel should have one up at all times. It's worth noting, though, that being hit with a silence effect will disable any tales. This is one set of skills where Moria has changed the order of precedence for sure...
Tale of Battle - +50 vit and +1558 wound resistance to the group.
Helpful if you are in a group with low morale players, or in a raid and your side does not have a captain and you need a small boost to morale. The wound resistance also makes this the tale of choice in certain battles with devastating wounds (against Narnulubat in The Rift, for example, this is highly recommended for the minstrel on the main tank, as those wounds he gives out can overwhelm your ability to keep the tank alive). Having said that, in any fight against mobs that you know are capable of dealing wounds, this is a good bet. To give you some idea, in SoA, with a L50 cap, the bonus was +7% WR, which is pretty substantial. Mostly, wounding mobs of an equal level will inflict DoT at least equal to a Bolster Courage; or effects, such as slowed attacks, of an equivalent power. Bolster Courage generates aggro. Tale of Battle doesn't, & may also save the LM some power on wound-wiping.
Tale of Heroism - +60 will +60 fate
Default tale to be used by base stats alone. The regen and added power pool is very nice. Not much to say about this, it's useful until there is more of a reason to use one of the others, as it offers more cumulative stats with the lowest pps cost of the three (3, as opposed to 4 power per second for the rest).
Tale of Warding - +10 radiance and +720 AC buff to the group
Formerly the weakest of the three, the changes to AV now make this hugely useful, usually the default option. The changes to mitigations, most notably the fact that AV no longer affects only Common, means that this is now of immense benefit. The boost to AC is around +20% for a light armour class. It's useful still for medium armour users, a bit redundant for the heavies but not entirely useless, & the +10 Rad can still be useful, though it does not stack with Hopeful Heart, hope tokens (though with radiance armour around, they are not used with anything like the same frequency), nor with the bounders cap. There will be times when ToB will be more useful, but otherwise this is better than ToH more often than not.
Tale of Frost & Flame - The new one. An afterthought. Since there is nowhere I, Rafe, can think of where you will run into both Fire & Cold damage, half of this tale's mitigations are always wasted. And the buff is pish anyway! Tari disagrees, says there are some situation where it is useful (Forochel for cold damage; places like Fil Gashan or the Forges, where there's lots of Fire). You'll have to make your own minds up - there is no right way to do things after all, just things thing that work better or not so well - but it remains very situation specific & therefore not one you'll routinely use.
Buffs
Smooth Voice - If you are looking to help your group out with other things besides healing, this trait is the way to go. This makes your Vigour (+Vit) & Balance(+Evade) Ballads group effects, alongside the usual others. Along with the others that are group effects untraited, they help the fellowship and thus reduce the amount of work you need to do. :) Most importantly, SV allows you to use a Tier 1 & Tier 2 Ballad without targetting an enemy. That opens a Tier 3 Ballad, & that opens up your Anthems. And that can all be done before you even enter combat!
Anthems - These require tier 1, 2, & 3 ballads to be used first. Once you've used the Anthem, your ballad counter gets reset. Nevertheless, your Anthems are of crucial importance. Anthem of Compassion decreases threat from healing by 40%, Anthem of the Free People increases in-combat morale regen for your fellowship by over 1400. Traited Anthem of the Valar gives the same iCMR buff with 221 Light damage to up to 3 targets on a shorter CD. You can equip the Glorious Anthem trait, which increases Anthem duration by 15s, or you can equip Battle Hymn, which gives AotV the iCMR bonus. Or, perhaps, both. Whatever you choose, do not neglect your Anthems!
Call to greatness - Gives a unique buff depending on who you use it on
Burglar - +15% damage to positional attack skills. Surprise Strike is recovered every 5 seconds.
Captain - Grants a defeat event. Grants the Battle-readied state every 5 seconds.
Champion - Grants a defeat event and 2 Fervour. Grants 1 Fervour every 5 seconds.
Guardian - +25% threat generation. Grants the Guardian's Ward effect every 5 seconds.
Hunter - +10% threat generation and grants 3 Focus. Grants 2 Focus every 5 seconds.
Lore-master - +3% chance for enemies to resist Blinding Flash. Recovers Blinding Flash every 5 seconds.
