Reeevaaaaaamp!

[Reximus]

I think overall Captains are in a good place, don't overchange them!

My top 3 things I'd like to see changed.

1. Buffsticks - these are annoying, and I don't personally find weapon swapping in or out of combat to be interesting gameplay. I'd like to see these phased out of existence.

2. Heralds - They are weak and limited, and their heal isn't particularly smart on auto-cast, and doesn't work well on manual cast, often giving an error message when you click on it. I'd buff up their damage, give them damage types based on race (Dwarf = Ancient Dwarf Make, Man = Westernese, Oath-bound = Beleriand), and set the heal to not cast unless the Captain is below 75% of Morale.

3. Legendary Traits - Most of these are pretty passive, yet the passive ones seem to be some of the best ones all around, so you don't see as much of the active ones.

If Legendary Traits were up to me:

1. I'd make IDOME a baseline captain ability.
2. Roll Shield of the Dunadain into the Hand of Healing Captstone
3. Roll Oathbreaker's Shame into the Master of War Capstone
4. Create a special cooldown ability for the Leader of Men Capstone, perhaps a "banner" that is dropped in addition to normal banners that transfer threat to the captain, maybe with some kind of avoidance buff as well.
5. Create 3 new interesting traits to replace the 3 removed. Ideas include a trait that combines all the captains mark into one mark with all effects that still works with legacies/set bonuses, a trait that triggers War-Cry whenever you use one of your other defeat responses, or a Trait that buffs all of the Captains Tactics assuming the legacies are removed.

I think these kinds of changes could add some flavor to traitlines, and provide some interesting choices for captains that aren't all passive.

[Evenprimes]

Just keep in mind Gimli's reaction when confronted with the Glittering Caves:

"With cautious skill, tap by tap -- a small chip of rock and no more, perhaps, in a whole anxious day -- so we would work, and as the years went by."

There may be many little changes that could improve the class (especially with respect to tanking, as mentioned above), but the concept and mechanics are great right now. Please don't change them drastically.

[Elrantiri]

1. Class traits:
Loyalty - As long as the heralds barely do any damage, another +15% barely makes any difference and the other bonuses aren't much good either.
Precise Ally - same as Loyalty
Strong Voice - I've never used this class trait, -8% power cost to a few skills is simply not that useful and not at all compared to other class traits.
Strength from Within - Way too weak to warrant a class trait. Especially with the improved VS get got at lvl 77 or 80 makes this class trait seem very weak in comparison.
Now for Wrath - if there is one trait which is plan and simply required for any decent Captain, this is it. The power management of the Captain is basically impossible without this trait, and I got the feeling many other classes depend a lot on this trait as well. As far as I'm concerned, U10 changes to Fate is only making this trait even more important.

2. Heralds: I'd prefer to completely kill the idea of heralds doing damage (as they do very weak damage anyway) and instead use them as another source of buffs. You could perhaps use the Bannerguard skirmish soldier as inspiration - replace the current damage/survival skills of the herald with buff skills like the ones Bannerguard has?

3. Buffstick: The buffstick just seems so unnecessary, why cant you just roll the extra 600-800 rating and 5% morale into the buffs?

Also, especially considering you're both Captain and itemization developer, I would very much like to hear your point of view on armor swapping and if we're to expect some changes to that area. I think Captain is the class that benefits the most from armorswapping, and while I wouldn't mind getting rid of swapping armor in-combat (it lags so much), endgame Captains would lose a lot of potential if in-combat armor swapping was made impossible today.

[dietlbomb]

I think the captain is in a great place, for the most part. I'll echo previous statements that the captain's buffing role should continue to be unrestricted by trait line.

But there are always places for improvement to the class.

1. Legendary Items. I find the whole legendary item situation for captains to be extremely annoying*. For a basic captain who only wants to play one role, he needs a fighting weapon, a swap weapon for buffs, a fighting emblem, and a swap emblem for buffs (both short-term and long-term). Additionally, the distribution of legacies between the major an minor pools is annoying. We covet healing emblems with 5 or 6 major legacies! It is quite a torturous situation for such a basic component of our healing abilities to be gated behind the caprices of the random number generator. Some suggestions:

• Remove legacies that improve Tactic: Relentless Attack, Tactic: On Guard, Tactic: Focus, and Motivating Speech. Increase the potency of those skills to compensate.
• Remove the legacy that improves Strength of Will. Increase the potency of Strengh of Will.
• Eliminate the restriction that major legacy scrolls cannot replace minor legacies on legendary items, eliminating the lottery for major legacies determining the usefulness of a particular legendary item.
• Reduce number of legacies that directly improve the captain's healing output. Roll these effects into class traits or into the base skills.

2. The leveling experience. The captain is an extremely satisfying character to play in groups at the higher levels. Once you have your legendary items set up properly, it is a blast. But leveling a captain can be quite tedious. Due to the various revamps over the years, some of the most fun class abilities are locked away until higher levels, leaving captains below level 60 pretty bored. Some examples:

• Level 46-53: Rallying cry cooldown reduced to 15 seconds
• Level 45-53: Pressing attack gets more than 2 targets
• Level 56: Call to Arms: Archer
• Level 58: Valiant Strike
• Level 60: Shadow's Lament
• Level 74: Blade Brother

I would propose that the distribution of skills during leveling be revamped, and perhaps add an AoE attack at low level as well (maybe a traited version of Sure Strike or some such?).

3. Heralds. The heralds are kinda fun at lower levels, but they are completely inferior to banners at higher levels. They die easily, provide inferior buffs to the captain, and produce negligible dps. They use freakin Common Damage! The archer is supposed to be a dps pet, but we get the archer about 30 levels after it would be most useful. I don't know how important heralds will be in the developers' vision for the captain class, but if they remain important, they need some serious buffs. Some suggestions:

• Increase damage output.
• Change damage type to match captain's weapon.
• Add a herald trait system similar to that of the skirmish soldier.
• Add some new cosmetics (it can't hurt, can it?).
• Increase the herald's buff output (perhaps tied to a trait for soloing captains?).

