Update 37.2 Release Notes

Here are the release notes for Update 37.2, released on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2023.

Of Special Note

Corsairs of Umbar is now available to pre-purchase!

Face the Rising Tide of the Kindred's Power! Unfurl the sails and brace yourself for the intoxicating rush of adventure as you approach the enigmatic shores of Umbar! Feel the sea's salt kiss your face and the promise of untold tales beckon from the horizon. Here, in the heart of the City of the Corsairs, dark-bannered vessels whisper of legendary raids alongside the Kindred of the Coin's power plays. With King Elessar's mandate in your heart, rally a crew of old friends and newfound allies. Dive headfirst into the dangerous shores of Umbar, find your sea legs with the new innovative Mariner class, and reclaim the spirit of discovery in lands that LOTRO has never ventured before!

Find Your Sea-legs With The Mariner
- Chart your own course with the Mariner, slashing through foes with slick swordplay, belting out rousing sea-shanties, and pulling off crafty moves that'll have enemies spinning in confusion.
Explore the Shores of Umbar
- Discover the bustling Corsair haven, where sun-kissed shores meet the shadows of dark-bannered ships, and tales of legendary raids echo through its vibrant ports.
Fight Fierce New Enemies
- From the striking coastlines of Outer Gondor to the sandy stretches of The Shield Isles, untold dangers and formidable adversaries lie in wait!
Over 350 Unique Quests
- Venture deep into Umbar's heart, navigating political intrigues and ancient mysteries, as the formidable Kindred of the Coins rise, threatening the fragile peace King Elessar and Queen Arwen have fought so hard to achieve.
Unique End Game Content
- Charge into an increased level 150 cap, dive into pulse-pounding instances, and gain access to an exciting new raid; prepare for an adventure like no other!
Get More with Collector’s and Ultimate Fan Bundles
- Unlock the ultimate seafaring experience with unique cosmetics, pets, and extra expedition supplies today!

Learn more about Corsairs of Umbar on LOTRO.com!

News and Notes

The Mariner

Mariners are confident melee fighters who wield swords deftly to challenge the forces of evil. Mariners have an innate sense of the flow of combat, and use their balance to adjust their fighting style to best fit the moment. Mariners also know how to use combinations of individual movements to create powerful skill chains. In fellowships, Mariners can use shanties to coordinate and motivate their allies, as well as craft strange concoctions to confound and disrupt foes.
Balance - Mariner's use a forward-backward system called Balance. In that system, your three main states are 'Aftward' 'Steady' and 'Foreward.' You will default to a 'Steady' state, and the skills you use will push your balance Foreward or Aftward. Watch out, though! If you find yourself too far to either end of the balance spectrum, you become unbalanced, and will need to quickly move back towards Steady, lest you find yourself penalized for remaining off-balance.
Swordplay - Mariners are practiced melee combatants, and their swordplay skills can be used to create chains of skill combos. Every individual swordplay skill will give you a short buff of your 'last used' swordplay skill, which will enhance one or more other swordplay skills. For example, using 'Thrust' will improve Step-back or Advance, if you use one of those directly after Thrust. On the Thrust skill tooltip, you'll also notice that it says 'Advance applies a bleed' in red text. That indicated that there is a trait in the red-line tree which will give Thrust that swordplay combo effect. Swordplay effects only impact your 'next used' swordplay skill. So if you use Riposte then Blade Shield, the Blade Shield swordplay combo effect will overwrite the one gained from Riposte. However, non-swordplay skills will not overwrite these effects, so you can use Haversack skills or Shanty skills without breaking a Swordplay combo chain.
The Mariner has 3 trait specializations: The Shanty-caller, The Duellist, and The Rover:
- The Shanty-caller - The shanty-caller is a group-support specialist, with a focus on maximizing group damage. This line is built as a direct counterpart to the Captain's Master of War red-line. Specializing in the Shanty-caller tree gives you access to a number of otherwise-unavailable shanty skills, and will make all of your shanties more potent. Skills like the West Wind and Guided by the Stars will benefit your group, while skills like Marked Foes and the Breaking of Thangorodrim will cause your enemies to take more damage from all of your allies.
- The Duellist - The duellist is a flexible melee fighter, focused on maximizing your own damage output, while retaining a flexible kit of skills to help you avoid damage and escape unwinnable engagements. A duellist sacrifices most of the group-support potential found in other specializations, but gains much-improved swordplay damage and effectiveness.
- The Rover - The Rover is a group-support specialist, with a focus on controlling and debuffing enemies, and helping to keep the group alive. This line is a direct counterpart to the Lore-master's Ancient Master and the Burglar's Mischief-maker specializations. Specializing in the Rover tree will give you access to a number of potent debuffing and CCing skills which are otherwise unavailable. Though the Rover still gains several unique swordplay combos, most of their unique skills and effects are gained from Haversack skills.