Minstrel - +10% to healing done. Recovers Chord of Salvation every 5 seconds.
Wardens - +10% threat generation, +5% damage
Runekeepers - +10% Power costs, resets cooldown on Self-Motivation every 5 seconds
Tari considers the best 3 classes to use this on are minstrels (i.e. yourself), guardians and LM's (provided they're not red line traited), as they all benefit quite a lot more than the other classes. Even if this is a lot to remember and take in, just remember what it does for you and possibly the guardian and feel free to use when applicable.
Aggro
Still as Death - Fall over and move a surprisingly large amount for a dead guy, 30 second max duration.
This does not drop aggro when used, you just fall over, they walk off for a bit, then when you get up the aggro level is restored and if no-one has done anything to help in the meantime, you get attacked again. This is the last skill you should use if you are under attack and need to drop aggro fast. While in this state, you can neither heal or be healed or use song of soothing to lower threat, and you are entirely dependent on other people knowing which enemies were attacking you and attracting their attention.
Lay of the Hammerhand - 1 damage to morale is converted to 0.5 damage to power, costs 10 pps to keep up.
This is useful in emergencies, and for allowing others to take aggro off you, but they have to know you are being targeted otherwise they will look at your unchanging morale and assume you are fine. If you have an in-combat power regen of about 800 or so, you generate enough power to keep the hammerhand buff up without losing power (techniques dependant on this skill rely on a high power regen). Remember to try and take this off before your power hits zero as a minstrel without power is useless. The one major weakness is that any stun will deactivate this. In a major fight where stuns are common, you may want to save this.
Song of soothing - AoE threat reduction.
Highly useful skill that reduces threat on the target and surrounding enemies by a considerable amount, although it has its drawbacks. If you are in a raid and you use this, chances are that everyone attacking you is going to run straight over to the other healer, so make sure they are not under attack before using this. It takes about 5 seconds to execute, so getting past the induction while under attack from two enemies will take a bit of time, when under attack from 3 enemies may not be possible without using a racial skill (the elf parry one springs to mind). Despite these shortcomings and a moderate cooldown, this is really your best bet for threat reduction in the heat of a fight. If you think you'll need to use it, do so when you have the chance, before others need healing and you are unable to help.
Anthem of compassion - 40% reduction in threat generated by healing.
Now this is the point where Tarinas & Rafe actually start disagreeing & threaten each other with Death by Epic (No! Interminably long poems; not interminably dull & awful plotlines!). Tari says:
If you have Smooth Voice equipped, then use this just before a tough fight and reapply as needed, otherwise try to keep this going as much as possible for obvious reasons. This is one of the major reasons why i keep Glorious Anthem slotted: increasing the anthem duration to 45 seconds means you can keep this going for 45 seconds out of a minute (not to mention the reduction in healing you need to do from AotFP being active for longer).
Rafe says:
What tosh! Yer drunk, man! ;) If a fight is going to last long enough for aggro to matter, AoC is worth nothing at the start. By the time it lapses after 30 or 45 seconds, you won't have used any healing worth mentioning. If you traited AotV & used that first, you probably won't have needed to heal anyone at all. The exception is the occasional boss fight, if he's dealing out huge hits from the word go. In those situations though, you're probably concentrating Bolster Courage on your main tank, & actually won't attract too much attention anyway.
If you take Glorious Anthem, you get 45s of AoC (CD 1m), & 45s of AotFP (CD 2m); if you equip Battle Hymn, you use AotV first (30s of AotFP effectively, plus damage that'll hardly be noticed, aggro-wise, at the start), AotFP next (30s dur, 2m CD), AotV again (30s, 1m CD), 30s of no iCMR buff during which you you use AoC for 30s (CD 1m) now that you've probably started healing; then go round again. Suddenly you have the iCMR bonus for up to 75% of the fight, instead of less than 37.5%, & AoC to cover you for the rest. My gut feeling (and Tari & I are your No.1 healers in The Rift) is that I suffer less with unwanted aggro than he does. I'm sure he'll argue the toss, but that's just because he can't help himself. :P Which is why I usually have to... ;) But that slightly different Anthem set-up has quite a bit to do with it. Of course, if you think you can spare the trait slots to equip both GA & BH, so much the better.