*Actually, I find the entire Legendary Item system extremely annoying, and I would prefer that it be scrapped, or at least reduced in importance, with the various buffs granted by legendary items distributed to other systems in the game.

[Pheriain]

Our traits need a good once over. Focus buff is so bad the cappies I know usually only use it to troll someone. Can it please be a bit more useful? Strength from Within is horrible, the heal on it is a joke, I never trait it. Withdraw is not something I ever use and I don't find it to be a captain-ish skill. While dropping threat and likely killing a dps class might be funny I don't think humor was the intent of the skill. Cry of Vengeance needs work. If a captain is jumping (like in acid wing) or being bounced (like dragon) then Cry of Vengeance will rez the person at the beginning of the instance. This makes them cross and surly. Ridiculous bouncing cappie, kicking them out of boss fight. Sometimes it won't work at all with no explanation. If I don't have range for it to work, why is there not *always* a red dot on the skill indicating as such? I often use both of my IC rez on the same person. Strong Voice is not one I ever use.

I would like a bit more balance in regard to classes switching roles. It is understood that the cappie is to be a jack of all trades and master of none however many other classes can provide support roles while maintaining respectable dps. Many classes now fulfill multiple roles. If we are traited dps then I think we should be able to dps. I don't think we should be MASSIVE DPS KILL THEM ALL but there does need to be more balance.

Heralds! I only use mine when I am solo leveling, if I even use it then. If we have so many skills and such dedicated to herald use then heralds should be useful.

[Thorongilion]

Hallo RockX wery nice to see you here. Not many devs make time to step into forums and care about player opinions, wery apriciated

Overaly i am happy with captain state since OD/RoI times when we stopped to be required to run around in HoH.
Brother skill changes was great.

I am looking forward fate changes, i hope this will solve our curent power issues when solo and not getting enough on defeat responses.

always there is "but"
our dps solo dps as many pointed out. the big deal is the speed, not dmg itself. I can hit up to 8k devcrit on landscape mobs with mark and oaths up, without to arms since i hate runing around with pets. Semms high, comperable to high dps classes. problem is that the animations and autoatacs delay betwen skill is INCREDIBELY long, this is where we lose dps.
to quote wise man:

Hi Rockx, very glad to have you as our dev!

2. Speed. I would like to see some of our non damaging skills become fast or instant. In particular our maintenance rotations. Mark, banner plant, strength of will, to arms, muster courage. We have to pop some of these before every pull. In pvp it's even more excruciating...for example when you get knocked off a horse your first steps are...

Muster courage 1.2.3, Mark 1.2.3, SOW 1.2.3, To arms, 1.2.3........Thats around 8 second while your taking damage and not giving any.

i might add this is even worse compared to other freep classes. what just automaticaly comes to mind is comparison to curent guard. sparing good guardian i end up half dead in time i put mark, slows and muster up, just simply becouse those skills have so insanely long animation. guard can fire off way more skills in that time. and we cannot blame it on 2hander having longer attack dur since guards are using it as well.


on pvp note since i started with it: we need cc break/imunity. 1st of all most ingame classes have it. burg find footing, grds turn the tables, wardens shield tactic, not to mention champs and LMs... as a heavy front line fighters we should have some.
Great skill with reasonable cooldown for this would be in harms way. it is 5min cd skill so comperable to turn tables/findfoting. its immediate skill already. And it is in the logic of skill, after all how can we put ourself in front of others to protect them when dazed/roted 10 meters away?
what i imagine give to the self buff from IHW that lasts for 20seconds bonus something like breaks out of all roots fears stuns and knockdowns and prevents those as long as the buff is up (20 seconds). slows imunity would be great also but might be considered OP.

talking about slows. well with complete lack of ranged skills we are wery easily to be played with and if creep dont want us to touch him we wont. again there is comparison to another heavy/mele classes chmp and grd sprint cures slows, make haste doesnt. and it shouldnt sicne its fewllowship wide and would be too strong. but we should have some way of chasing targets. IHW?

many here mentioned how they hate buffsticks. am not on same wave with that one, i quess am used to it for too long time, and i like the 25sec make haste legacy witch would be wasted on main weapon so in the end i canot realy avoid switch weapon anyway.

Idome.
1st of all as many mentioned its weak. defo not a legendary skill anymore. either boosting the stats or adjusting the buffs more to give straight +mastery, icpr, icmr, morale ect. it is aura so the presence of captain is inspiring others. atm its just sad.
2nd

i had hard timess understainding what was going on in beta with nerfing 1stat (fate) on it. as many said you probably made the stat too powerfull if this is happeining the 85 fate would be probably only reason to keep idome in its curent state.

