Tactical Damage mechanics in SoM

[Viloxus]

I predict that within 1 month of this going live creep whining will result in this being nerfed somehow.

[LagunaD]

I predict that within 1 month of this going live creep whining will result in this being nerfed somehow.

Nerf RK's first. kthx.

[Bennyboy]

I see this getting hit by the balance hammer in the future to bring it inline with melee/ranged.

RKs have always had a range for our Lighting skills, there's nothing OP about it; just makes it so there's more luck involved with getting higher numbers.

I think a range type system for damage is really stupid, but that's my honest opinion.

[Bennyboy]

Nerf RK's first. kthx.

I actually don't have a problem with RKs, they're extreamly squishy compared to let's say Minstrels and LMs... I obviously know how RKs work, so it's easy to kill them once you get in melee range, Minis and LMs are a whole nother story tho. If my RK get's in a pickle in the moors he's pretty much dead, although when I play my LM I can get myself out of most sticky situations.

LMs CC and high damage output is pretty Rediculous in the moors, anyone who creeps knows that.

[Thorvaldheimdal]

I actually don't have a problem with RKs, they're extreamly squishy compared to let's say Minstrels and LMs... I obviously know how RKs work, so it's easy to kill them once you get in melee range, Minis and LMs are a whole nother story tho. If my RK get's in a pickle in the moors he's pretty much dead, although when I play my LM I can get myself out of most sticky situations.

LMs CC and high damage output is pretty Rediculous in the moors, anyone who creeps knows that.

Anyone who creeps also knows that RK's regardless of their skill can hit even harder and faster w/o inductions. RK=scary

No arguement on them being squishy.

[wyldcyde]

hmm... last rank costs 70 points... probably won't get that on rk... could probably get it on LM since it has less legacies to max.
rk has my lightning and fire legacies which give decent bang for buck.

[Adarel]

Thanks, Laguna - great post!

[Cabbus]

I hate when games start getting to the point people have to do math equations to figure it out. Its ridiculous and they are just making the game too confusing anymore. Its to the point I no longer care what Turbine posts for news. I even lost interest in their latest crafting news. I hate the weapon system the way it is now.

[LagunaD]

I hate when games start getting to the point people have to do math equations to figure it out. Its ridiculous and they are just making the game too confusing anymore. Its to the point I no longer care what Turbine posts for news. I even lost interest in their latest crafting news. I hate the weapon system the way it is now.

Well, you don't *have* to.

You can pretty much assume that ranking a legacy called "Tactical Damage Rank" will...increase your tactical damage. If you don't care how much it increases, compared to other possible things you can spend the points on, then you don't need to worry about any math.

Really the SoM changes make tactical skills work just like melee and ranged skills have worked all along. It's a bit different cosmetically, but actually no more complicated than what you should be used to.

[FyreBrand]

I love looking at the math. It's fun for me. I don't really do the math in game though. I mean if I have two legacies that might be fighting for points I don't sit and calculate the effectiveness per point. If it really is important to me I'll pop in here and see what other players think.

The cool thing is it doesn't matter now because you can farm a scroll via skirmish to reset all your points and configure your legacies differently if you don't like the choices you've made.

[jeffm]

I hate when games start getting to the point people have to do math equations to figure it out. Its ridiculous and they are just making the game too confusing anymore. Its to the point I no longer care what Turbine posts for news. I even lost interest in their latest crafting news. I hate the weapon system the way it is now.

Well, you don't *have* to.

You can pretty much assume that ranking a legacy called "Tactical Damage Rank" will...increase your tactical damage. If you don't care how much it increases, compared to other possible things you can spend the points on, then you don't need to worry about any math.

Really the SoM changes make tactical skills work just like melee and ranged skills have worked all along. It's a bit different cosmetically, but actually no more complicated than what you should be used to.