War Speech
Solo, you should be on your red-line trait, in which case you'll be in WS. In FS, people will scream at you to turn it off and will be quick to blame you if they die. That doesn't mean they know what they're talking about. They're not Minstrels, after all...
Any Minstrel who starts a fight out of War-Speech is sub-competent at best. Basically, in the first half-minute of almost any fight, all classes, at least theoretically, start with maximum health & maximum power. Until you are 30s in, there's no real need for a MNS to be doing any healing. So what are you doing in the meanwhile? Standing around with a full bar of power? What a waste!
If you're red-line traited, WS is the default unless there's a real need to drop it. In group, you should have SV up. You can still afford to begin combat in WS. With SV, you can pre-start with 3 Tiers of ballads (at next to no cost) so that you can get AotV up, & spam round W-S skills once. You've added a small but important contribution to damage output (both of yourself & through various buffs) at virtually no cost to yourself in aggro, or power (because your iCPR will eat up the usage in no time). If you then fire off AotFP, you might be able to go round your W-S skills a second time, all the while your healing skills unneeded because active use of your Anthems has covered you. Remember, though, that your TWO W-S attacks (don't forget Call of the Second Age) are both AoE, so time their use right. Also remember to switch W-S off when real healing is needed, or you'll be the biggest idiot in the group!
Others
Cry of the Chorus - Activates all tiered skills and cures silence
Song of Aid - Opens up all response moves for the fellowship while being used, duration decreases if taking damage
SoA is useful for getting off the anthems in the middle of a heated battle quickly, but it is more important as one of two skills that can instantly remove silence from yourself, which stops a minstrel doing almost anything. SoA takes a little longer (roughly 2 seconds of use before the responses skills are all unlocked) than CotC, but benefits the FS as well. It has its uses, but they are fairly sporadic as if you have time to wait for the 2 second induction, then whatever you need the tiers open for is likely not too essential as you can pretty much get up to tier 2 in the time it takes this skill to activate. On the other hand, as Eldiron points out, with the Song of Aid active, a LM (if traited for it) has a huge insta-cast no cd heal, making him an even better single target healer than a minstrel! Usefull if the LM knows the tune, or is being told the song is played.
Song of the Hopeful Heart - AoE 4 hope in about a 10 metre radius from where it is cast, 5 minute duration, 10 minute cooldown
Useless most of the time, but the niche times it is useful just so happens to be on Mordy, Thorog and the Rogster, so it is almost permanently kept slotted late-game. Its very important to note that the area covered by Hopeful Heart, although it now comes with a visiable circle / glyph, remains hard to see at times, especially in a major fight. To overcome this, it is best placed at a physically identifiable location, best bet would be a captain's banner. The reason its so useful is the hope buff cannot be removed (if you get a hope wipe, move out of the HH area, then back in to get 4 hope again). As this stacks with the DP hope and the +3 hope unlooked for, you can easily get 5 or above hope that is non-wipable, which stops cowering for every single fight in the game so far. The trick with this skill seems to be getting people to understand that they need to move out and into the area again, as every single group I've been with has had someone shouting that the move is not working despite everyone else using it right. Unfortunately, you just need to put up with this.
Regen
While this is an arguable subject for most classes, for minstrels at least, it's generally agreed that without power you are effectively useless. A large power pool and high power regen are of the utmost importance. Since a minstrel should have a decent total power naturally, it's the power regen in particular you need to concentrate on and be aware of how it works.
The basics are quite simple. Power regen on an item tells you the amount of power it offers per minute. Power regen with regards to fate is a trickier subject to discuss due to the nature of diminishing returns. Diminishing returns in this case refers to the decrease in positive effects you will see for every point you increase a stat (will/fate/vit etc) beyond a certain point. This seemed to be about 380 in SoA; now? 480, presumably...
At low levels of fate
1 fate = 1 in-combat power regen
1 fate = 1.5 in-combat morale regen
At high levels of fate
1 fate = 0.66 in-combat power regen
1 fate = 1.5 in-combat morale regen
While there is no change in morale regen, that is a bit of a moot point as you'll be increasing fate to benefit tactical crit and power regen above all else.