Word of courage.
worst heal ever to say. its slow becouse of animation, it costs huge amount of power AND morale compared to low heal
but main problem is the useless HoT atatched to it. thing is if you are healing single rarget strongly, like tank in 3man the hot is over writed all the time, resulting in initial heal, 1 tick of hot and initial heal again. making the legacy and gold shield bonus useless. simpliest idea is that the HoTs should stack at least up to 3 times, similar to ToO menestad inc healing bonus.

leveling: what i find iritating is that you gain blade brother version so late in game. this doesnt concern anyone at end game, but giving out all 3 versions of brother skill at about the same level similar to LMs warding knowledge would help out big time. and probably moe players would get along with captain

Items intemization.
well shortly this:

i havent heard of anz single captain who would apriciate stats. to arms duration is GREAT idea. but those stats are more like for legacy bonus like defensive strike armour buff. it is for tanking, with buff for grouping. no thanks.
This is avaiable trough skirmish for wery long time and have all we need:

not gona coment on the shield, some might like it. at least it has logic. hell lot of healing mastery with healing bonus.

talking about items armour sets should be included. personaly i HATE the -ondefeat cd bonus. it simplifies the class to rally cry / to arms spam bot. i was over the top happy with RoI when healing was more complicated to be smacked in face with new pvp gear. someone up in thread was talking about some skills not beeing fun, well pressing rally cry every 6 seconds is not fun. not mentioning its overhealing 80% of time and in fights where such strond aoe healing is actualy needed we just dont have the responses (talking about saruman, firefrst challenges, only place where this is actualy usable i hard content is shaddow challlenge.)
and if this should stay ingame since it is so desired it in my opinion should be avaiable on pve gear.
AND on another note when pvp set combined with old helegrod set after the changes to the armour you can wipe out rally cry cd completely similary what was possible with escape from darkness. just wrong.

talking about pvp gear am suprised with the lack of ideas on set bonuses there. mostly on the dps one. its just sad. it sohuld provide us with some advantage in pvp. for example the sure strike +inc dmg on target. not to mention if you miss the sure strike it wont apply. It mainly sticks to 1 target, so when creep run away and we start hitting another one we dont have the bonus. this should be self buff in my opinion.

sorry for huge wall of text (hoping someone will actualy read this ) and probably lot of typos, i am not native english speaker.

and again hugs to RockX for making the eford to ask us players. more devs like you pls!

[IGolbezI]

well, the two no-brainers are 1) more active buffing/buffs, and 2) removal of the need for buffing [sticks]. the last one i leave to others' imagination.

[Dragonage03]

Since we are talking revamps. My captain is one of my favorite toons but I see some major flaws to the class I would love to see addressed. But what I do love about the cappy is all buffs they bring to their group and themselves (not having to keep and use a buffstick LI).
1) Heralds: They are an interesting idea but the benefit they offer is no where near the powers of the banners especially the self stat boosts get just from having a banner equipped.
2) Captain Damage: I know they are supposed to be jack of all trades, master of none, hyrbid class. But as most people on Windfola say Cappy Loldps. Part of it has to do that our bleeds do not scale well. Also I think if Devasting Blow had the same effect as the champions Remorseless Strike for increased critical strike damage as well as having our Pressing Attack base hit for more then 2 targets without a legacy would go far in helping captains out in that department.
3) Cappy Tanking: I would love to see them actually able to at least off-tank without major power or threat issues. Whether it means a complete revamp of the Leader of Men trait line or even its capstone (will admit tanking with a Halbred still does sound awesome, would be better if Crit Defence was possible as a secondary LI state similiar to the current might/parry/etc.).

Since you only asked for three items for the moment those are my big three. But I could list many other smaller changes to make the class more fluid and useful to their fellowships and soloing.

[Uvirith]

As posted in many threads my complaints about captains always come down to three points:

1.) Give Captains a Damagestance like Guardians or Bards. Enhance damage by approximately 100%, including reduced cooldown of AoEskills. In exchange sacrifice the ability to buff or heal other than the captain itself. Kinda like Warspeech for Bards.

2.) Remove +Buffstrength-Legacies and weave them into the skill itself. Buffsticks/emblems are just a horrible horrible mechanic.

3.) Add an option to mute playershouting. Well, thats not exactly a captain-issue alone, but something whats bothering me since release. I sooooooo hate that AAAAAARRG UAAAAAAAH BRAAAAAAAA ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ every 10 seconds. Its annoying to the point of rage and frustration.

Yeah, that should be it

Greetz,
Uvirith

[Aedfrith]

What others have said. This is written from the perspective of someone whose cappy is his 4th toon after hunter, minstrel and burg. I enjoy playing it and contribute usefully, but I'm no expert.

Cappies in groups seem to have some compulsory traits (Now for Wrath, Relentless Optimism, Renewed Voice). But some other traits are really, really weak. Loyalty? Seriously useless beyond level 20 or so.

Some skills are monstrously inefficient (Words of Courage, Fighting Withdrawal, Kick).
Very little ranged? Fair enough, no class can do everything and there's always Annie the Archer. But very little AOE (without legacies) makes life difficult in solo.

Cappy tanking seems weak. I've met one captain who has successfully cappy-tanked SG but he knows his class inside out and is, well, a bit mad. You need to be as good as Nost to even think about doing it.

There is a horrible "trough" when levelling a cappy - between about levels 40 and 45 - when enemies hit harder than you and you don't have meaningful self-heals to deal with it. Thankfully, things get better once you get baby's first LI.

Legendary items - you need at least 3 (DPS stick, buff stick, emblem) and top level cappies need 4 (swap emblem) or arguably 5 (swap raid stick).

Rebuffing when people around you (or you!) die is fiddly. Swap to buff stick, turn IDOME on, dish out the crit and parry (seriously NOBODY uses Focus anymore!), choose a blade/shield/songbro. (My own rotation goes rather off when I don't have access to Inspire). Remember to swap back to damage stick before fighting...

[Aedfrith]

As posted in many threads my complaints about captains always come down to three points:
3.) Add an option to mute playershouting. Well, thats not exactly a captain-issue alone, but something whats bothering me since release. I sooooooo hate that AAAAAARRG UAAAAAAAH BRAAAAAAAA ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ every 10 seconds. Its annoying to the point of rage and frustration.