Classes

Buff Interactions
- Oathbreakers Shame, The Breaking of Thangorodrim, and Murder of Crows Incoming Damage debuffs no longer stack with one another. The 'Oaths Fulfilled' effect has been renamed to 'Renewed Defences' and will prevent another potent debuff from being applied for 45 seconds.
- Caustic Brew, Ancient Craft, and Trickster each apply 'Major Rent Armour' and will not stack with one another.
- Pitch Pot and Sticky Tar each apply 'Minor Rent Armour' and will not stack with one another.
Beorning
- Improved Nature's Wrath should now correctly give 10 Wrath while dual wielding.
- Greater Bee Swarm should leave the regular bee swarm DoT behind when it expires.
- Beorning armour is now correctly bartered from heavy rather than medium armour vendors in skirmish camps.
Burglar
- Trickster tricks now apply Major Rent Armour, reducing all enemy mitigations by 10% for 20 seconds.
- Location is Everything now increases Critical Chain Skills Damage rather than causing those skills to ignore some enemy Mitigations.
Champion
- Champion's Advantage now increases Blade Skills Damage rather than causing those skills to ignore some enemy Mitigations.
- Damage for Champion Blade skills has been increased by 8%.
- Damage for Champion Strike skills has been increased by 20%.
Guardian
- Bolstering Blocks can now only proc once per second. This entirely passive heal was capable of generating more HPS than intended for the guardian, and was not in line with reactive healing available to other tank specializations.
- Damage for most Guardian skills has been reduced by 5%.
- Rupture has been corrected to a 10 second duration at slightly reduced potency (10% max).
- Negative combat states will no longer remove the Guardian's Protection by the Shield toggle skill.
Hunter
- Bodkin Arrows now increases Induction Skill Damage rather than causing Hunter skills to ignore some enemy Mitigations.
- Damage for most Hunter skills has been increased by 15%.
Lore-master
- Murder of Crows debuff is now 10% Miss Chance but 20% Incoming Damage, and does not stack with Oathbreakers or the Breaking of Thangorodrim.
- Ancient Craft now removes 5% of all enemy Mitigations, rather than Armour rating. Enfeeble will increase this amount to 15% for 10 seconds and 10% thereafter.

Forester Event

All movement bonuses are now suppressed as they should be.
The synching issue with the event should be solved.
All of the forester tools that can be made and upgraded as part of the event have been made account bound.
The forester event will now run, regardless of participants, every 21 minutes.
The quest for the forester event will no longer invoke the mithril coin reset on failure or cancelling.
There was an odd race condition in the quest that could cause the quest to fail in the second step. This has been rectified.
Guardians were able to bypass the speed restrictions in the forester event with Sprint. This has been remedied.

Miscellaneous

The Pure Seagull cosmetic pet now sounds like a seagull.
Several avatar clothing models that had missing textures and were displaying as white are now fixed.
War-steed combat fidgets now correctly play only in combat.
Level 130 Shrews should no longer be able to sneak into 'Instance: Humble Beginnings'.
Sarabeth Lowbanks has found her name again.
The following emote animations have been updated for River Hobbits to use hobbit versions of these animations: Cheer, Laugh (lol), Mock, Wave.

Known Issues

The French language version of the Mariner introductory video in character generation has a freezing issue. The video will transition back to character creation or players can cancel the video without issue.
Mariner Known Issues
- Mariner Pot Skills list incorrect effect durations (Caustic Brew, Fire Pot, Pitch Pot and Sludge Pot).
- There are currently some tooltip issues with the traits 'Test Defences', 'Rare Ingredients' and the skill 'Belly of Brine' not displaying properly.
- Mariner Class Deed 'Spitting Techniques' is not properly advancing when 'Breath of Ice' is used.
- Mariner skills 'Advance' & 'Sweeping Advance' display "Dramatic Flourish Critical Magnitude Buff" but should display "Dramatic Flourish Critical Buff Potency".

Source

Update 37.2 - Tuesday October 3, 2023

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