Massively in Moria: Hands on with the Rune-keeper
When The Lord of the Rings Online's new expansion, the Mines of Moria launches on November 18, two new master classes will be available to the player base: The Warden, a tank/dps class and The Rune-keeper, a healing/nuking class. The reason they are dubbed "master class" is that they are difficult to learn, but are powerful allies when mastered.
I got to go hands-on with the Rune-keeper class in the beta for a few weeks and ran it through the paces: solo and group, with different specs and group configurations. Read on for my take on the strengths, weaknesses and tactics of the newest class to join the battle against the Shadow in the West.
The Rune-keeper class mechanics
For those not familiar how this class works, here's a brief overview. The Rune-keeper starts off in a neutral Attuned state. In that state, there are a number of basic nukes and basic heals he can cast. If he chooses to cast a nuke, he becomes Battle Attuned at the rate of one Attunement per nuke. As he advances further into Battle Attuned state, more nukes become available to him. At the 9th Battle Attunement, his most powerful abilities unlock. The same is true for his healing spells, each one progresses him further into his Healing Attunement and opens up more powerful abilities.
Sound fun, eh? The downside is while Battle Attuned, the Rune-keeper is restricted to one minor healing spell. Conversely, while Healing Attuned, he is locked out of almost all of his nukes. Thus the Rune-keeper needs to be very aware of his situation in a battle because switching between Attunements takes time. There are a number of utility spells that allow him to move his Attunement back towards the neutral state where he can access the base spells that will allow him to build Attunement into the school of spells he needs.
There is one other way for Rune-keepers to change their fighting style mid-combat. They get a legendary trait called Steady Hands that resets their Attunement to a neutral state. It has a long cast time and doesn't work well in solo play, but if the healer goes down in a group and Rune-keeper is deep in his battle attunement, it's a much faster way of working into his Healing Attunement than having to spend the time to cast the four or five utility spells that it would otherwise take. Plus, it removes the power cost of all spells for 15 seconds, making it especially useful in desperate situations.
The nuking spell lines
There are three lines of nukes:
Lightning - instant cast, good chance for crit, great for soloing or burning down a mob quickly in a group
Fire - mostly DOTs that stack, some of them have long casting time making them difficult to cast while soloing, but efficient dps on boss mobs and in raids
Cold - lower dps, but added debuffs and some AE abilities
To give you an idea of the power of these lines, here are the most powerful abilities for each line that are only unlocked when you are entirely battle attuned (scaled for L53 RK):
Epic Conclusion - 383-451 Lightning Damage, +50% damage on critical hits, bypasses Tactical resistance, but increases Power costs of all Battle spells by 50% for 10 seconds. I've seen crits above 1k.
Smouldering Wrath - 169 Fire Damage per second for 8 seconds. Damage will not interrupt this channeled skill. If a mob has around 1200 health or less, this will finish them off.
Frozen Epilogue - 303-357 Frost Damage, increases skill induction, power costs on attack duration on opponent while reducing incoming healing also. The clincher? It's an AE that works on up to 5 targets at once. It's the ultimate debuff.
The healing spell lines
The healing spells only come in one line, but have many different tools. However, what the Rune-keeper does not have is panic buttons, so you have to be pro-active about stacking the large number of HoTs available to him. Healing spells include:
Heal over Time (all of these stack with each other):
Direct Heal
Warding
There are two top tier talent for Rune-keepers that unlock at Healing Attunement 9:
Essay of Exaltation - this is a group Word of Exaltation (reduces incoming damage by 50%) combined with a powerful HoT. Good for dealing with cascading AE attacks. But like the top tier Lightning ability, there is a cost. All Healing spells will have double the power cost for 10 seconds.
Our Fates Entertwined - You take 10% of the groups damage and damage will not interrupt your inductions. I'm not so sure about this one. We're a glass cannon class to start. Taking on the group's damage doesn't sound like our strong suit. It's not as if we have a super self-heal like Lore-masters to handle the incoming damage.
As you can see from the list above, you have to lay down a lot of HoTs in advance to prevent damage since you have limited direct heals. The class as a whole doesn't have a lot of panic buttons and a distinct lack of strong AE healing making it a challenge as primary healer.
The utility spell lines
The utility spells help you both do damage and heal, but most of all, they shift your Attunement back to a neutral state which will be critical when you need to switch from Battle to Healing Attuned quickly. This is especially important if you don't yet have your Legendary trait Steady Hands. Casting three particular spells (Armour of Storm, Distracting Winds and Self-motivation) can bring you down all the way from Battle Attunement 9 to neutral in just a few seconds (the first two are instacast, the third has 1.5sec induction time).
Unlike your Battle and Healing spells, utility spells don't require you to be in a certain Attunement state to work. They all work at any time. Some of them have abilities that change based on what kind of Rune-keeper stone you have in your main hand (Lightning, Fire or Cold).
Examples of different kind of utility spells include the very important short-term, single target crowd control spell Shocking Touch, a debuff that procs damage based on what Stone you have equipped and a series of warding spells that will prevent the next Wound, Poison or death blow
Whew, now that we have all that out of the way, let's talk Rune-keeper traits.