Uvirith's nightmare fellowship (fairly balanced):

Hobbit warden tank
Hobbit burglar
Captain
Dwarf DPS minstrel using pibgorn
Elf healer minstrel using horn
Dwarf DPS RK

*wheeze* [pibgorn] YEEEE! KHAZAD AI-MENU! [piercing cry] YA! WO! [desolation] *riff* [horn] HAYA! YA! [surprise strike] AAARGH! [rallying cry] YAAA! [War Cry] WO! [clever retort] BARUK KHAZAD! [call to fate] *strum* [bolster courage] *CRACKLE BOOM* [improved scathing mockery] etc...

[EazyPeazy]

1) Legacies

I don't mind having mandatory legacies so far as they are effective for what I am doing. Look at number of healing legacies and numbers in red and yellow line.

There should be balance, so every line can be enhanced in the same scale. This area also covers unpopular buffing legacies - I got used to switch multiple LIs only to be maximally effective. This cause delays in gameplay and just isn't fun. So roll buffstick and buffemblem legacies into basic skills and use newly created slots to enhance red and yellow line.

2) Traits

We still have many relics from past which are just here to take place. I am talking about IDOME, Tactical prowes, banner traits, Turn of the Tide and Defiance.

Again roll them into basic skills and newly created spots use for new traits. You can probably find more traits in every trait line, but these are really obvious choices. Another thing which can indirectly buff yellow and red line are trait line bonuses. Think here for a while and I am sure you can come out with something enhancing but not overpowering.

I can think of changing some skills into fast or immediate in red line. This will buff our DPS in respectable manner without doubt. In yellow line there were mentioned Vitality *4 = Morale, and/or another bonus for crit defence, along with more aggro generation.

3) More active Buffs

Yeah last update were 2 new brother skills. Some new defeat response would be awesome, or revamp Routing cry which is now unreliable interrupt.

[Galahadur]

1. Make Blade-Brother earnable in lower levels, around level 50. It's, by far, the best solo friendly skill the captain has to offer. It makes leveling less of pain, specially when paired with Fellowship Brother.

2. Healing needs some help. I can heal better with my LM than with my Captain. Words of Courage needs a little help. Reduce the morale cost, increase the upfront and make it have an AoE aura where it spreads to other fellowship players, with less magnitude. Add an armour bonus or maybe an incoming damage proc. or a big healing proc when hit.

3. Fast skills. Sometimes Captain skills feel slow and sluggish when chained. I would look for cuplrits in Defensive Strike, Shadows Lament and Grave Wound.

Bonus: Legendaries that dont feel so legendary. Shield of the Dunedain, although a nice skill, should be a regular skill and not a legendary one. Hands of Healing capstone needs a buff. In Defense of Middle Earth could use a boost, if not in main stats, in secondary ones like Finesse, Hope or Critical Defense. Scrap the Focus buff... it only provides a little ICPR wich any 20 fate would give or add some secondary bonuses to Focus.

[Lunasa]

I am really glad to see my favourite present developer assigned to be a developer for my favourite class.

Captains are at a nice place right now. Of course, building all those buffsticks and collecting all sets you need for swapping may take a long time. But now captains are fully accepted by the community, are welcome in all groups and - more importantly - are useful in those groups. The main priority for a developer would be not to worsen the situation.

I am a "hard-core raider" who loves pugs and avoids PvP by all means. I have 7 out of 9 classes at the end-game and in different periods I was raiding with all of them. As a captain, I am fine with our DPS relative to other classes and I love tanking. With all that in mind here are my three major concerns (none of them is unique, everything was mentioned above):

1) Buffsticks. Most classes have legacies which are only used rarely and can be placed on a swap-item to maximize the performance of the class (some burgs have 'healing tools' or 'stick with riddle range', some minstrels have a buffbook, some guardians put sprint legacy on a separate weapon and so on). I don't expect the situation to be changed drastically and there will always be some min-maxers who make use of swapping LIs. The problem is that at the moment the Captain is the only class where this game-style is expected. We have plenty of 'necessary' legacies (three Tactics, motivating speech, strength of will, to arms, CD reduction on a number of skills) which are only required when a particular skill with a relatively long cooldown is used. Such legacies feel as a waste on the main LIs, and if you don't have them at all - you are considered to be a bad player. I would also add 'Telling Mark Damage' to the list of terrible legacies, because it is mandatory and there is no place to hide if you dare to use a Telling Mark with 5% only in a group.

Please, incorporate at least some 'pure buffing' legacies into the corresponding skills, and introduce new legacies which would affect skills on short (30s or less) cooldowns.

2) Set bonuses. (Hurray for the class developer and itemization developer coupled in one person!) There are two problems here:
a) Swapping. I doubt there is any other class who benefits as much from armour swapping as captains. We have a 'buffing set' for motivation speech - Tognir, we have 'rez sets' - everything what reduces CD on the Escape from Darkness, we have sets that are used by some for Valiant Strike or Shadow's Lament procs. While it entertains some users of MMO-dedicated keyboards and mice, it discourages other players. I believe that reduction in number of bonuses which affect skills with long cooldowns (same as the buffstick issue) would solve that.
b) "-20% Defeat Event skills cooldown" This set bonus was around forever (since Helegrod). It turns captains into RC-spam bots and of course people go for it, people tend to choose the easiest way. When the Helegrod armour sets were scaled to lvl65, most captains were wearing and loving it. At lvl75 with the stat revamp the old Helegrod set became obsolete and all the attention/discussions were shifted towards the PvP gated Armour of Perseverance. This is not acceptable. The following is a personal example, which may be too unique to be taken into account: I hate PvP. I chose Lotro among all MMOs for the reason that it was not a PvP based game and you could ignore that "other part" completely. Well.. as a raiding captain I can't ignore it anymore. I tried for a year or so, but watching other captains having so unbalancing and OP set bonus previously available in PvE was rather unpleasant. I still hate PvP, but to be comparable to other PvE captains I decided to play creeps: only questing and deeding to get the required PvP pieces on my cappy. I can't agree to fight against other people in the virtual world, so even on the creep side I was the most harmless creature ever (as crazy as it may sound). It took me several months. I am done now, and I am not ready to repeat this grind for the next level cap. I would even go that far to ask: remove this bonus completely. This single bonus allows captains to deliver more healing than RKs/Minstrels could dream about. The "RC-spam" healing while traited for DPS (red line) becomes nearly as efficient as Valiant Strike healing while traited HoH (blue line). To me this looks wrong and I would prefer to see the reduced cooldown on Rallying Cry to be tied to the HoH traitline. The DPS benefits (reduced cooldown on Shadow's Lament) are good and not that game breaking, so maybe instead of complete removal this bonus could be changed to affect SL only? (which is also strange, considering that "Defeat Event skills cooldown" appears on the Healing PvP set... /sigh).