In conclusion, early in the game the abundance and the benefit of fate items compared with regen items makes them much more favourable. However, later on when you start getting diminishing returns, you'll want to focus more heavily on power regen items, as even before you take diminishing returns into account, there is no item that offers 90 fate, which would be required to offer the same power regen as the numerous end-game items offering +90 in-combat power regen. Ideally you want to have above 800 power regen as this gives you almost limitless power in heavy healing battles and allows you to keep Hammerhand on yourself and still gain small amounts of power instead of losing it heavily. Either that or make sure you have Angrenel, Notiane, or some other decent LM in the party... ;)
Traits
This is one of the biggest changes that Moria introduced. The combat changes & the extra trait deeds that made L10 reachable on all Virtues have made a significant difference to what you will want to equip. But you can read the Virtues Guide for hints there. Moria has also introduced 3 trait sets for each class, new deeds, & 3 new Legendary traits. For the Minstrel particularly, there is a profound impact. Here's some opinion on the current worth of the traits & sets...
Regardless of your class, generally speaking red line traits revolve around damage, blue line traits are helping your fellowship (healing, tanking lines), yellow are AoE / CC type effects. As you equip more traits in a line (2/3/4) you get an increasing number of extra related benefits, & slotting 5 makes that line's Legendary (or capstone) trait available.
For the Minstrel, the Red line is a really nice DPS set. The Legendary is very good, making slotting 5 well worth while in solo play. If you're planning on being a main healer, don't take this into fellowship / raid situations though! Remember to re-trait. In rough order of desirability, Powerful Voice leads; Unrelenting, Light in the Dark, & Harmonious Melody follow in a bunch; personally, I take Medium Armour Use (which raises your light armour mitigation cap) over Herald's Hammer for the 5th if I'm looking to equip the very useful Legendary Call to War. The other two traits in the line are a waste; don't bother!
If you're looking askance at MA, consider this: with the new system, damage mitigation has been capped by armour type. Equipping MA grants you the medium cap, a 10% improvement over Light. If you are running the Protector of Song (yellow) build or just using Ballad of Steel a lot, you'll be hitting the light cap pretty much from the moment you enter Moria. Even if you don't equip a single piece of medium armour, you'll likely increase your common damage mitigation by at least 4%, closer to 7% with ballad of steel, which makes a notable difference to your survivability. Putting it in perspective a little - you'll have a higher base common mitigation value than just about everyone not in heavy armour.
The Yellow line Legendary is an interesting one. It takes your 4 Tales and places them in two pairs i.e. whilst you can still only have one tale active, that tale is actually two combined. Since having 4 yellows slotted boosts the effects of one tale in each pair, this naturally holds true for the Legendary, so Wound Resist & Armour Bonus are much enhanced. On the other hand, Rafe says he'd find it hard to justify slotting more than 4 yellow traits at any one time, but regards Strength of Voice & Battle Hymn as must have's at all times; Smooth Voice is if you're in Fellowship; Glorious Anthem (changes Anthems from 30s to 45s duration) would be nice if you could spare a slot. The other 4? Don't use them. There are better choices.
Blue line is your healing line. Even more than Yellow, it's hard to justify equipping 5 of this set. The Legendary is... pretty crap, for a start! Apart from that, again several of the traits are pretty worthless anyway. However, if you're Main healing, you'll certainly want 3 of this set, & the bonus for having 4 is not bad. Life Singer, Focused Performance, & Subtle Movements are must haves; if you want the fourth trait, Graceful Demeanour boosts Rally; again the remaining traits are pretty un-useful.
Though Tari says: Silver Tongue from the blue line gets a recommendation from me - knocking 6 minutes off FH's CD is very nice to have - especially when groups are sitting about waiting for said cooldowns (of lesser note is knocking several minutes off Song of Restoration which also has a slight impact on raids without the need to waste legacy points that could be better spent elsewhere). Subtle Movements, I feel, is less important (assuming AoE is going on, pretty much a given in Moria instances...) for the same reason that Anthem of Compassion isn't much use at the start of fights anymore (Rafe: Anymore? It never bloody was - see above! :P). If you have to heal early (first 7 seconds or so), then you'll be getting the unaggroed enemies - lowering your threat by 5% doesn't matter much when you're the only one on their hate list. The only advantage is the enemies will be easier to take off you, but often a single attack will do the job.
