Minstrel- Music to your Ears!

Struggled to try and copy and paste this because a) its pretty long and b) they've put pictures of how various skill icons have changed for this class. So i'm just gonna post a link for those who want to read it all, and post a few highlights for those who don't.

Read here: http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/1388-rise-of-isengard-minstrel-developer-diary-


Information extracted from above article:

Medium Armour – Super Important
Minstrels will no longer be able to wear medium armour. The trait allowing Minstrels to wear medium armour is being replaced with something that is equally valuable. It is important to note that any medium armour that is bound and that the Minstrel is wearing when the Isengard expansion goes live will become light armour.

Ballads
This is the first place where the changes will be felt by the Minstrels. No longer will the Minstrel need to use a previous tier of ballad to gain access to the next. Ballads have been consolidated into three types: Major, Minor and Perfect. This terminology is rooted firmly in music and not in progression. Minor refers to the minor intervals or chords that make diminished or dissonant sounds; major to the intervals and chords that make bold and pleasing sounds; perfect refers to chord progressions and intervals that are in perfect sound alignment striking resonant and whole sounding tones.
Each ballad still provides buffs to the Minstrel, but these buffs are tied more closely to the goal of the stances that the Minstrel employs. The stances, discussed in the next section, roughly equal healing, damage and power conservation. Each ballad provides buffs that enhance healing, power reduction or damage. Unlike the previous system, the buffs provided do not wear off over a short period of time; nor do these buffs enhance the Minstrel as greatly as they did before. Instead, these buffs apply themselves to the Minstrel and will stay active on the Minstrel until they actively leave combat for a short period or they use other skills that remove them. In addition to providing buffs each ballad also deals damage to a target or, in the case of the Major Ballad, serves a dual purpose to heal or deal damage dependent on stance.


Minstrel Stances
Melody (No Stance) - Minstrels not currently employing a stance are now considered to be using the Melody stance. Melody is considered to be the main healing stance and is the basic stance for Minstrels. Melody provides no innate abilities but will alter some skills to target them more towards healing.Minstrels have had two stances for quite some time now – no stance and War-speech. With the revisions as part of Isengard there are now three stances that the Minstrel can use.
Harmony Stance - The Harmony stance is a unique stance driving the Minstrel into the fray to fight foes up close. The primary role of Harmony is to be the fellowship buffer, but healing and damage remain possible while in this stance. Harmony adjusts the bonus in healing granted by Noble Cause infused Herald’s Hammer and provides a moderate amount of bonus damage for ballad skills. As with Melody, Harmony stance alters the same skills in different ways, allowing them to be used in a method that fits the stance more readily.
War-speech Stance - War-speech is the main DPS line for Minstrel. War-speech decreases the cooldown on Piercing Cry, increases the chance that Piercing Cry will critical, increases the damage on all ballads and converts all healing skills to be self only. You did not read that wrong – the negative healing has been removed and replaced with self only healing while in War-speech. War-speech converts the Minstrel into a damage dealer. To help alleviate the issues that this may cause when grouping, we have removed the tail effect from War-speech. You can now drop War-speech and heal as you please. Like the previous two stances, the same skills undergo conversions when the Minstrel is in War-speech.
* See page 3 of the above link for info about how these stances effect various skills.

Anthems
Perhaps the most significant change to the Minstrel class is the change made to anthem skills. In the pre-Isengard build, anthems were dual purpose skills. With the revisions coming with Isengard, anthems are now buffs. They will buff you or your fellows but they will now only be buffs. Anthems will now require the Minstrel to have three active ballad buffs on them to cast, but there are no longer any anthems that remove ballad tiers. Critically, anthems now all have identical durations and share a unified cooldown; the cooldown base is 20 seconds and the duration base is 10 seconds. This will force the Minstrel to take a more active role in maintaining buffs from anthems on themselves and their fellows. Careful trait selection will allow the Minstrel to more effectively use and maintain their Anthems.
Anthems will now require the Minstrel to have three active ballad buffs on them to cast.
A lot of consternation arose over the secondary application of anthems. The concern that Minstrels were becoming very much like a Warden seem to stem from the change to anthems that allows them to add extra benefits to the coda. This is an important piece of the revision as it provides some truly powerful bonuses that may become mainstays of the Minstrel class.
* See page 4 (& maybe 5) of above link for more detailed information on this change.

*Page 6 of it covers traits & trait-line changes if you're interested.

Changes to Instruments
With the changes to the nature of the Minstrel we also needed to take a pass at all the instruments that are available. These changes are listed here.

Instrument Modifier(Base) Modifier (Critical)
Cowbell Ballad and Coda – Damage Threat Reduction
Ballad, Cry and Coda –
Power Cost Reduction
Horn Healing – Critical Bonus Anthem – Power Cost Reduction
Threat Reduction
Clarinet Healing – Critical Bonus Threat Reduction
Healing – Power Cost
Reduction
Bagpipe Ballad and Coda – Critical Chance Threat Reduction
Theorbo Healing – Bonus Threat Reduction
Drum Ballad and Coda - Damage Threat Reduction
Flute Ballad, Cry and Coda – Power Cost Threat Reduction
Reduction
Harp Anthem – Power Cost Reduction Threat Reduction
Lute Healing – Power Cost Reduction Threat Reduction