There are a number of exciting things coming with update 30. A major content update in the form of a quest pack. It is going to be included with VIP or purchasable from the LOTRO trust store. There is also a lot of class balancing and level 130 endgame changes coming in this. And there’s even some slight role reworks.

Content Updates

With this update, there are three new key content of features to cover.

Interlude: Blood of Azlog

First, there’s the new interlude Blood of Azlog which continues the storyline and the legacy of Durin’s and the trials of dwarves, even though it’s not technically a part of that book quest series.

So this just continues once again, with the War on Three Peaks and all the events going on there. One key feature of this as it will take you back in time, you’ll experience some historical moments with the dwarves. And this storyline will begin with Gloin inside Annâk-khufu, which is in the Elderslade zone.

Tales of Yore: Azanulbizar

One of the exciting parts of that storyline is actually the second key content feature, which is the Tales of Yore: Azanulbizar. Azanulbizar is the new landscape zone, the new open-world landscape content we are getting in this update. Which is the Azanulbizar zone.

As part of the addition of Azanulbizar, T.A. 2799, Update 30 also includes a small visual update to The Lord of the Rings Online’s Dimrill Dale, first introduced in the Mines of Moria Expansion.

You will continue the Blood of Azlog storyline there, as well as these zone quests. Along with all that, with this zone, we are going to be getting 10 new missions. That, of course, like all the other missions, they scale from level 20 to 130 and will have their own reward system.

Also with missions, there is one other kind of minor change that could be easily glossed over. And that is now that all mission stable masters are interconnected. So you can travel between mission hubs very easily. That is what we are getting for new questing content.

Raid: The Fall of Khazad-dûm

The final key piece of content is the new raid, The Fall of Khazad-dûm.

This is a very exciting raid. It actually goes back further in time than when we have the Tales of Yore. The key feature of the radi is the single boss who is going to be Durin’s Bane, the famous Balrog. I am personally super excited to jump into that raid.

We’ll have tier one through three available right now. And then in the future, we’ll have tier four open up on June 17th and finally tier five open up on July 1st.

The Fall of Khazad-dûm tier release dates:

• T1: June 8th, 2021
• T2: June 8th, 2021
• T3: June 17th, 2021
• T4: July 1st, 2021

Revive Limits

There are new raid revive limits coming to the game. This is going to be a new raid mechanic where you have a certain amount of revivals available during boss fights.

For anybody wondering it does look like this is only coming into effect in the new raids. So based on the patch notes, it doesn’t sound like this will affect any old content in the game, only the new raid: The Fall of Khazad-dûm.

This feature actually depends on the tier that you run the raid. On tier one, this mechanic does not come into play. You do not have revive limits, you don’t have to worry about that unless tier 2+.

The way it works is you accumulate revives over time, you start at tier two with three revives, for example, and you will get a new revive every 60 seconds. The way you consume a revive is during combat, if you revive somebody and they accept it (they have to accept it), then you will have a revive taken away from the counter.

Revive Limits

• T1: N/A
• T2: 3 Revives, +1/60 seconds
• T3: 2 Revives, +1/120 seconds
• T4: 1 Revives, +1/180 seconds
• T5: 1 Revives, +1/240 seconds
• When a boss fight ends, all revive tokens clear.

Class Changes

I do want to say that I think it’s just awesome to actually see some serious work put into class balance, which I think is long overdue. After all this, I still definitely think there’s some stuff that can be done a lot that needs to be done actually. But this is one step closer to having classes more in balance with each other.

So across the board, one change you will see is support in general is being nerfed. It seems the goal of this has helped make support, maybe less necessary, but still very useful in group content and raids. This may allow more flexibility in group composition and I am personally all for that.

So hopefully it actually does work out in practice. I also do want to point out what these support nerfs, a lot of content itself at level 130 has also been nerfed. So players won’t be struggling a ton when this update gets released without the strong support skills.

Let’s go ahead and move on and talk about some more specific changes with each class. I will just be overviewing them.

Beorning

Beorning is having it’s damage buffed overall, and it has a minor rework to expose in vigilant roar.

