When Mines of Moria hits the shelves, players will suddenly find themselves with the opportunity to break the level 50 cap and work their way toward 60. What exactly will that mean for the various classes? How will the access to new traits, virtues, skills, and class quests affect the way you play?

Well, three new developer diaries begin to answer those questions for the Burglar, Lore-master, and Hunter classes. These are only the first in a series of diaries, so you can expect to see more down the road.

These diary entries are quite long an in-depth. Keep reading for a summary of the updates for each class, but I recommend checking out the full entries if you're truly curious about what the Mines of Moria expansion will truly mean for your characters.

Burglar

For the Burglar, the three new trait sets focus on damage, tricks/crowd control, and gambles of chance. The Quiet Knife Trait Set bonuses focus on improving positional damage and critical hit chances. The Mischief-Maker set bonuses lower Trick resistance and increase durations. The Gambler trait set is something quite new to the class.

The Gambler Trait Set is a new twist on the gameplay of the Burglar, embracing chance to improve all of his strengths when luck is on his side. Gambles are effects applied to enemies which come in three flavors: improving damage, crowd control, or debuffs. They each have their effect while on the target and have an additional effect when they expire (like a stun or damage over time). When a Gamble is applied it rolls on a kind of loot table with respectable results guaranteed but with a chance for “rare” or “incomparable” effects with greater impact.

Improved skills for the Burglar include Startling Twist, which adds the ability to remove Corruptions from monsters, and Hide in Plain Sight. The improved version of HiPS adds a special movement speed buff which allows you to move at your normal out-of-stealth speed and allows you to ignore slows.

Also, Burglar's Tools will now be Legendary Items and passive skills have been added rhat improve the Burglar’s base damage, critical damage, and even the devastating critical damage when wielding daggers.

Hunter

The new trait sets for the Hunter are the Bowmaster, the Trapper of Foes, and the Huntsmen. These focus on damage, crowd control, and survival and mobility.

Here's a quote regarding the Huntsmen trait set and how added mobility will be possible for a Hunter:

In addition to giving the Hunter ways to recover morale while in combat it allows the Hunter a degree of focused mobility in combat never before possible. To set your expectations in reality, this does not mean you can use all your bow skills while moving, but it does mean that when you specialize with this set you will lose Focus much more slowly and your auto-attacks will have a much higher hit rate while moving. Read on for more details.

As for improved skills, Merciful Shot will gain the ability to remove Corruption buffs and Swift Bow will allow you to fire three arrows in rapid succession at your target.

In addition to the mention of Legendary Items for Hunters in the form of bows and crossbows, the developer mentioned group travel.

With new playable regions coming online, it’s time for some new group travel options for the Hunter. Three new group travel skills will be added that you’ll get to discover for yourself—and not all of them are for the mines themselves. If you haven’t curried favor with the Lossoth yet, get started!

Lore-master

The Lore-master will also be able to play around with three new trait sets. The Keeper of Animals will increase the fortitude of your animal companion and restore morale, the Master of Nature's Fury will focus on direct damage, and the Ancient Master will raise the effectiveness of debuffs.

The class will also receive some improved skills, including the ability to remove Corruption at will.

The Lore-master in the 50+ arena also gains access to Sign of Power: Wizard's Fire. This Sign uses Fire instead of Light to deal damage to the foes of Middle-earth, enabling the Lore-master to take advantage of his fire affinity with another skill. The Lore-masters also gains access to Dispel Corruption, a powerful skill that dispels some of the more horrific monster abilities on demand. The Lore-master is one of the more-powerful classes with removing these monster corruptions, being able to do so at will and removing most in one shot.

Of course, information regarding any of these class updates can change before the release of Mines of Moria, but they at least give us a good look at the direction the development team is moving in regards to trait sets, improved skills and Legendary Items.