Rise of Isengard: Dev Diary Feedback: Stat Updates

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Originally Posted by Clover

Stats will be getting an update with the launch of The Rise of Isengard™. Read more about these changes in the latest developer diary from Ken "Graalx2" Burd and post your comments here!

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What about the absolutely unfair stats on items that is TACTICAL CRITICAL MULTIPLIER?

There are no range critical multiplier, nor there are any melee critical multiplier. Which is why all the range/melee classes get annoyed when they see tact crits hit lot higher than any of the range/melee player's skill, but what they don't realize is that tactical classes are using around 36% tact critical multiplyer.

PLEASE adress this issue, either separate it as tactical healing multiplier or give range/melee classes something similar on ARMOURS.

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Originally Posted by Lilka

This means that Lore-masters, Minstrels and Runekeepers will use Will to contribute to their Melee offence. - Their MELEE? Is this a typo?
Hunters will use Agility for their Melee offence - er... typo?
Guardians, Champions and Wardens will use Might for their Ranged offence ratings. - ....typo?

I feel very stupid not understanding this. But OK, I'll roll with it. Can I safely assume that a Minstrel's Will contributes to their Tactical Offence, a hunter's Agility contributes to Ranged offence and a Champ/Warden's Might to their melee offence too?

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yeah thats the impression I get. It merely means that each class will have one primary stat that affects all their offence, be it tac,ranged, or melee. So LMs Will stat affects their tac/ranged/melee offence.
A guards might affects their tac/ranged/melee offence


anyway.. interesting changes. will need quite a while to think them through. Seems like a bit too much change but whatever

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Originally Posted by KahnyaGnorc

You will still have the increased parry and mitigation that extra Might provides. However, I've always thought Agility->Damage was silly. Agility affecting hit and crit makes sense (better chance to both hit and to hit a vulnerable spot), but, with everything but crossbows, Might would logically improve damage (Greater Might could affect how strong the pull you could have on your crossbow and the stronger kick-back you could endure, both resulting in greater damage, so the argument could be made even there.)

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Maybe. Logically, though, we couldn't increase our Fate at all - your fate is your fate, and a necklace isn't going to make yours any better. It's a name for a mechanic, and the Agil/Dex = ranged thing is a holdover from D&D that sticks with most games with stat systems. C'est la vie.

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Originally Posted by witchking782

What about the absolutely unfair stats on items that is TACTICAL CRITICAL MULTIPLIER?

There are no range critical multiplier, nor there are any melee critical multiplier. Which is why all the range/melee classes get annoyed when they see tact crits hit lot higher than any of the range/melee player's skill, but what they don't realize is that tactical classes are using around 36% tact critical multiplyer.

PLEASE adress this issue, either separate it as tactical healing multiplier or give range/melee classes something similar on ARMOURS.

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You know they'd have to nerf the overall DPS to account for the now-higher crits, right? I mean, yeah, tact crit is a big number, but the DPS numbers for an RK are not vastly different than those of a Hunter, and Champs lol at tact crit while they mow down hordes of enemies at once. The fact that Group A has something that Group B does not really doesn't matter if the outcome (here, DPS) is largely the same.

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Originally Posted by ANewMachine

Maybe. Logically, though, we couldn't increase our Fate at all - your fate is your fate, and a necklace isn't going to make yours any better. It's a name for a mechanic, and the Agil/Dex = ranged thing is a holdover from D&D that sticks with most games with stat systems. C'est la vie.

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Actually, it was only in 4th Ed that Dex affected ranged damage. Thrown weapon damage was Strength, Bows required a Mighty Composite to scale damage, which was Strength-based, and Crossbow damage never changed based on any stat.

My opinion is these are great changes. You can use whatever you want and not worry about it. I never liked the caps anyways.

Woops the above post is from me. Didnt switch my bad.

Finesse would be a stat that is most useful for DPS classes. Support/debuffers/tanks will find it somewhat useful. Healers will have little use for it at all.

I'm concerned now that the end-game raid gear will be high-finesse gear. To maximize your raid's effectiveness, you'd first want to give your DPS classes the high-finesse gear, and then support/tanks and then finally healers when no one else needs it. Raids are going to groan/curse if a Mini accidentally rolls on end-game gear and gets the high finesse boots. It will get very disappointing to be anything but a DPS class is this is the case...the DPS classes already get the most bang for the buck on legendary weapons, adding in another set of items that clearly favors that playstyle doesn't make much sense. It's not yet time to go back to the days of Moria where only the DPS classes mattered.