Beorning Class Changes

• Expose is now a target debuff that increases incoming damage by about 7.5% for melee and 5% for ranged. In human form it buffs Tactical and Ranged instead.
• Vigilant Roar no longer taunts by default, and instead only taunts when the first rank of the Vigilant Roar trait is taken (similar to Biting Edge).
• Vicious Claws (tank version only) can no longer miss, nor be blocked, parried, or evaded.
• Damage has been increased for the following skills:
  • Slam
  • Nature's Vengeance (initial hit)
  • Bee Swarm (initial hit)
  • Vicious Claws, particularly in red line.
  • Grisly Cry
  • Vigilant Roar
  • Thrash, particularly for its lower tiers
  • Expose
  • Bash
  • Execute
• Cooldown on non-combat resurrection has been reduced from 20 seconds to one second.

Burglar

Next up the burglar is having a few of their debuffs nerfed, just like all the other support classes.

Burglar Class Changes

• Trickster debuff reductions:
  • Trick: Dust in the Eyes has had its maximum miss rate reduced from ~39% to ~15%.
  • Trick: Disable Damage reduction has been lowered from -15% to -10%. and the Attack Speed reduction has been lowered from -20% to -10%.
  • Disable has been reworked to correct various buffs.
  • Finesse's debuff is now -33% of the target's Finesse, rather than a level scaled value.
• Legendary Item bonus to Addle tactical damage has been reduced to 5%, unimbued bonus to induction time reduced to 16%
• Burglar Bob & Weave and Relish Battle trait heals tick faster (1/second).

Captain

The captain has received a number of changes and they are probably the most significantly changed class in this update. They have had some nerfs to yellow line, which will hopefully make it more in line with the guardian and beorning tanks in terms of overall power level. The captain with the red line support with Telling Mark has received a small nerf.

Then another change I do want to point out actually in general, in this update is you will see some fellowship wide buffs are going to be raid wide now, and this does include the captains buffs. I am honestly super excited for this change because it offers flexibility and group composition. For example, right now it’s very, very helpful, almost 100% required for some things to have two captains in the raid, one in each fellowship. So everybody in the raid can take advantage of captain buffs. Well, with this, you can maybe get full raid benefits from just one captain. So, yes, that is something I am personally looking forward to

Captain Class Changes

• Yellow Line:
  • Captain Yellow line morale bonus reduced from 25->10%.
  • Shield of the Dunedain LI legacy cooldown bonus reduced from (+10->+5s) (total duration reduced from 20->15s), Shield of the Dunedain can only be used on others.
  • Stand Tall Duration bonus reduced from (+10->+3s), Proc cooldown reduced from (1.0,2.0,3.0->1.0s,1.5s.2.0s)
• Red line:
  • Telling Mark base effect reduced from 5% to 3%, The traited bonus has been reduced from 5% to 2%, total 10% to 5%.
  • As a 100% uptime debuff with no action time cost, Telling Mark's group effect was too powerful.
• Kick can no longer miss, nor be blocked, parried, or evaded.
• Fixed: Captain banner heralds were not correctly inheriting offensive bonuses from their summoner.

Guardian

Next up we have the guardian and their tanking hasn’t changed much. I know that’s been a big thing in the community wanting guardian to be buffed. Hopefully with the captain nerfs, the guardian doesn’t even need to buffed too much.

The actual changes they got is they have received a damaged boost for a lot of their abilities, Sting has a slightly shorter cooldown at half a second.

Guardian Class Changes

• Protection by the Sword's group melee damage buff has been increased from 2% to 5%.
• Sting has had its cooldown reduced from 3 seconds to 2.5 seconds, which will allow it to be more conveniently slipped between skills with longer attack executions.
• Heavy Weapons Training now increases skill damage by 10%, up from 5%.
• Relentless Assault now grants a modest amount of Finesse.
• The following skills have received a damage boost, listed approximately from the smallest boost to the largest boost:
• Brutal Assault
• Whirling Retaliation
• Redirect
• War-chant
• Hammer Down
• Shield-blow
• Smashing Stab
• Bash
• To the King
• Sweeping Cut
• Shield-swipe
• Force Opening
• Overwhelm
• Guardian's Ward
• Stamp
• Turn the Tables
• Stamp can no longer miss or be blocked, parried, or evaded.

Champion

Champion Class Changes

• Clobber can no longer miss, nor be blocked, parried, or evaded.

Hunter

Hunter Class Changes

• Hail of Arrows has been fixed to properly proc 50% of the time at the first skill tier, and 100% of the time at the 2nd.
• Blindside no longer causes the player character to move into melee range with their target if Combat Movement Assist is active.
• Blindside can no longer be parried, bringing it into alignment with other ranged Hunter skills.

