Armor, Resistances, Mitigations and such...

looking for someone to break down each for me in technical terms, and tell me why one would be better than another...

still a bit newbish...but right now the character i play mostly is ahunter...so it doesent matter that much...i just stand in the back and pew pew while everyone else gets beat on....
but im gonna start leveling my alts to cap soon so i need to learn about the rest of these terms to properly proceed...

which of the 3 is more valuable to have stacked? armor, mitigations or resistances??

and what exactly is the difference between mitigations and resistances??/
are resistances just the chance you have of not being affected by say, poison? or disease?
do resistances have anything to do with blocking just normal physical or tactical damage? or is that all on mitigations?

and now armor....would is be better to focus more on armor on my gear, than raw mitigations?

need to fully understand the 3...

and id like to ask you guys here to break it down for me...because i can do really is ask in GLFF ...and GLFF on Brandywine is a clownhouse...

Try the wiki for the lowdown on the stats and their differences: http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Character_Stats

Essentially it comes down to opportunity costs. I don't play heavy armour characters usually so sorry I couldn't help you with specific numbers to aim for (each class of armour has different values).

Each attack has both a source and damage type.

Physical sources are Melee/Ranged attacks
Physical Damage types are common, Beleriand, Westernesse, Ancient-Dwarf
Tactical source are Tactical attacks
Tactical Damage types are Fire/Frost/Lightning/Poison/Wound/Fear/Shadow/Acid

Usually Physical sources do a Physical Damage type, and same for Tactical, but there are exceptions. Like a flaming sword would be Physical source, but does Tactical Damage type.

Physical Mitigation = a percentage reduction that is applied to all Physical Damage types
It is determined by armor value + 2x Might + 2x Vitality
Tactical Mitigation = a percentage reduction that is applied to all Tactical Damage types
It is determined by (armor value)/5 + 4x Vitality + 2x Will

Block/Parry/Evade = chance to completely avoid Physical sources
Resistance = chance to completely avoid Tactical sources and status effects (both the initial hit and subsequent ticks)

Some tactical attacks are scripted to be unavoidable however, so Resistance won't work against them.

You know, I've played this game for almost 5 years now, and I still don't understand any of it.

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Originally Posted by TOOBxSOCKS

....
which of the 3 is more valuable to have stacked? armor, mitigations or resistances??

and what exactly is the difference between mitigations and resistances??/
are resistances just the chance you have of not being affected by say, poison? or disease?
do resistances have anything to do with blocking just normal physical or tactical damage? or is that all on mitigations?

and now armor....would is be better to focus more on armor on my gear, than raw mitigations?

need to fully understand the 3...

and id like to ask you guys here to break it down for me...because i can do really is ask in GLFF ...and GLFF on Brandywine is a clownhouse...

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First, to make understanding easier, we need to separate tactical attacks and tactical damage. "Tactical attacks" is an euphemism for magical attacks; "tactical damage" is an euphemism for elemental damage types.

The core thing is, Combat in LotrO is based ONLY on your ratings. Meaning, for example your Armor value doesnt do anything on its own. It however adds 100% to your physical (common damage) mitigation, and 20% of that armour value adds to your tactical mitigation (shadow/fire/acid/frost/lightning damage types, i.e. elemental damage). It follows that armour has a huge effect on your common damage mitigation, but not quite as much on your tactical damage mitigation.

The damage you take is influenced by two different sets of ratings; one is your defences. Defences are

• both types of mitigations,
• your critical defense and, by association, also
• your incoming healing rating.

Mitigations are generally your most important defences. Why? Because they reduce the real damage you take every time, on every hit, regardless of the source. Note that the damage in instances, particularly from bosses, is usually elemental damage (i.e. tactical mitigation is more important).

Then you have your avoidances.
This influences your chance to avoid or lessen incoming damage based on source.

• Block can avoid melee and ranged attacks from the front.
• Parry can only avoid melee attacks from the front.
• Evade can avoid all melee or ranged attacks from all angles.
• Resistance can avoid any and all magical attacks. It can also avoid effects you get from debuffs, for example damage ticks from poisons on your character.

All clear? Hopefully. Now, how to build your character depends a bit on the class. If we take the hunter in your sig as a basis, you have a high intrinsic avoidance against physical attacks, because Agility increases evade a lot and parry a bit. Additionally, as a hunter (at least in fellowship play with a decent tank) you ideally are not often the target of enemy attacks. So you dont want to buff up your avoidances too much.

What you want to do is be easy on the healers. Which means, your defensive build should focus on bringing your mitigations above the 40% (the cap for medium armor is 50%), and investing a bit into critical defence, incoming healing, resistance and morale. Morale doesnt actually do anything for your damage reduction, but it acts as a sponge to give healers more time to shoot you a heal (and you´re not high on the priority list of healers).

One sad thing in my experience however: Many hunters stupidly exploit their 40 meter attack range in instances, standing at the back of the room pewpewing away. Most other classes dont have that extreme range; they usually effect radii from 10-25 meters around them. If the hunters would just stand closer to the group, they would get affected by a lot more fellowship buffs and heals.

