What is the current path for gear progression? What numbers are good benchmarks for stats?

[Brumans]

Hey all, I'm confused about gear, and wanting to know how to currently progress. Here's what I currently have:

15,403 morale
CR 14.5k (28% crit, 9.9% dev, 32.7% mag)
Finesse 15k (27.8%)
PM 45.9k (162.4%)

Resistance 7.6k
Phys 15.7k (45.6%)
Tact 10.5k (36.2%)

My gear is "of the liberator" 192 teal set, Mostly 192 teal jewelry, 1 yellow 176 earring, and I have imbued legacies and a teal sword for offhand.

So, I feel my DPS is kinda okay, but with only 15k morale, if I get 2 or 3 mobs on me (and plenty of the Minas Tirith quests have spots with 2 or 3 mobs), I take a ton of damage even in the time it takes to fear/root some. On quests where I have to interact to start the fight, it's even closer.

I've done all the quests up to Minas Tirith stuff (and still doing them now). So I have the rest of this update to get quest rewards from. I'm just not sure what to do for various slots. I think I have ideas, but there's no up-to-date guides around these days for LOTRO, so want to make sure I have this correct.

I have the Dol Amroth set gear. After that is it the DA essence gear (ugh, tired of those dailies, not to mention the essence grind)? Then the Osgiliath instance cluster gear? I don't know if I could even set foot into them without blowing up, and everyone only seems to do T2C, and I don't want to drag the group down. But if I could skip even more DA dailies, that'd be great.

For jewelry, do people just run BBs for stars and get yellow jewelry? How are the new BBs - can I enter them without dragging down a group again? Do they provide any newer gear over old BBs?

And just in general, as in the title - what are some good %s to try to hit with gear? Should I start switching out PM for resistances or morale? Or just keep as is and build up essence gear as I can, and swap once I have a full essence set? With essences being so freeform, it's hard to know what kind of balance of defense/offense is recommended.

Sorry for all the questions - just kinda lost overall. I've browsed the wiki and some of the threads here, just trying to put it all together.

[Warmutkan]

First, you can see the current stat caps here. This isn't a direct answer to your question, but it can give you a sense of the ceiling on some of the stats, and how close you are (or aren't) to them. No player can hit every stat cap, but if you're building toward, say, maximum DPS, then this can give you a sense of how high you're looking to hit in those areas.

What kind of stats you need will depend on the kind of content you're playing, and how much you care about the nitty-gritty. If you're going out into the Moors or running T2Cs, you're going to need to care about your stats more than if you're just doing Skraids or BBs, and similarly, you'll need to care less if you're doing landscape content against normal and signature mobs.

The easiest way to get fairly good (but not best) gear is the Tier 10 crafted gear (teal, 3 essence slots). That will give you lots of flexibility, and doesn't take as long to pick up as either the DA or Osgiliath sets. Of course, that does assume that you have essences - if you've done landscape you'll have some, but if you want to push your stats higher, you'll be wanting Greater (teal) essences or better, not the majors (purples) that are more common.

To some of your other questions:

• Yes, you'd be able to enter BBs with your stats without dragging the group down. You will need to rank up your BB trait lines (engineer, officer, vanguard), but that doesn't take too long if you run with a group who has done them many times.
• You will die in Osgiliath T2Cs with those stats, particularly the 15K morale. This is okay, since either you don't want to do T2Cs, or you'll want to get more morale through your gear before heading in there to upgrade to the Osgiliath set.
• Yes, it's pretty common for people to slot 5 BB gold jewelry pieces, plus 3 other pieces suited to their role (e.g., the 2 DPS-based BB sets, plus 3 pieces with DPS or morale-based essences).

I would recommend getting your morale up to 20K, as that will make you survivable for most group content (though not all T2Cs). Doing that with your current gear, though, would give a big hit to your other stats. Where the dust settles on how high you can get each of your stats will depend on what essences you have access to, and what gear you end up putting them in to.

At the end of the day, it comes back to that first point: what content you enjoy running, and how much time you think is worth putting into gearing up for that. Some players watch their stats very closely. Others don't care at all. All depends on how you play.

[Brumans]

Thanks for the all the info! I'm looking to get into more group content, mainly. There's so much I haven't seen. Our server was pretty dead, but the merge has helped a lot, but I know there's a lot that I shouldn't be joining, heh.

Looks like there's a few easy options for 3-slot armor then (crafted, the builder/smith armor I just found today too), so might mix that with some DA armor once I finish MT landscape content, keep running BBs as I can to get gold jewelry, and then try some Osgiliath group runs. You suggested 20k morale for starting some T2C runs - what about just T1/T2 runs? It'd be nice to be able to at least finish up the Ashes and Stars quest chains.

[Warmutkan]

Thanks for the all the info! I'm looking to get into more group content, mainly. There's so much I haven't seen. Our server was pretty dead, but the merge has helped a lot, but I know there's a lot that I shouldn't be joining, heh.

Looks like there's a few easy options for 3-slot armor then (crafted, the builder/smith armor I just found today too), so might mix that with some DA armor once I finish MT landscape content, keep running BBs as I can to get gold jewelry, and then try some Osgiliath group runs. You suggested 20k morale for starting some T2C runs - what about just T1/T2 runs? It'd be nice to be able to at least finish up the Ashes and Stars quest chains.

For T1 and lighter T2 content, anything in the 15-20k range is passable - just know that the lower your morale, the more situations you will need either a savvy healer or an ability to accept the tender embrace of being dead more often. For lots of content morale is not an issue if you have A) a good healer and B) a good tank.

As far as getting into group content - are you in a kin? Especially if you've moved to a more active server, there are lots of kins running all sorts of grouping content who can show you the ropes, help you in instances you'd be well suited for, and work with you to gear up for the more difficult content. All the shiniest gear in the world doesn't matter for much if you don't have folks to run with.