Here's to hoping that finesse adds to threat/mitigations for Guardians/Wardens, and outgoing healing for Mini's and RKs!!

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Originally Posted by Nobbins

Finesse would be a stat that is most useful for DPS classes. Support/debuffers/tanks will find it somewhat useful. Healers will have little use for it at all.

I'm concerned now that the end-game raid gear will be high-finesse gear. To maximize your raid's effectiveness, you'd first want to give your DPS classes the high-finesse gear, and then support/tanks and then finally healers when no one else needs it. Raids are going to groan/curse if a Mini accidentally rolls on end-game gear and gets the high finesse boots. It will get very disappointing to be anything but a DPS class is this is the case...the DPS classes already get the most bang for the buck on legendary weapons, adding in another set of items that clearly favors that playstyle doesn't make much sense. It's not yet time to go back to the days of Moria where only the DPS classes mattered.

Here's to hoping that finesse adds to threat/mitigations for Guardians/Wardens, and outgoing healing for Mini's and RKs!!

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Finesse would help both of those roles, if the mini/rk gets threat while healing, finesse helps him/her avoid being slaughtered. Finesse would help the tank(champs can tank too in isengard) avoid being hit more.

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Originally Posted by Clover

Burglars are a special case. We decided to switch their primary offence rating to be based off of Agility rather than Might. We felt that this Agility focus more closely matched our vision for Burglars and would have minimal impact on current burglars as Agility was already highly desired. And yes all of you burglars out there, you will get 10 times your Agility contribution to Melee Offence

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Can you please do something similar like this to captains please.

Right now all classes have around 3 stats to concentrate on while being able to manage their role, (primary offense, vitality and critical rating stat).

For capt we have: Will for healing, fate for tact crit, vit for morale pool, might for melee offense, agi for melee crit, fate for tact crit.

This is really frustrating because there are hardly any armour pieces that are speficically designed for capt and will have: might, vit, will. So if captains are geared properly they will be high value on will/fate/vit but low on might/agi. Now i understand that its the curse of the class and you cant really expect to be good at both healing and melee offense at once. But that is how EVERY SINGLE CLASS other than captain is designed as. They don't need to worry about secondary roles and they can concentrate on 3 stats to AHEIVE MAX POTENTIAL without having to use a secondary gear at all times in the bag.

Can you PLEASE consider changing the melee offense primary stat from might to vit. The captain class is always known to having more morale pool than others mainly because we need morale to use our healing skills since they cost power. This will allow captains to worry about Vit/will/fate/agi and still be very useful in groups without being FORCED to carry two different sets where we have to worry about might or will.

This problem has been seen throughout the gear specification of the captain class. In moria we had great gear (obviously overpowered with stats). In DN, we gained might and vitality but lost will. In BG we gained might/vit and melee offsence but lost a lot of will. In Hele, we gained will/fate but lost morale/might. In OD we gained a vit/will/fate but lost a lot of might.

You can see how the captain class gear it self is a pendulum that keeps swinging between melee offense and healing power. Heck lets be honest, our melee offense isn't that great and our healing will never replace mini/rk. So why are you continuing to torment us with different stats on gears when you can certainly consider changing the primary melee offense to vitality.

PLEASE I'm sure the total stats that captains have will be very similar to the total stats that all the other classes have but we will still have to shuffle between healing and might gear and that is just very bad class design.

I will reserve judgement till we get some more information or better yet see it for ourselves.

My initial reaction is similar to many others.
Some of the changes are good (no more stat caps), some of the changes appear to be dumbing down for no good reason, and finesse does have a horribly familiar glow to it. Hopefully it won't be as poorly implemented as radiance was.

I think there's some good and some bad in this thread:

Good:

Reworked caps: I figured something like this was in the works. Players were butting up against the caps, and it was severely limiting itemization. Now we can choose to go for a lopsided build or make a more rounded character.

Combined mitigations/crit: I don't know a lot of people who built for specific mitigations (maybe in certain raid fights, but that's it), which made those stats on gear/virtues rather useless. Now they won't be. I don't see the crit changes being that huge except for the few classes (Hunters, Minstrels) who have damage skills in more than one category. Should be fun to rack up the NC/HS crits on my Minstrel.