I'm kind of, not completely, with Cabbus on this. It used to be simple enough for a child to understand: increased dps meant increased damage. The actual formula may have been a bit more complex than that, but the simple rule-of-thumb was easily understandable, and easily "provable" because you could see the increased damage as it happened.

Now, the damage calculations are complex, indirect, and freighted with enough unique jargon that if you aren't willing to do the math, and I'm not - this is a game I play for entertainment, you really can't know if your LP expenditures are well-enough spent. Turbine has forced most LOTRO players to take it on "faith" that damage will go up by some obscure but useful amount if we spend LP to rank up the Tactical Damage Rating.

There is something to be said for the KISS principle, or as Admiral Gorshkov said: "Better is the enemy of good enough." I've worked with enough techies of all educational levels and academic degrees that I know the attraction this kind of complexity has for many techies. Of course, the question becomes: "Will the customers who pay for all this feel like they are getting better value than they were before?" And techies who get lost in their fun complexity usually forget the impact on customer satisfaction.

I can only hope that you're right, LagunaD, that this is a "better" system than what we had. I love the game and will continue to play it notwithstanding its increasing complexity and loss of simplicity, which is where I seem to differ from Cabbus.

[moebius92]

It actually turns out to be pretty simple on the healing side of things.

Take your healing implement rank. Add 1.5. (It should actually be between 1.4 and 1.6 depending on the skill, but 1.5 is close enough for government work.) Increasing your healing implement rank by one will increase all your healing skills by 1 / (<healing implement rank> + 1.5). (Example: you have a healing implement rank of 62. Increasing your healing implement rank by one will increase your healing skills by 1/63.5 = 1.6% or so.)

Add up all your modifiers. Increasing a modifier by n% will increase the effected healing skills by n / (100 + modifiers). (Example: your total modifiers to share the power is 25%. Increasing the share the power legacy will increase your share the power by 1 / 125 = 0.8%.)

There's probably a similar set of calculations you can do for the damage side of things, but I haven't worked it out yet. Although I wouldn't be too surprised to see the +1.4 - 1.6 thing again. There's a number of commonly reoccurring ratios in everything.

[Orthallon]

Excellent thread, thanks for doing the math and the testing, and for everyone's comments.

[spacecat420]

Wow Great Job there!!!! Thank You!!

[jwr26]

Bump to make sure this great information stays on the forums.

[EtherEel]

This reply is after F2P update

My very basic question for a long time, that I have not found addressed elsewhere (my apologies if it has been), is:

There are Legendary legacies for LMs that seem counter-intuitive &/or confusing. Especially *Tactical Skills Damage Resist* and *Fire Damage Skills Resist*...

Fire skills ARE tactical skills. Do these stack (doubtful), or does Fire not apply to the rest of the generally Tactical.

Similarly, does *Tactical Skills Direct Damage* NOT apply to Fire skills? What about Lightning skills? And now the Frost skill?

[LagunaD]

This reply is after F2P update

My very basic question for a long time, that I have not found addressed elsewhere (my apologies if it has been), is:

There are Legendary legacies for LMs that seem counter-intuitive &/or confusing. Especially *Tactical Skills Damage Resist* and *Fire Damage Skills Resist*...

Fire skills ARE tactical skills. Do these stack (doubtful), or does Fire not apply to the rest of the generally Tactical.

I don't think it's possible to give a conclusive answer here. There is no way to check what the total resistance modifier is for a skill, apart from tabulating a statistically significant sample (tens of thousands of casts), which nobody is going to do. The bonuses are small enough (few percent) that anyone who thinks they can see it by eye is kidding themself.

My opinion (and it is only an opinion) is that the tactical fire skills are affected by both legacies. The reason I think that is that +Tactical damage and +Fire damage bonuses stack (Fire skills get the benefit of both). So I would guess that resist bonuses work the same way.

Similarly, does *Tactical Skills Direct Damage* NOT apply to Fire skills? What about Lightning skills? And now the Frost skill?

