Rise of Isengard: Dev Diary Feedback: Stat Updates

[JeanCarlo]

Couple of items...


Why not simply remove all caps? For BPEs and other Pre-Moria stats, this would just be like SoA when we didn't have any caps aside from the Primary stats.

Finesse - the new radiance?

[brasswire]

Huh. Not sure exactly what to make of this yet. It is different. Just not sure if it's better.

One thing I don't like at the moment is the whole "Lore-masters use Will for melee offense" bit, nor the consolidation of the three tactical crit ratings into one single rating. It dumbs things down a bit, and I'm not sure I see yet where the big up-side is.

[Regero]

dude... 25% cap on BPE....

AWWWWWWW YEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!

That's just plain hawt, that's crazy hawt.


Most everything else just looks like it's easier to build your toon the way you want to, I'm happy with that as it means less stat juggling. The consolidation of tacticals, resistance, etc. is nice, no objections here. Finesse is meh, its a needed balancing factor to the new changes I guess.

The changes to secondary characteristics looks nice too considering the increased functionality primary stats will be getting. I've always been a bit disappointed with our primary stats because, well, they just didn't seem to do much of anything. Atm a difference of 100 might is hardly noticeable.


My only concern is that wardens need our +Crit Defense secondary characteristic, get rid of this and an already noticeable issue becomes more problematic. Could we at least make this into a gambit if not a secondary characteristic?

[kimano]

My burg is loving this change, brilliant.

My Burg absolutely hates this change. Meh. Why couldn't Burgs have both instead?

[Fin.]

dude... 25% cap on BPE....

AWWWWWWW YEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!

That's just plain hawt, that's crazy hawt.

Remember bosses have Finesse too.

[Azerog]

My only concern is that wardens need our +Crit Defense secondary characteristic, get rid of this and an already noticeable issue becomes more problematic. Could we at least make this into a gambit if not a secondary characteristic?

I assume you are referring to the crit defense passive we have currently and will no longer have come RoI? At least that was my take on the whole all passives are being removed thing. So crit defense looks like it will only come through traiting/gear/relics.

[IyvanEU]

Some of the changes seem positive, although I do have a couple of questions, as some of the points seem unclear to me.

Tactical Mitigation – this stat will replace the various mitigation types used for tactical skills, Fire, Lightning, Frost, Acid and Shadow. Damage will still have a damage type because some skills will modify a specific mitigation but in general, you will mitigate tactical damage using your Tactical Mitigation stat.

Is this a seperate stat from the existing tactical defence stat? So would we basically have:

Common mitigation
Tactical mitigation

Melee defence
Ranged defence
Tactical defence

If so, it almost seems pointless to retain the mitigation stats - would seem more worthwhile to scrap them altogether and make armour affect defence ratings instead.

My second question is where does this leave virtues that give boosts to shadow defence and resist ratings? Will these now give a general resist / tactical defence boost, and if so, will they be nerfed? Otherwise, some of the virtues may end up being pretty OP.

Although I like the changes to the stat caps, I'm very wary of the stat consolidation. It does seem like a substantial dumbing down of the current mechanics, which is not a good thing imo.

[KahnyaGnorc]

Actually, Wardens using Might for Ranged damage makes some sense -- the stronger you are, the harder you can throw a javelin (and the bigger and more damaging the javelin you throw can be!).

I remember back in other MMOs, where you need specific armor sets for specific bosses (Fire, Frost, Shadow, etc), and not with nostalgia. So, combining those resistances and mitigations looks good to me (having a "Tactical" armor set and a "Melee" set for my tanks isn't too bad, but I'd hope that bosses would have a mix, so that you can't simply min/max two sets and be done with it . . . making a set that blends the two for overall tanking should be the way to go imo).

Cap increases/removals are great, especially with the idea that you have to do stat gymnastics to even reach those caps. This means that your caps are pretty much just the best gear you can get, not having to juggle caps.

[Yosoff]

My Burg absolutely hates this change. Meh. Why couldn't Burgs have both instead?

Why would you rather have offence rating tied to might than agility? Might gives you block (need a shield to block) & parry. Agility gives you evade, parry & crit rating; it's also easier to get. Currently, burgs only get 7 points of melee offence rating per point of might, with this change we'll get the full 10. It's a positive change for burgs in every way.

[Harlinator]

Huh. Not sure exactly what to make of this yet. It is different. Just not sure if it's better.

One thing I don't like at the moment is the whole "Lore-masters use Will for melee offense" bit, nor the consolidation of the three tactical crit ratings into one single rating. It dumbs things down a bit, and I'm not sure I see yet where the big up-side is.

I agree that this seems like a simplification of the mechanics. One bright side that I can see is server load. Simpler calculations means less strain on the servers. That's a good thing, but we don't know what the cost is yet.

Also, for me, it is not clear on what affects tactical offense vs. tactical crit. Does Will now contribute to both? This is how I read the diary. If so, is Fate going away? If not, what will be its role? Vit directly affects morale pool. Is Will still going to be the stat that directly affects power pool? Not sure if it makes sense to do this with these changes.

Seems like each class just needs 'the one stat' and be done.

[KahnyaGnorc]

Common mitigation
Tactical mitigation

Melee defence
Ranged defence
Tactical defence

Damage type versus Attack type.

If a mob makes a ranged attack that deals Shadow damage, you combine Ranged Defense with Tactical Mitigation, for example. Also, personally, as a tank, I like having a greater variety of universally useful tanking stats (unlike Shadow Mitigation or Poison Resist, which are useful only in certain situations, if at all). Otherwise, it is just maxing those that we do have, then just stacking dps/threat stats.