Please, reduce the effect which armour swapping has on our class and do something about the "Defeat Event skills cooldown" bonus.

3) Tanking. This is my personal preference. I see many more discussions about captain-tanks on this forum than I ever see in the game. People don't accept captains as tanks, they go for 'need a tank or champ' requests and they have all the right to do so. If captain-tanking is not addressed in the future revamp, I am sure that the community will not even notice... but some captain players will be upset. The main problems of tanking were mentioned in other posts: unbalanced power consumption and lack of AoE threat generation. For proper tanking dedicated LIs will be needed anyway (for defensive relics), so introducing some tanking legacies (extra threat, threatening shout/routing cry cooldown) instead of the already removed in the Section 1 buffing legacies seems to be a neat way to do it. This will not affect captains who prefer Blue/Red traitlines (so no risk of making the class overpowered) but will introduce a solid additional role to those captains who love tanking.

Please, make captain tanking viable.


P.S. I share concerns of other captains about our Heralds... A captain is supposed to be a pet class, but the truth is - most of us don't even remember about our pets anymore. I am not sure if I want to see them buffed (is it even possible without taking away some strength from captains or without making captains overpowered?) or removed completely (I like pets... but I play LM for that, where pets at least have some minor and very situational use).

Thank you in advance

[Pheriain]

2) Set bonuses. (Hurray for the class developer and itemization developer coupled in one person!) There are two problems here:
a) Swapping. I doubt there is any other class who benefits as much from armour swapping as captains. We have a 'buffing set' for motivation speech - Tognir, we have 'rez sets' - everything what reduces CD on the Escape from Darkness, we have sets that are used by some for Valiant Strike or Shadow's Lament procs. While it entertains some users of MMO-dedicated keyboards and mice, it discourages other players. I believe that reduction in number of bonuses which affect skills with long cooldowns (same as the buffstick issue) would solve that.
b) "-20% Defeat Event skills cooldown" This set bonus was around forever (since Helegrod). It turns captains into RC-spam bots and of course people go for it, people tend to choose the easiest way. When the Helegrod armour sets were scaled to lvl65, most captains were wearing and loving it. At lvl75 with the stat revamp the old Helegrod set became obsolete and all the attention/discussions were shifted towards the PvP gated Armour of Perseverance. This is not acceptable. The following is a personal example, which may be too unique to be taken into account: I hate PvP. I chose Lotro among all MMOs for the reason that it was not a PvP based game and you could ignore that "other part" completely. Well.. as a raiding captain I can't ignore it anymore. I tried for a year or so, but watching other captains having so unbalancing and OP set bonus previously available in PvE was rather unpleasant. I still hate PvP, but to be comparable to other PvE captains I decided to play creeps: only questing and deeding to get the required PvP pieces on my cappy. I can't agree to fight against other people in the virtual world, so even on the creep side I was the most harmless creature ever (as crazy as it may sound). It took me several months. I am done now, and I am not ready to repeat this grind for the next level cap. I would even go that far to ask: remove this bonus completely. This single bonus allows captains to deliver more healing than RKs/Minstrels could dream about. The "RC-spam" healing while traited for DPS (red line) becomes nearly as efficient as Valiant Strike healing while traited HoH (blue line). To me this looks wrong and I would prefer to see the reduced cooldown on Rallying Cry to be tied to the HoH traitline. The DPS benefits (reduced cooldown on Shadow's Lament) are good and not that game breaking, so maybe instead of complete removal this bonus could be changed to affect SL only? (which is also strange, considering that "Defeat Event skills cooldown" appears on the Healing PvP set... /sigh).

Please, reduce the effect which armour swapping has on our class and do something about the "Defeat Event skills cooldown" bonus.

I agree with the concerns needing to pvp for pve armor. I don't prefer to pvp, sure it is fun now and then but I do far prefer raiding. I don't like having to spend a lot of time in the moors in order to acquire the armor I would like for raids.

I think pve armor should be acquired in pve or tied to HoH like Lunasa said. I don't think the set bonus needs to be done away with completely.

I don't agree at all that the set is game-breaking. I am certainly not healing as much as RKs or minis, unless there are ravaging hoards of mobs one cannot get RC off that often. In long boss fights against a single mob one can only try to crit as much as they can, use cappy pots (which have a cool down) and ToN in order to get RC off. I would not at all call that game breaking nor would I state I heal as much as an RK or Mini, there has to be TONS of mobs dying for that to happen.

I don't think the bonus needs to be removed but I would prefer to see it in pve.

[Vandervahn]

Well, most things hae already been commented upon.
To start lightly though, I want to reiterate that our legendaries need a makeover; and it doesnt even have to be that intricate to work.