From the tactical point-of-view... 5 red, 2 yellow is fantastic for soloing in War-speech. Your healing is nowhere, but most stuff doesn't live long enough for that to matter. If you're not being a killing machine, you're being a healing machine. In that latter case, it's an even toss-up between 4B / 3Y and 3B / 3Y / 1R (PV); 4Y / 3B is another, perhaps slightly less, useful combo.
Tarinas, in a little more detail on Solo trait builds: You have two distinct choices, often based on how strong the enemies are.
Build 1) 5 Skald and capstone trait. Likely less impressive come book 8, but the damage output is fairly ridiculous compared to other trait arrangements - potentially 2500 damage on 6 targets if you have the right legacy is just fun to see. Load up on crit items (LI legacies go without saying) to max out your chances: rift helm, dawn rings of tactics, ettens necklace spring to mind. While they cut your morale/power by a fair bit, you'll be killing faster and therefore taking less damage (goes great with the DP out of combat regen perk), which is the goal of this type of build.
Small additional points that fit well here - first, your goal in this build is to never drop warspeech to heal (granted its not always possible, but it remains the goal nonetheless). To this end, in tougher places, you'll want to ensure that you have Battle Hymn slotted (which is one reason why Rafe never drops it) and that it's used as soon as it is off CD. That iCMR is most of the healing you can rely on if you intend to fight with War-speech. You can sometimes use Cry of the Valar (fear) to give yourself a chance to knock off a couple of Bolster Courage. In WS & full Red, you don't get a huge amount back from that, but it's usually enough.
Secondly - if you can move safely without dragging more enemies into the fight, then do so. Very few offensive minstrel skills need you to stand still, Anthem of the Valar is the only one that really comes to mind, maybe Anthem of the Wizards too. Make full use of this: after getting Orome and Resonance up (should be always on the target to maximise light based damage), follow up with Second Age or Wizards (if you slot it) to make you faster than the enemies. Then just run around as much as you can, strafing to keep facing your opponent whilst avoiding damage, Piercing Cry for that near guaranteed stun if the speed difference is removed before they drop low enough on morale to start limping. Very easy to get through fights with 3 enemies without losing more than 300 morale, a lot of times without even being hit.
Build 2) 4 Song, 2 or 3 skald (medium armour and piercing cry at least). Improved Tale of Warding, plus medium armour mitigation caps, plus a few relics/jewellery with melee/ranged damage mitigation equals a very hard to kill minstrel. This build kills about 30% slower than the skald line if Tari remembers correctly (source escapes him, but will be irrelevant with book 8 anyway as this gap will decrease somewhat). This build just doesn't die, more akin to the minstrels of olde, before the nuclear hands were introduced. This is better suited for taking down bigger enemies (where the skald traited line can lose out, due to power drain, or being forced to drop war-speech, which leaves you worse off than this build). This build might be feasible to actually have a L60 mace with maxed out DPS about the place somewhere, just so you can get the most out of autoattacks.
Legendaries
Weapon Legacies
* Anthem Damage
Ballad Threat
** Call to Fate Critical Damage +
*** Call to Oromë Damage +
* Call to War Skills Resistance Chance
Call to the Fellowship Damage and Healing
Call to the Second Age Targets
Lay of the Hammerhand Power Per Second Cost
*** Piercing Cry Damage
###Rally! Cooldown
# Soliloquy of Spirit HoT Pulses (reluctantly) (no +!)
Still as Death Duration
** Tier 1 Ballad Damage
** Tier 2 Ballad Damage
###Triumphant Spirit Recovery Time (++)
Songbook legacies
* Echoes of Battle Resistance ++
Cry of the Chorus Cooldown
Target Ballad Resist Rating +
### Bolster Courage Healing
Song of the Dead Skill Recharge (+nope)
Chord of Salvation Cooldown
Raise the Spirit Healing (+)
## Ballad of War Magnitude (+nope)
Ballad of Unshakable Will Fear (+nope)
### Healing and Motivation Skills Morale Healing
# Inspire Fellowship Healing
Cure Fear Range
Song of Restoration Cooldown (+nope)
Ballad of Flame Fire Defence
Song Resistance
* - Tari's recommended offensive legacies
# - Tari's Recommended healing/buffing legacies
+ - Rafe's, where different from Tari's
Notes - at time of writing, no-one knows what 'Ballad Threat Down' actually does, although it seems likely it reduces the threat blallads cause, there is a second point of view that using ballads actually decreases your overall aggro
Imprimis
The first & most important thing to be said is that, for Minstrels, dps and, to a lesser extent, item level are unimportant. It is the legacy & the Tier that are the most important factors in the usefulness of a minstrel LI. It is entirely possible that you will be using at L60 the item you received when you completed the initial LI quest.