Tactical Skills Direct Damage applies to any direct-damage skill which says "Resistance: Tactical" in the tooltip. This includes most fire skills. The only direct-damage skills which it does *not* affect are Sticky Gourd, Improved Sticky Gourd, and Storm-Lore - these have "Resistance: Physical" in the tooltip.

Damage bonuses are easier to sort out, since their effects are clearly visible in the damage values shown in the skill tooltip.

So, to go back to your first question, my opinion is:

1) Tactical Damage Skills Resist affects any damage skill with "Resistance: Tactical" in the tooltip.

2) Fire Damage Skills Resist affects any skill which does Fire damage.

3) Skills which meet both criteria (e.g. Burning Embers, Ents, Cracked Earth) should be affected by both legacies.

[rodarin]

The real question is outin the moors a target has 3 LMs targetting him with maxed out resists reduction on their books, do those also stack to where his resist is at 1 (lowest you can get), or do they just go together and he gets the highest (if they arent all the same) reduced?

The regular stuff is easy enough to figure out, although the diminishing returns arent nearly as bas as were first thought in this thread. I assume people figured that out as well.

[LagunaD]

The real question is outin the moors a target has 3 LMs targetting him with maxed out resists reduction on their books, do those also stack to where his resist is at 1 (lowest you can get), or do they just go together and he gets the highest (if they arent all the same) reduced?

It seems obvious to me that any -resist buff is attached to the skills of the LM that uses it, only. Merely targeting something won't affect its resistance to anything.

In the case you cite, each LM gets the -resist buff from his own book. A fourth LM attacking the same target, but without any -resist legacy, would not have any reduction in resist chance.

[moebius92]

I thought I'd post the tactical healing rank numbers for the skills while I've actually got the data around.

Tactical healing = (C * (THR) + D) * (1 + M), where M is the sum of the modifiers (outgoing healing, trait bonuses, legacy bonuses, etc.)

Skill	C	D	D/C
IF	1	5.6	5.6
BoH	15	23	1.53
StP	13	18	1.38
WotC	30	47	1.57

Couple things to note - the D/C ratio is where the entire add 1.5 to your tactical healing rank rule of thumb comes from. Inner Flame used to have a C of 0.5 (estimated - the old estimate was lousy, due to a lack of precision). Beacon of Hope and Wisdom of the Council are both accurate from level one on up, Share the Power and Inner Flame are not. (Share the Power appears to alternate between getting +12 and +13 on each level at the lower levels.)

[Meaner]

Ok now that im tatally confused & tired of trying to figure out what im reading can someone tell me what im reading in simple terms?I know its something on the lines of L.M. legacys and damage after that when math got involved you lost me very fast.

[CalloWindBringer]

I've just returned to the game after a two year absence, and all the changes have me pretty well confused. This thread was very helpful though in understanding some of the changes. Simply put, it looks like you'd want to rank up your Tactical Damage Ranking on your staff first, or at least more quickly, as it affects the damage output of all your tactical skills. Any legacies you can find that also add to your Tactical Offense Ranking are a bonus, as that increases all your tactical damage as well. As I'm sure you already know, most of your LM skills are tactical.

[BirdofHermes]

I've just returned to the game after a two year absence, and all the changes have me pretty well confused. This thread was very helpful though in understanding some of the changes. Simply put, it looks like you'd want to rank up your Tactical Damage Ranking on your staff first, or at least more quickly, as it affects the damage output of all your tactical skills. Any legacies you can find that also add to your Tactical Offense Ranking are a bonus, as that increases all your tactical damage as well. As I'm sure you already know, most of your LM skills are tactical.

This is a very old thread from nearly 6 years back and some of the info is outdated. However, yes, Tactical Damage Rating on your staff is good to rank until you get to about Lv85-95. Then it's time to spend elsewhere first, and at Lv100 the Tactical Damage Rating is almost pointless to spend points in, except for maybe the first two ranks. The benefit you gain is ridiculously small compared to the cost, you'd be better off spending points elsewhere.