1. remove all longtime buff legacies. It doesnt even matter if we lose the increased effect completely; i.e. I´d be OK with a standard 5% motivate. Just get rid of this ridiculous swapping. One could think about the capstone giving a boost to buffs though; i.e. LoM boosts focus and parry buff, MoW boosts crit buff etc. It would also free up 4 legacies for more damage/tank legacies.

2. Distribute healing and damage legacies better. Most obviously, all our essential healing legacies are emblem majors, and with few DPS/tank legacies to speak of, it makes us chase this ever elusive 4/5th major like no other class. Decrease the magnitude of some legacies. I´m looking mostly at Rallying cry cooldown and Strength of Will effects. These legacies improve their basic skills 300%. I think thats not a good state of affairs. So, decrease the legacy magnitude, and upgrade the baseline skills accordingly (shorten natural CD on Rallying cry). This would also lower the effect of the much-daunted -defeat events cooldown armors.

3. In general, make Captain skills more fluid. People have already mentioned the aggravating skill durations. That and the cooldowns on our buffs for example make rebuffing even more of a chore than it already is. We could also have the capstone be more involved here, for example specifically lowering the CDs on our several damage/tank/heal skills.

Pressing attack needs more targets standard. Someone already said that the pressing attack max targets legacy should upgrade all our AoEs, which I agree with.

Bladebrother NEEDS to be made accessible at an earlier level.

I dont see the point that you cant choose a target for cry of vengeance. Healer and tank dead and my Cry revives the Hunter. Yeah, thats gonna help me finish the bossfight... There is no real point of the gigantic cooldown on our revives anyway, when we can bring it down so low with the right armors and legacies. Again, improve the basic skills while lowering the legacy magnitudes.

Lastly, something needs to be done about our defeat event skills. Our whole skill chain is geared towards unlocking these skills. With 45 seconds CD per skills, we ALWAYS have them all on cooldown in any grouping before the advent of legendaries. I dont know how often I have had the conversation "I know its bad as a level 35 captain, but just you hang in there until level 50".....

[DelgonTheWise]

My 2 cents. Let me first say Captains are in pretty good shape overall, and I hope for
evolution not revolution at this point. 3 main areas for improvement:

1) Improve legendary weapons
- major/minor distinction is irritating (5 majors needed on healing emblem?!?)
- some legacies are "mandatory", how fun is that? Any Captain NOT have telling mark and
RC cooldown on basically all items?
- Power legacies should be compared to Fate stat legacy to make sure they stay
relevant. +55 fate (with 0 legacy points invested) gives good amount of ICPR and
(as a really nice bonus) some crit too
- barely any tanking specific legacies exist (DS is it?), and this is the role that needs
help the most
- buffsticks are boring/irritating, as are the buff legacies. All required, not fun
(IMHO swapping items isn't fun).

2) Improve traitlines.
- I believe LtC should get more damage at a cost of healing others. Captains going all out
for damage should have something comparable to warspeech/overpower in terms of DPS.
And the herald legacies are a failure, as adding x% to a small amount of damage still gives
you a very small number.
- I believe LoM has power problems. And is weak in a few key tanking areas -- AOE threat,
regaining control of battle after a rez. Bonuses for 2 LoM traits remain bizarre relic
of history and not in any way related to tanking. Example better bonus: Defensive Strike
power restore is tripled, + 500 crit defense.
- HoH is in fair shape, though its raw healing power really isn't enough better than a
high crit LtC build (HoH is more consistent, but LtC gets many more rallying cries from
crits). Strong Voice has been the loser of this traitline for some time.

3) Improve legendary traits
Captains have 5 useful legendaries. SoTD and Oathies are the most fun in that they are active
skills that require timing and judgement. Many folks run neither of them. Fellowship brother
is so good that most folks run it, leaving them 2 slots. Most folks run capstone, leaving them
1 slot. Many groups expect IDOME, which is a REALLY REALLY boring skill -- turn it on when you
start you day, all done. That often leaves SoTD and/or Oathies out in the cold. In particular, many
never run SoTD, which IMHO is the most fun skill of the lot. Not sure what the solution here is,
just raising the issue...

Not my personal issue, so not making it one of my 3 points, but
4) Reconsider the level skills are granted at to make levelling a more pleasant experience...

[Grimdi]

In no particular order, and mostly what others have said already:
1) Complete overhaul of legacies. Right now there are too many "must have" and "mostly useless" legacies, and very few in the "nice to have" category, esp. on emblems. Was trying to make a dps emblem once, in the end 4 of 6 legacies were the same as on my healing emblem. Personally I don't care much about buffsticks, though if we can get more flexibility by removing them please do so.
2) Damage. We need some more variation in our damage skills, during levelling it's often possible to have all damage skills on cooldown at the same time. Another AoE skill would be nice too. Also as captains are already very depending on crits for defeat events I'd like to see crits also having a bigger effect for our dps, for example a high crit magnitude modifier for a few skills (like devastating blow).
3) Tanking. Mainly some means to get and maintain AoE threat as others have said. If we get some AoE dmg skills it could be done by adding extra threat on those for each equipped tank trait (like RKs get extra dmg/healing) or tank capstone.

There are some other things as well (Heralds, War banner, Focus buff, CoV misses, Mark Cooldowns, ...) that could use some work, but hte above are the top three on my list.

[lomadan]

There a lot of things that I would like to say regarding the captain since I main 1 and I am also a raider yet I'll stick to the ones that I would most like to see changed:

1) Make fighting withdrawal a targeted detaunt skill, just like single person heals work eg. You select the hunter and reduce his current threat and it works even on the captain if he is the one selected

2) Add a new skill that gains added effects when the enemy is "marked" by the captain with a Cooldown of about 10s
a. Telling this skill deals more dmg
b. Revealing this skill has a small group melee heal
c. Noble this skill generates additional threat

3) Minor skill and trait tweaks, like:
a. Remove DoT from Elendil and replace the light of Elendil buff with a minor group buff like -1% dmg reduction from all sources.
b. IDOME does not longer feel legendary like it did in Moria, maybe make it a trainer skill and make the trait "supercharge it". I've read in a post about making it feel call-to-greatness-like and I absolutely love this idea.
c. Words of Courage is just too pricey and it needs to become more pesponsive (maybe turn it into a fast skill)
d. Make traits that affect same skills 1 trait so we can have room for new ones, like make 1 trait with Expert attacks and Battle master since both are affecting the same skills.