All LI's follow the same progression; all legacies can be raised the same number of levels. The base level of the item determines the base level of the legacy; the tier determines the ocst of progression. Therefore, although a L60 item may have a greater maximum, the Tier progression cost means that a higher level item may not be as useful. Since your inital LI is hugely biased towards giving you high Tier legacies, it may be that it makes more sense to hang on to that, if the legacies are good & high level.
As far as offence goes, you can rattle off ballads so fast that auto-attacks scarcely get a look in. Either that or, as a group healer, you won't be involved in the melee anyway. Whichever it is, LI weapon points spent on dps are a waste. So... concentrate on your legacies, and on their levels...
Secundus
Healing
You'll be after two legacies on your songbook, namely 'Healing and motivation skills' (which represents a group of skills, namely every healing skill except fellowship's heart) and Bolster courage (note, if you want to try and make something of Soliloquy of Spirit {Rafe says you're an idiot} the legacy is found on weapons, not songbooks). Obviously the more healing skills you have the better as you receive a bonus even if you never improve the legacy once, but as these two stack and 95% of the time bolster courage will be your skill of choice, you get most impact out of these two. While you won't be able to max both of these on any L30 third age book, you can still get close; you'll end up with with roughly a 17% increase to bolster courage heals (with 10% to all other heals) and have enough leftover points to get a third legacy up a fair few ranks.
As far as weapons go, find one with Rally! at a decent rank. Triumphant Spirit is a bonus. If you can get Ballad Threat Down as well (however it works) that's about all you can get out of a healing weapon.
Damage
Call to Orome is probably the best legacy to have... says Tari as it's the most regular part of your warspeech damage rotation. Rafe doesn't agree. He says T1 and / or T2 ballad bonuses are as much, if not more, useful. You can kill without using Orome; you won't kill without using Ballads.
Piercing cry, while on a longer cooldown, will be critting 80% of the time with unrelenting slotted, making the impact of this legacy much higher than it would initially appear. Other legacies worthy of note are as follows:
Echoes of battle resistance - Despite how useless it sounds, is actually an increase to the cry/song effect, not the base application rate, which has its uses.
Call to war resistance - Similiar to the above, lets all your war-speech skills hit more often. Less important post book 7, but still has its use. Best served by just being on a book rather than investing points in it though.
Ballad of War Magnitude - Boosts the group melee damage buff from 10% up to a possible 20+%. Even if you don't have it on your main book, raise another with this on, then when you're going to use it, equip the book, use the skill then re-equip your other book. To this end, Tari actually recommends a second book with all three tier 3 ballad legacies on them - they can really make a difference in certain places.
Minstrels can count too..
Maths stuff
Side note for anyone interested, healing works by a combination of two formulae
Multiplier = healing legacies * (outgoing healing bonus + target's incoming healing bonus) * (tactical crit magnitude)^CRIT
Heal = base heal strength * Multiplier
Where CRIT = 1 for a critical heal and 0 for a normal heal
Only thing that's interesting to take away from this is that the multiplier bonuses are multiplicative instead of additive, so you'll be getting percentage of percentage increases, instead of just percentage increases. Just like how the burglar +25% crit multiplier is misleading, this too means your healing factors are probably having less impact than you would think. Makes Tari question if the Turbine Devs can actually do maths :p
In Conclusion
Minstrels heal people, anyone who doesn't know this hopefully is still under L5 on their first character. However, playing just as a healbot is lazy, harmful to the group overall, and a sign of a poor player when you have so much more to offer the group. You can offer a wide range of buffs to the group and increase their morale regen so you don't need to actively heal them and generate aggro. And, although it goes against the nature of the class, in times of emergency you must be prepared to sacrifice players from the group for the greater good of the group (which does mean keeping yourself alive).