My Ideal Minstrel

We’ll be taking a short hiatus from the class cooperation series to take a look at what changes I’d love to see for the primary healing class. I know it’s a little late for the Tell the Community thread and that no significant changes were made after all the input that was provided. This isn’t meant to be critical of Turbine, just an opinion article based on some of the best ideas I have seen over the past few months. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m perfectly fine with the status quo, but it’s nice to dream of what some small changes could do for the class.

Developers got on the good side of a few minstrels with the new Annuminas Medium Armor set, though its still pretty much a toss up about which way the division will lay once radiance is re-worked/removed. In the mean time, a new shiny set of armor with +150 radiance is great to have. Sure, the Will and Fate bonuses are deficient to say the least… but the extra 100 points of morale makes up for it. This set doesn’t seem like it was designed with the Minstrel in mind, for a solo player it may be a better choice than other existing sets. Keeping that in mind, the radiance becomes a useless modifier and the set continues to be a non-viable option for a grouped Minstrel.

It’s fundamentally wrong that our passive modifiers are Melee Critical. I won’t go into the very mathematical specifics, but all of our damage-dealing tiered ballads are tactically based. It just doesn’t make much sense that we don’t get the Tactical Critical Passives like Rune-keepers, when we operate in very similar manner.

Soliloquy of Spirit was certainly the focus of a heated debate and still is for the most part. Most people just try to forget that we have such a bad Heal-over-Time on our skill bars. There are so many good suggestions for how this skill could be made over to make it useful and relevant to current strategies employed by a healing Minstrel. I’ve seen multiple recommendations of just increasing it’s power giving SoS more healing per second. I can get behind this, but  it would have to be dramatic to stand up to the power cost and not too overpowered with the legacies and bonuses that are out there to improve SoS. A few people also suggest to transform it to a power renewal skill with the same tick speed and numbers only (i.e. self-targeting power renewal at 60-70 per tick at level 65). This would be great since we currently have no way to regain power during combat aside from the regeneration caused by Fate bonuses. One other idea I had read suggested making it an area-of-effect HoT, essentially making it the equivalent of the healing sigil from a Rune-keeper, but why would you want to play like a Rune-keeper when you’ve chosen to play as a Minstrel. I think everyone can agree that there’s at least something wrong with this skill.

Most people want the War-speech penalty removed or reduced. With some forethought you can get around the 10 second penalty, so this change would just be a bonus. It also didn’t make much sense to remove glowing hands, so I want them back. 

Having a chance to reduce induction on healing skills would be greatly appreciated if executed cautiously. Raise The Spirit, Bolster Courage, and Inspire Fellows would benefit specifically, but it would probably need to be a Pool A legacy or a bonus only available with a full set of armor. Any other adaptation could be seen as being OP. Even if the legacy started at 1% and ranged up to, say, 10%, it would be a joyous occurrence when the legacy came into play.

I sincerely hope this doesn’t just sound like a laundry list of complaints, but is rather something to consider while playing your Minstrel. What sort of qualities would you like to have available? What would you change about your class? The more input I receive, the more topics we will be able to discuss next week.

Rubywing can be found on her personal blog or by email at Rubywing@MMOReporter.com.