To sum it up I want the captain to be less trait dependable so he can be more versatile while retaining the ability to heal/buff/offtank and so on.

[Souku]

these are certainly not "top 3" but i don't see them mentioned anywhere else in this thread yet and they are all simple enough.

1. provide a way (trait/legacy) to reduce the cooldown of cutting attack or increase its duration so that the slow can be kept up reliably. currently captains are the only class other than minstrels that cannot keep a creep reliably slowed. if cutting attack misses or you are not perfect about refreshing it, then you are usually SOL the creep can just run away.

2. reduce the amount of yelling that the captain does. one of the reasons i turn sounds off is the amount of yelling that captains do with all the battle shouts and the various cries, it gets quite annoying.

3. add a few more dps legacies to the emblems. shadows lament damage would be a good one.

[jchudz]

Some of the things I'd like to see

1) Overall speed increase of captain skill animations- This would improve our dps and healing a bit and improve our general responsiveness.

2) Kick- With the recent changes to interruptions where classes got cd changes across the board on their interrupting skills captains, along with rks got left out. I would like to see the base cd reduced to 25-30 seconds with the legacy bringing it down to say, 15 seconds. If this means that the cj proc chance needs to be removed, so be it. I don't know of any captains who are particularly attached to the bonus anyway. Perhaps 2 set yellow line bonus could be changed then which leads me into 3...

3) AoE damage and threat generation- This is arguably one of the weakest aspects of captain tanking, our ability (or lack thereof) to hold aggro on multiple mobs. I would suggest changing the kick cj chance to something like "Pressing attack and routing cry generate additional threat" or possibly "increased threat from healing" or a much needed power cost reduction.
Since i'm already talking about AoE I guess I'll throw this in as well; I would like to see the base amount of targets on pressing attack increased, lets say to 4 mobs. I would also like to see the +max targets legacy for pressing attack also increase the number of targets on routing cry as well as an overall damage increase to both (especially routing cry, it has some pretty pathetic damage)

[furtim]

Maybe I'm too much of a radical about this, but I'm gonna float the idea for my fellow Captains to comment on anyway.

What if our "static" buffs went away forever? I mean like the Tactics and Motivating Speech. The things we can just throw on a group and then switch to an alt to run the rest of the raid.

Now, obviously, a lot of our class' power is tied up in those, but IMO the current way of accessing that power causes a ton of problems. I wouldn't want that power to go away, but I would want a new way to get at it. Something that requires more active engagement than *hits buff macro, goes afk*.

[aadaboy19]

Good Morning, Thank you for taking the time to create a thread and ask improvement ideas from the community. There are many passionate captain's who are loyal to the class, but the morale is fading due to the lack of attention to the captain. There are great responses from others above and I would like to point a few of them out. I have only played hte captain from SoA and have seen the class progress. I believe that the newer classes have been given great attention leaving many to place their captains on the shelf to collect dust. Ok, I would like to begin with PvMP:

1.) Given the audacity system and the amount of Buffs and Debuffs the creeps have it is very difficult to get any kills as a captain, given our DPS is already on the bottom, you pair that up with lack of CC, and audacity, most will just ignore the captain kill everything else then finish the captain off. Given the new out of combat rezzing, captains sit in the back and rez their healers and dps classes to continuously roll creeps. (different issue, but one that should be addressed...how many creep classes can rez? Then think about how many freep classes can rez...slight disparity) Captains need more for their dps line, reduce the number of Herald traits by combining them. The spider class does this with their brood traits. Also, the captain's herald should be the same level as the captain, and be more battle effective.

2.) Designed to be a group class is great when PVE, but in PvMP there is not always a group around, so we lose the benefit of brother skill unless rolling a herald, but the current state of the herald leaves the captain with a serious gap in combat effectiveness by not using a banner. There should be a trade off with using a herald and a banner, but right now the gap is too great. A herald archer hits a full aud creep for about 100....The captain needs some more CC, or enhanced CC. a 3 second stun when used on a creep with full audacity is pathetic reducing the stun to only 1.5 seconds...roughly enough to get 1 maybe 2 attacks in. Captains could also use another ranged attack, yell, or something. No captain as of now who knows what they are doing rolls a herald for any practical purpose in the moors against creeps.

3.) Enhance the captain's banner and/or offer a different herald designed for PvMP Rank 8 requirement. The herald has to be on par with the benefits of a banner, this will allow the captain to be flexible to use a banner if in fellow, or if solo a herald that will not suck at everything. Warleaders get a banner that reduce the enemies capabilities, Banner of terror I beleive it is, the reduction in stats from that banner is exponentially more damaging than all 4 captain banners together not to mention they can have multiple banners deployed at once. Give the captain's some debuff skills. ***Roll a non-ranked captain in the moors and see just what I am talking about. One of the major setbacks is our attack speed and some of our animations are way too long, get fleas and spider attack duration increase and we hit like 4 times a minute....

