Watcher of Resolve

The Watcher of Resolve

The Watcher of Resolve focuses on what the minstrel does best: Healing. It’ll improve your cast times, lowers your power costs, and makes you less threatening to the enemy, freeing yourself up to keep your Fellowship in top fighting condition. I usually have a few of these slotted when working with a raid or fellowship.

Focused Performance

• Acquire: Evade enemy attacks 300 times.
• Effect: Your induction timers (the time it takes to cast spells) are shortened. This makes you harder to interrupt. This is a great skill for any minstrel to have; because his heals will be more reliable in-combat.

Graceful Demeanor

• Acquire: Use Enlivening Grace 100 times.
• Effect: This trait makes "Enlivening Grace" and "Rally!" abilities grant more morale and power on revive. "Rally's" cast time and recharge time are also reduced slightly. Since Enlivening Grace can only be used out of combat, its bonus from this trait isn't particularly worthwhile. However, if the Minstrel has Rally slotted (and he should, unless he only solos) this trait can make a world of difference. With Graceful Demeanor, Rally will revive a player will FULL health and nearly full power, and its cast time is reduced significantly, making it more feasible to use in a dangerous situation without losing too much opportunity to heal the surviving fellowship members. And of course, the fact that it comes back faster is incredibly useful as well. Ideally, no one should die in a Fellowship with a Minstrel, but sometimes stuff just goes wrong, and with this trait and Rally, you'll be well-prepared when that happens.

Improved Cure Fear

• Acquire: Use Cure Fear 250 times.
• Effect: This trait improves most of the aspects of Cure Fear. The level of fear effects it removes are increased by 2, it removes an additional effect with a single application, and the cast time is reduced from a minute to 45 seconds. These are all nice bonuses to Cure Fear, but the main thing this trait has going against it is the fact that Captains will always be MUCH MUCH better at curing fear. A Captain can cure multiple fear effects on the entire fellowship at once (though with a 30 second cooldown, which is still better than the Minstrel's), and thus, it seems kind of silly worrying about even trying to help out with something that is probably much better handled by another class. Still, in situations where fear effects are abundant and there simply isn't a Captain available, there may be reason to slot this trait.

Improved Song of Soothing

• Acquire: Use Song of Soothing 350 times.
• Effect: This trait changes the usage of Song of Soothing dramatically. It eliminates the induction completely; allowing it to be used instantly with no chance of setback or interruption, but it also comes with a penalty. The cooldown increases dramatically, making it available for use much less often. Essentially, rather than a skill to help maintain keeping the minstrel low on the threat list, or to get one or two enemies off of him, this changes Song of Soothing into a kind of "oh crap" button for threat management. Generally, I feel that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and recommend Subtle Movements over this trait for threat reduction.

Life-Singer

• Acquire: Use healing songs 1,000 times.
• Effect: Reduces the power cost of your healing skills by 10%. This is handy for any grouping Minstrel, and as power is always an issue for Minstrels, it comes HIGHLY recommended.

Power of Song

• Acquire: Use Song of Restoration 100 times.
• Effect: Increases your power pool by 200 points at level 60. For Minstrels, power is life, and more is always better. However, it's arguable that this just gives you a little more of what could be obtained by gear or virtue traits, preventing the Minstrel from using some of the more unique and special bonuses from other class traits. Thus, this trait is not always the best.

Silver Tongue

• Acquire: Use Cry of the Chorus 125 times.
• Effect: Your songs recover slightly faster. This includes really useful songs such as "Song of Soothing", "Song of Distraction" and especially "Song of the Hopeful Heart." In the latter examples case, this trait lowers its cooldown by a whole 6 minutes, from 30 to 24. A very nice trait from this line to have.

Subtle Movements

• Acquire: Use Song of Soothing 300 times.
• Effect: You draw less threat from your enemies than normal. This is great to have in a group, and since it is a hands-off sort of bonus, this is one of the better traits from this line.

Legendary Spirit

Legendary

• Acquire: Path of the Resolve-Watcher.
• Effect: Increases the healing power of your "Soliloquy of Spirit" ability. Soliloquy of Spirit is kind of underwhelming, and while this makes it better, it is not nearly as good as the Minstrel's other heals. But it's not supposed to replace them; it's supposed to supplement them. This makes Soliloquy of spirit a pretty decent, quick, maintenance heal-over-time, giving the Minstrel just a little bit more time to heal other Fellowship members or focus on his ballad chains, and it pairs well with the Legendary Weapon legacy which increases the duration of the same ability.