Lore-master

Their debuffs have been nerfed. It’s just Fire and Frost Lore that has been nerfed, but Wind Lore has been buffed. Another thing that has been buffed with the Lore-master is their damage.

Lore-master Class Changes

• The magnitude of fire and frost lore debuffs were considerably above where we were comfortable with them being for large group content, so Fire Lore's traited effect has been reduced from 35% to 15% and Frost Lore has had its traited effect reduced from 30% to 15%.
• Wind Lore has had its effect increased from 1/2/3% to 3/4/5%.
• Wind Lore's duration has been increased to 30 seconds to free up other skills for rotation.
• The following skills and effects have received an approximate 20% increase in damage:
• Burning/Searing Embers (direct and DOT)
• Wizard's Fire
• Test of Will
• Gust of Wind
• Cracked Earth
• The interaction between the trait Fierce Lightning and the skill Lightning Storm has been refactored to address frame rate drops caused by the skill.
• The tooltip for Lightning Storm no longer erroneously states that the skill consume Morale.

Minstrel

We have another tactical class with the minstrels and their anthems will now be raid wide and Anthem of War has also been nerfed with them.

Minstrel Class Changes

• Anthems should now be Raid-wide.
• Anthem of War's unimbued Legendary Item bonus to physical/ranged has been reduced from about 10% to about 5%, and Anthem of War's base Tactical bonus has been reduced from 15% to 10%.
• The tooltip for Major Ballad now correctly states that it is a damaging skill in the Dissonance form instead of the Resonance form.

Rune-keeper

Finally, for the last class that got some changes today, we have the rune-keeper and their red line overall was buffed in terms of damage. They have also had some minor trait and skill changes to go along with that as well.

Rune-keeper Class Changes

• Most red line skills have received a damage increase.
• Mystifying Flames now affects all incoming damage, not just fire. Its damage multiplier has been reduced from 15% to 5%.
• Mystifying flame no longer stacks different tiers on a single target.
• Mystifying Flames and Molten Flame are no longer able to be resisted.
• Fiery Ridicule's damage over time has been changed from seven pulses/2 seconds to 7 pulses/3 seconds, along with an increase in damage per tick.
• Essence of Flame has had its cooldown decreased from 15 seconds to 12 seconds.
• The induction on Essay of Fire has been decreased to 2 seconds.
• Smouldering Wrath has had its cooldown increased from 15 to 17 seconds.
• Frost affinity now grants +20% outgoing healing rather than force setting the bonus value to 20%, which prevented any other bonuses from stacking.

Warden

Warden Class Changes

• Shield Slam can no longer miss nor be blocked, parried, or evaded.

Miscellaneous Changes

We are at the more miscellaneous type changes coming in this update. First of all, we do have the virtues cap increasing to level 75, kind of along those lines, we are also getting an update to loot boxes, which I know basically nobody is probably excited about, but with the loot boxes, you can get up to item level 432 gear with a chance to create 434 to be more aligned, probably with the power level in update 30.

Crafting

There is a new recipe from the crafting guild where you can disenchant the output for some Ithilgalad crafting components. Housing

There are a few housing changes, but most of them are bug fixes. There is one I want to point out. When you sell a premium house, it used to be, you would only get 70% of what you bought in terms of housing rents. When you sold the house, now it will be 90%. So a little bit better value.

If you do decide to sell your premium house, you will now get 90% of your housing rents.

Mounted Shenanigans

One random note that I am actually excited for it. In this update, the Anniversary, Eagle and summer days fireworks can be used while mounted.

It’s exciting to do things well, mounted and shooting out fireworks definitely sounds exciting to me. I will be interested in trying that with those specific fireworks and see how that actually looks.

Cosmetics

Next up, we have a new figments of splendour vendor coming, Rowan Raspberry, which is one of the rotating ones, and it sounds like they are also getting some new cosmetics. Which will be interesting to check out what they have.

Bug Fixes & Adventure Areas

The final section with quest and adventure areas. I already mentioned some balance changes coming with level 130 content. There are going to be updates to Remmorchant, the Net of Darkness, The Houses of Lamentation and all the instances at level 130. and finally there are several bug fixes, which is always welcome.

I hope you all enjoyed it and learned something useful about Update 30: Blood of Azog in the Lord of the rings online.

About the author

Louey7 is a content creator that focuses on LOTRO with a variety of YouTube content including news, reviews, guides, and live streams!

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