Bad:

The Rift imitations: To be fair, I think EQII did this first. It never really made sense to me. Why is my Wisdom/Will/whatever making my melee attacks hit harder? It will be nice to ratchet up my Herald's Strike damage, but it will also make Might a trash stat for everyone except the melee classes. Also a lot of Burglars had high Might builds, which will be useless now.

And as for Finesse, hopefully it won't become a lazy raid check. Like any "required" stat for raids, it limits gear choice and build customization.

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Originally Posted by Elyske

Finesse would help both of those roles, if the mini/rk gets threat while healing, finesse helps him/her avoid being slaughtered. Finesse would help the tank(champs can tank too in isengard) avoid being hit more.

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nah won't help minstrel or rk (if rk is healing) here is why,

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Finesse is a ratings-based stat that will directly reduce the Resistance of monsters as well as their Block/Parry/Evade ratings.

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Since the boss gets it they will hit US easier regardless of how much finesse we have as healers its an offensive stat not defensive, so its useless to people who never have to hit the boss IE healers. My lore-master will need it to stop resists on debuffs, but my minstrel won't since their changing ballads so I don't even care if it resists I still get my ballad buff.

Avoidances will be way too high, I really don't see why those needed be raised. It's going be tought to beat tanks in moors, but I'd like to know how much this new stat Finesse will have effect.

Removing stat cap is very good.

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Originally Posted by lf2536

caps being removed from basic stats like Vitality sounds interesting, this has the potential of allowing massive morale pools (for Guards/Wardens in particular).

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And:

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Originally Posted by duamarth

One question on primary stat contributions: does this mean wardens and guards will no longer get +5 morale for 1 vit?

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My main guardian has walking around morale of 8k. Buffed for raids he breaks 11k.

Lifting the limit on vitality is going to send that even higher, but removing the 5/vit for tanking classes returns him to champ/cappy health levels. I want the 5/vit rule for tank morale to stay, but it is unclear from the posting. And if there are class changes coming for guardian, it may not have as much impact as I think. The 25% block chance certainly helps.

Graalx2, would you please clarify this point?

UPDATE:

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...39#post5484139

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Originally Posted by Graalx2

Ok all secondary characteristics Except for Critical Defence.

For the changes to primary stat contributions I only listed the changes. Guardians and Wardens for example, still get 5 Morale per Vitality.

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''This means that Lore-masters, Minstrels and Runekeepers will use Will to contribute to their Melee offence. Hunters will use Agility for their Melee offence and Guardians, Champions and Wardens will use Might for their Ranged offence ratings.''

This will work the same way with defences??? Meaning, Melee defence, Ranged Defence and Tactical? An will it be scaled for each class? Because if Melee defence of agility scales the same way as might now, a Hunter could have the same melee defence than a Warden. A dps class same defence as a tank class, would be odd...

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Originally Posted by witchking782

Can you please do something similar like this to captains please.

Right now all classes have around 3 stats to concentrate on while being able to manage their role, (primary offense, vitality and critical rating stat).

For capt we have: Will for healing, fate for tact crit, vit for morale pool, might for melee offense, agi for melee crit, fate for tact crit.

This is really frustrating because there are hardly any armour pieces that are speficically designed for capt and will have: might, vit, will. So if captains are geared properly they will be high value on will/fate/vit but low on might/agi. Now i understand that its the curse of the class and you cant really expect to be good at both healing and melee offense at once. But that is how EVERY SINGLE CLASS other than captain is designed as. They don't need to worry about secondary roles and they can concentrate on 3 stats to AHEIVE MAX POTENTIAL without having to use a secondary gear at all times in the bag.

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Isn't the idea that you have to concentrate in either healing or DPS? It's the same with minstrels, war-speech or healing (and rune-keepers). Do you want both at the same time?

As a burglar, I can't thank you enough for the change of our offence source and finally bringing the contribution in line with all the other classes.

To those who are complaining about the change because of petty concerns such as "I built myself for might, it's going to be useless": these changes will come with Rise of Isengard. Level cap 75. Safe to say all your current gear will be obsolete and you will get yourself a new build at the new level cap.

I'm not entirely certain what the effect is going to be in the overall game.

I do know that more people will be going for the same gear now.

I'm not happy about the burglar primary stat, as Agility was never a very important stat, regardless of what Turbine (and much of the burg community) may claim. I've ran 300 agility on a top end build before, and it made little to no difference in DPS, accuracy, etc. in regards to melee attacks.