NB1: There is an additional, rare elemental damage type, light damage. We dont have defences against it.
NB2: Finesse is used to lower ours and the enemies´ avoidances
NB3: parts of the wiki page above are outdated. for the real math behind all this, go to http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...on-and-Offence.

because other people have broke down the stats brilliantly I'll quickly go over the resistance and captain

resistence has 2 names. creep-resistance and free-resistance
creeps can alter there resistance to completely avoid many tactical attacks
while freeps resistances does not.

resistance hasn't been a priority since watcher and turtle, seen as many tactical skills arn't avoided by resistance like creeps have. freep resistance is best to avoid many effects that need to be potted, or damage over time effects (like puddles too)

I suggest getting combat analysis if you want to look into what can be resisted. rule of thrumb doesn't always work and many instances work differently. in the currently state nothing really needs us to stack resistance though.

http://www.lotrointerface.com/downlo...tAnalysis.html

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Originally Posted by TOOBxSOCKS

but im gonna start leveling my alts to cap soon so i need to learn about the rest of these terms to properly proceed

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you forgot moral pool :D a big factor on a captain

Physical mitigation;
while captains naturally have high physical mitigation from haveing there primary stat as might, there usally isn't a need to go much higher. common damage that hits the captain is usual from aoe on bosses, many can be avoided. so physical mit isn't a main priority. unless your tanking ofc

Tactical mitigation;
while your main is a hunter, your probebly used to see low figures (under 30%). but in many raids tactical skills from the boss are the skills that causes deaths. while your captain might naturally have higher than most, as a captain you should think about storing some items in bank that give tactical mit incase you go into an instance (Ost dunhoth, smaug) that could potentially lead to a wipe if low.

Moral pool;
generally atm you should have 9-10k moral buffed at 85. but there are times when your not needed to dps, and not a huge healer. so moral pool NEEDS to be higher. I warn you with moral builds though. if your moral is high and your mits are low, you'll be getting hit more, so healers need to heal you more. if your not the tank you shouldn't be a priority for heals half the time. so if you have too much moral it could cause someone else to die if the healer is taking time out to get you. this still, is a good form of defence from burst damage on you.

thank you all for the break downs...


i was kind of going on the little bit ive picked up in game, and the rest just common sense by taking the terms for exactly what they sounded like....it seems i knew more than i had thought....
definitely learned a bit more here though....thanks again...

On a more practical level, the game gives you armour, so you don't have to worry about that rating too much, just keep slotting pieces with good stats as you get them.

That will provide you with mitigations! (Handy, isn't it?) If you are going to get hit, toss on some jewelry pieces with more mitigations, particularly tactical in instances that have a lot of tactical damage, as you get less tactical from armour. When you get your legendary items, put scrolls with +mitigations on that you obtain from Midnight Raid (Echad Dúnann in Eregion) or other repeatable instances that give title scrolls.

Resistance is futile. Seriously, those who have lumped on a ton of resistance find they aren't any better off than those with little, because as pointed out above, many things are scripted to affect you regardless, and many things have subsequent "ticks" that will hit you even if you resit one. Don't bother.

You didn't ask about block/parry/evade, but B/P/E is important to learn too. You can evade something that comes from any direction. You can only block/parry frontal attacks. Similarly, you want to fight MOBs from behind, which is partly why tanks turn their backs to the group. That way your attacks hit more often, as they can't be blocked/parried. Positioning is key.


http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/3...ickensig00.jpg
"Sometimes survival comes down to not being hit. Actually, most times." -the chicken skill, Bob and Weave

Always keep in mind that armor, might, agility, willpower, vitality and fate are base stats. They don't do anything on their own. They only influence other stats.

For example if you are looking for more tactical mitigation and you have two items with similar stats but one has 1000 armor and the other has 900 armor plus 300 tactical mitigation the better one would be the last.

- 1st item provides 1000 physical mitigation + 200 tactical mitigation
- 2nd item provides 900 physical mitigation + 480 tactical mitigation (180 from armor + 300 raw bonus)

The trick is to find a good balance.

When you mouse-over a stat in the character panel you can see what it influences and by what amount. Most of the time it will be simple multipliers like base stat * 1 (0.2, 2, 2.5, 4 and so on). Some of these multipliers depend on the character class.

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Originally Posted by Rhaphael

Each attack has both a source and damage type.

Physical sources are Melee/Ranged attacks
Physical Damage types are common, Beleriand, Westernesse, Ancient-Dwarf
Tactical source are Tactical attacks
Tactical Damage types are Fire/Frost/Lightning/Poison/Wound/Fear/Shadow/Acid

Usually Physical sources do a Physical Damage type, and same for Tactical, but there are exceptions. Like a flaming sword would be Physical source, but does Tactical Damage type.

Physical Mitigation = a percentage reduction that is applied to all Physical Damage types
It is determined by armor value + 2x Might + 2x Vitality
Tactical Mitigation = a percentage reduction that is applied to all Tactical Damage types
It is determined by (armor value)/5 + 4x Vitality + 2x Will

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This is important, good breakdown. Lot's of people don't get that there's source mit and type mit.

@OP: Oxy, do you remember that champ in GLFF yesterday arguing that Invincible gave him 98% mits while it was up? Stacked with his mitigation stats. That's a textbook case of not understanding the difference between source and type mitigation. The phys/tact mitigation we see on items and basically everywhere is type, whereas Invincible buffs physical and tactical defense which is code for source mitigation along with other phrases like "-incoming damage" or "melee/ranged/tactical."

I mean it's really easy to see how wrong he was if you have a champion; you'd just need to pop Invincible and see how it does not make the % of your phys or tact mitigation go up on your character sheet, instead raising your melee/ranged/tactical defense on your character sheet (rating will still be 0, would need to hover over that to see increase in % before and after Invincible). Indeed you can see the effects of source mit things like Audacity, Tome of Defense, Shield Bro To Arms, SotD, Gift or Carrock, etc. using this method. Make sure you check the little box to show you all your stats.

So the way you really mitigate damage is if you have like 15% melee defense from say +10% Tome of Defense & +5% FB Shield Bro To Arms and 40% tactical mit from your stats, if boss punches you for say acid damage and it connects non-crit, you'll mitigate that by muliplying by both (1-0.15) and (1-0.4). You wouldn't add those two %s together and multiply by (1-0.4-0.15) the way that champ was implying.