Ok, time for PVE:

1.) Legendary Traits- IDOME is a staple in a captain's toolbox. Fellowship brother, Capstones, and IDOME should be Legendary traits. SotD and Oathbreakers should not. Captain's are designed mainly for support, so having to trait a legendary for a single target on a 5 min cooldown is silly, I would be ok with SotD non traited being able to use as is on a single target same cooldown, and traited should be enhanced SotD effect on whole fellow for 10 seconds instead of 15 as this can be a serious game changer in the moors, on that note give warleaders a group wide bubble. Similar concept with oathbreakers, non traited could be increased damage output on self + 1500 crit rating & increased attack speed ~5%, traited can be as is. This will encourage the solo players to not feel so weak without overwhelming group dynamics.

2.) Stances- I like most of what stances have to offer. I would keep in mind the amount of armor swapping and buff sticks required to have a great captain.. We as captain's would like to get out of the business of having to have 2-3 bags dedicated to various armor, weapons, and jewelry for the diverse roles that we play in. Stances are a great way to enhance skills we already have for a certain purpose while reducing the effectiveness of others. Its important to remember that captains are good to ok at everything, but not necessarily great at any one thing. Perhaps take some of the buffs other classes have and remove them. The minstrel is not a buffing class, so why do they have great buffs for fellows???? Some captains do all three, tank, damage, and heal...others stick to 1 setup. Healing stance, improve heals, decrease damage; DPS stance, increase damage by crit rating, decreased attack duration add finesse, and % boost to dps, and sacrifice healing, healing output modifier decrease. Tanking stance, increased aoe yells, increased parry evade and block rating, self bubble, increase threat with every hit. change buffs and defeat responses to correspond with particular stance, LIs could also correspond to specific stances although this would encourage more legendary swaps, so I would create an LI that has verbiage and effect for all three variations of stances.

3.) Swapping/Quick Slots- I dont use macros and probably never will, many do however so this may not be a huge problem for them...but for the rest of us its a killer. In order to swap gear efficiently, it needs to be set on the quickslots, unfortunately we have too many things that need to be on quick slots and cannot put all the 18 plus armor pieces on their 6 legendary items/weapons, and multiple sets of jewelry, pots, shields, and cloaks. Stances mixed with well thought out and planned set bonuses on armor can reduce the amount of swapping captain's currently suffer with. What about an armor set that is generic but changes stats with stance? Impossible, impractical, I dont know...but would relate to major stats. At the very least we could keep with the different armor sets for the different traitlines, and allow stances to supplement, i.e. if I was traited for dps (high might) but on the fly had to tank something, I could go into yellow stance which the might would still be effective for block rating, wouldnt necessarily have the vitality, but would still be effective at tanking without having to put on a full set of tanking gear. This is preferred by me because of this reason. I can trait and build to my preference whether that be heals, damage, or tanking, BUT I can still perform my hybrid roles effectively (Not as well though if not traited for that specific role; preventing the Over Power effect) Then when I need to revert from tanking one mob to going back to DPS that I am traited and geared for I can just switch my stance back. Obviously there would have to be a CD 5-10s between stance. I can guarantee you that almost every captain would rather swap stances (1 button) as opposed to swapping gear and jewelry to perform a task (Potentially 15 or so swaps).

[borges_maze]

Welcome, RockX. Man, there are a lot of good suggestions and ideas in this thread. My main three would be:

1. A captain solo stance. I'd like to see something along the lines of the mini's warspeech or the guard's overpower stances, nothing that would overshadow our usual group roles but enough to bring us to midrange dps. This would help the leveling experience immensely and would give us a nice option in pvmp.

2. Replace focus buff. The Tactics: Focus skill is pretty much useless at this point. Please either give it a significant boost or replace it. I, personally, would like to see it replaced with a tactical mitigation buff.

3. Give pve a -20% defeat event cooldown set. I pvp a lot and did not have any problem getting my pieces, but LotRO is not a pvp game and class-defining armour sets should not be gated behind pvp. I would like to see a similar armour set available via pve. However, I would also ask that the current Perseverance set not be changed, as it is wonderful for pvp, and I would like to be able to earn future versions in pvp.

[Naethin]

I’m excited that we are going to get a revamp! Here are some of my thoughts on things that should change and they basically fall under each trait line:

1) DPS feels way behind the pack even when traited red line. Like others it would be great if DPS was increased by 20% at the capstone while outgoing healing is 20-30% less. Even with a 20% increase we would not be at the Champ/RK/Hunter level. Other than upping the DPS I think our red line is in good shape.

2) Tanking – I know we should not be at the level of warden/guard, but having the trait line we should be able to do better than now. Maybe it’s me but survivability is still an issue even when traited full yellow. Having Vitality give +4 morale for capstone may help which is I think the same thing that champs have, or have a +10% mitigations or something. Increase healing threat would also be a good set bonus(this would help with our AoE threat problems) Another idea would be make Fighting Withdraw affect someone else when at the capstone, so if a healer for instance got aggro you could select them and hit Fighting Withdraw to lower their aggro (not the captains) should be an instant skill. Also make Shield brother have the same effect to the captain (Decrease incoming damage), but increase outgoing healing of the Captains Brother. That way when tanking, the captain should make the healer their shield brother to increase their healing output.

3) Healing – Even though our healing is pretty good I would change a couple things… Make HoTs stack, even if there is a cap of how many. Also when you’re main healing it doesn’t make a lot of sense to use song brother on the tank because they don’t need more outgoing healing (except maybe a warden). I think song brother should provide the same buff to the captain, but the Brother should get a +incoming Healing. Also Captains need a real self heal, even if it comes at a large cost of DPS output, but make it at the Blue line only. When trying to main heal and you get low on morale, there is very little you can do to stay alive. Make the skill on an induction so that way cappy’s can’t just spam heal themselves on the run.

Oh and I know I’m over my limit, but make kick have the same CD as other classes (no need to have the 10% cj chance if that is a concern, or make the kick-CJ chance a trait that ups the CD)