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Originally Posted by AtzumoKayami

Isn't the idea that you have to concentrate in either healing or DPS? It's the same with minstrels, war-speech or healing (and lore-masters). Do you want both at the same time?

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As I read the Captain's concerns to which you're responding, it is more along the lines of Minstrels (and LMs) will be able to focus on a single stat (Will) in order to perform either function. Captains don't appear to have the same ability.

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Originally Posted by Elyske

Finesse would help both of those roles, if the mini/rk gets threat while healing, finesse helps him/her avoid being slaughtered. Finesse would help the tank(champs can tank too in isengard) avoid being hit more.

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Er? No, it won't. Finesse makes enemies easier to hit (and enemy Finesse makes YOU easier to hit). It doesn't add to your defenses at all.

I oppose Finesse (Radiance Mk II), removing stat caps and the introduction of "Resistance" replacing separate Wound, Fear, Poison and Disease resistances.

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Originally Posted by Lomeloth

As I read the Captain's concerns to which you're responding, it is more along the lines of Minstrels (and LMs) will be able to focus on a single stat (Will) in order to perform either function. Captains don't appear to have the same ability.

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Exactly, its captains choice to use healing skills or melee skills depending on what the group needs but they shouldn't have to flip between gear in order for them to preform at their best. Plus our constant healing skill is on 3 sec cooldown which means we're rotating one melee skill and one healing skill even at the best of times. let us choose what skill to use thats best for the group but don't gimp us on stats by forcing splitting melee offense and outgoing healing on two very opposite stats that are never together in any sort of jewelry.

Interesting.

I certainly like the removal of caps, especially when combined with a "diminishing returns" mechanic. Hopefully it will force people into making some difficult decisions about how they build their character, with pros and cons to each decision. I like that. One impact of stat caps is that it tended to make players at the upper end a little too cookie-cutterish. (Every endgame guardian has 650 vitality. Every endgame champion has 650 might. Every endgame hunter has 650 agility.) Now there will be choices...as a guardian, do I want to roll with 800 vitality and all my other stats at 200 (yes an exaggeration), or do I want 650 vitality and 600 might, agility, etc?

I'm a little dubious about some of the other things. Does this mean that my LM with 650 will is going to have a melee offense rating equal to (or at least close to) a champion with 650 might? That seems...strange...to say the least. Or maybe I'm reading that wrong, but that seems to be what it is saying, classes like LM will now use their will to calculate melee offense rating.

I'm unsure about the whole concept of finesse. It has potential to be really cool, and it has the potential to be another radiance fiasco. The fact that the diary goes through great lengths to indicate this will be a stat mostly found on instance/raid gear lends itself to this fear. Clearly it doesn't seem like it will be a "hard gate" the way radiance was, but it certainly has the potential to be a "soft gate" depending upon how big of an impact it has on the battlefield. If the effect is relatively minor, I don't think there are any worries. If it has a profound impact on your success, however, then essentially it becomes a gate...just a player-imposed gate rather than an instance-entry-gate. Or another way of looking at it is, when you start comparing different players, is this going to be one stat among many? Or the "one stat to rule them all"?

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Originally Posted by Graalx2

This stat will appear primarily on instance/raid/pvmp loot but there will be a few pieces available with Finesse from quests and crafting.

This new stat is a two sided weapon because monsters will have access to it also. Most landscape monsters won’t have much if any Finesse

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Keep in mind that "instance/raid/pvmp" are all areas that a lot of folks never or rarely participate in. If you're only going to have a "FEW pieces available with Finesse from quests and crafting" then you had better have very FEW landscape monsters with Finesse. Maybe limiting it to landscape elite masters and above is probably fine, but if many regular landscape monsters (elites and below) get it then increase the FEW pieces from quests and crafting into the "wide selection" realm. I have to say this certainly smells like radiance at first. Remember, questers could get a few radiance items usually through epic story quests.

I know at this point it is likely useless to bring this up, but if Finesse is pretty much only available from raids, etc. (except for a FEW pieces through quests/crafting) then, like early Radiance that gave the wearer an advantage via perma-Hope buffs, the raiders will blow through landscape and smaller instances causing Turbine to increase difficulty to compensate. Don't ruin combat for those that only quest for the, you know, story (an area that Turbine is about to have some hefty competition in).

Don't let this turn into Radiance Part Deux. I know plenty of end game players and not a single one of them ever had anything but extreme disgust for radiance.