[Hiren]

dude... 25% cap on BPE....

AWWWWWWW YEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!

Yes, I can't wait to have this on my champ. Oh, wait....^^

The consolidation seems to be good thing, now I have to focus on might and can ignore agility on my champ for increasing hit chances.

Finesse: ääh, I really hope this system actually works. I am sick and tired of seeing standard NPCs b/p/e my melee attacks most of the time. Yet, this new system has a bad taste. Reminds me too much of radiance and I really hope there is no gating character behind this.

Btw.: Do we get an inherited/base Finesse value by leveling up like evade/parry etc.? Or will this only be increased via gear/items? If not, will there be classes who will have a higher base Finesse value?

[Aestis25]

The Finesse addition is such a long-overdue concept for this game: effectively, you're talking about Hit Chance.

So instead of everyone & their mother blindly stacking for pure offense (Ranged/Melee/Tact), they will have to consider Hit Chance as well (in the form of your Finesse stat). This gives Turbine the option to give bosses high BPE/Resist ratings, which they really can't do right now, and force that choice among us players: do you want to hit hard, or do you want your shots to hit? Both will become important.

Likewise, this gives Turbine a MUCH more elegant way to keep in check sky-high BPEs among tanks/heavies/burgs/etc, without lame solutions like caps. So if your bad-mamma-jamma Guardian is rolling around with 75% BPE + partials thinking you're invincible, no worries: Turbine can keep this from becoming overpowered in the form of Finesse for bosses.

Long story short, this is a great change/direction and should give players far more control over their characters/builds, which is why we all grind for loot to begin with.

[Azerog]

Also, for me, it is not clear on what affects tactical offense vs. tactical crit. Does Will now contribute to both? This is how I read the diary. If so, is Fate going away? If not, what will be its role? Vit directly affects morale pool. Is Will still going to be the stat that directly affects power pool? Not sure if it makes sense to do this with these changes.

Seems like each class just needs 'the one stat' and be done.

My read is that the basic contribution of each stat stays the same, the only thing that changed was that each class gets one stat that contributes to offense, instead of 3 stats contributing to 3 different types of offense. So fate will still give in combat regen, tac crit, and tac crit magnitude. Will still should give power, OCPR and either it's fear resist component goes away completely or will become tactical resist.

At least that is my read on it.

[js.park]

As I understand it:
Captains have several tactical-based offensive skills: Battle-shout, Routing Cry, Noble Mark.
Captains currently receive 1 offensive rating for these skills per point of Will.
This 1x bonus will remain in RoI, whereas the other classes will receive 10x bonuses to their secondary offensive skills.

This does not seem right. Am I mistaken somewhere?

[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?

As for the rest... yay! Makes things a lot simpler. I never expected to be a 'capped' player, but I have been for a long time and as someone who loves to collect shiny things, stat-juggling and trying to keep under the caps has not been as much fun as dripping myself in all my favourite pieces.

I can't say my burglar has a lot of Agi gear as I focused on Might... oh well, something to seek between now and RoI. High-Agility gear always seemed so much rarer than high Might gear, stuffed in BG and T2 OD and other unobtainable places.

[kimano]

dude... 25% cap on BPE....

AWWWWWWW YEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!

That's just plain hawt, that's crazy hawt.


Most everything else just looks like it's easier to build your toon the way you want to, I'm happy with that as it means less stat juggling.

Unfortunately it takes away from how some people build their chadracters. My Burglar prizes Might over Agility so now I have to fall in line with everyone else. There will be less originality after isengard especially if you want to melee with a burg.

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. And yes all of you burglars out there, you will get 10 times your Agility contribution to Melee Offence.

How about the ones of us that don't want or desired agility for our Melee Offence? How about the ones of us that bought Might stat tomes?

Minimal impact? Not on my burg it isn't minimal. I have to redo my entire build. Wow. welcome to WoW version Lotro.

[Rawlor]

I have to redo my entire build.

You would have to anyway at level 75 so there really isn't much to worry about now is there?

[Yosoff]

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?

Not a typo, just not perfectly clear. Offensive ratings are being combined; no more breaking it down by Will=Tactical, Might=Melee, Agility=Ranged. So for LMs Will contributes to their Offence Rating. Since all types of attacks will use that shared rating Tactical, Melee & Ranged will all be impacted by their amount of will. For Hunters, Agility will determine their Offence Rating for all types of attacks.

[Fin.]

How about the ones of us that don't want or desired agility for our Melee Offence? How about the ones of us that bought Might stat tomes?

Now that might be an issue. But I really doubt there will be any reimbursement.

[Elyske]

No one has mentioned the increase (assumed) in devestate chance. Is there going to be a cap with it too?

-Also, creep side Finesse may be a big factor too. If we do get it somehow, via corruption or other method. Freeps may need a large amount just to be viable out there, and if creeps DONT get finesse, if freeps stack it then creeps will be even more underpowered.

[Erethal]

Are critical/devastate chance caps remaining the same?

[KahnyaGnorc]

How about the ones of us that don't want or desired agility for our Melee Offence? How about the ones of us that bought Might stat tomes?

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.)

[Mithaming]

Doubt they will raise the crit/devastate chances, would be nice though but it would be severly overpowered.

[Lurkerinthemist]

Ok...time for one of the smart captains to come in and map this out for me. I'm with the earlier poster, concerned that captains' balanced stats could be affected. The thing that really jumped out at me was:

Most class offence ratings to use their primary stat * 10....captain's offence ratings are unchanged

On the other hand, the consolidation is good - I like that I can have tact crit with melee crit