Rise of Isengard: Dev Diary Feedback: Stat Updates

[AtzumoKayami]

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 choose to heal or do damage. 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.

Ah, now I see where you are getting. It does seems unfair to captains to have to choose gear according to the function, as opposed to MNS and LM that will have will add to tactical and melee damage, besides the healing

[opurt]

Nice to see the usual range of reactions, especially the ones freaking out (** Oh my God, it's radiance all over again!!! **) from a very short dev diary filled with generalities and absolutely no details at all. Keeps my work day rolling along nicely.

Anyhow, based on the general statements in the diary, I have a neutral view towards these changes. Can't see anything I would consider game changing at this point, but that may change as details are released.

Until then, keep the "freak outs" coming as they provide me with a good laugh!

[gakj3]

great changes.

possibly THE most needed change to this game imo. definitely in the top 3.

[Habble-TES]

This all seems good except for the removal of the secondary traits. Why the hell would Will help with a melee attack? A Loremaster probably shouldn't be as good at melee.

[GBergen]

I like the stat cap removal and B/P/E increase... however... STOP DUMBING DOWN THE GAME. I don't want all the mitigations grouped together and I don't want to focus on getting one stat only.


Also Finesse better not be another gating fail. Please take the time and energy to implement it properly so it doesn't dishearten people from raiding.

thanks.

[EmmeraldFireFox]

"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. The Captain’s offence ratings are unchanged."

What is / are the primary stats for the captian's offense rating?

[Harlinator]

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.

For solo/pvp mode, I usually try to find a balance with morale and tac offense. My power pool is generally less important for me. So, normally I might choose vit over will for this build. However, I will now have to change that which is ok, but seems to be a lot of missing info still. For instance, Will I still have tac offense relics for my LIs? Just not sure how much is changing yet.

[MoonwalkIntoMordor]

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.

This is not a fix. It is a change. A change to make agility a very important stat, unlike what it is now.

Basically, you will no longer have to focus on a stat only for its contribution to damage (current might). Agility, your new primary stat, will be contributing to damage, crit, evade, parry, accuracy.

Of course this has disadvantages as well. Might will pretty much be useless for a burglar. We all know how hunters feel when their class sets give them hundreds of might. I hope developers will take this change into consideration when designing equipment for burglars.

[Azerog]

For solo/pvp mode, I usually try to find a balance with morale and tac offense. My power pool is generally less important for me. So, normally I might choose vit over will for this build. However, I will now have to change that which is ok, but seems to be a lot of missing info still. For instance, Will I still have tac offense relics for my LIs? Just not sure how much is changing yet.

Why would this change how you build for solo? Will is the primary stat for tac offense now, that is not changing. What is changing is that will will allow you to hit harder with herald's strike.

You are correct, there is a lot of missing info here. The Dev diary was very vague in many respects. I am choosing to see it as 'If it wasn't specifically mentioned, it is not changing', now that may not turn out to be the correct view but given how little information there was in the diary I don't think we can come to any other conclusions.

[witchking782]

"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. The Captain’s offence ratings are unchanged."

What is / are the primary stats for the captian's offense rating?

Currently it is might*10.

[Azerog]

Currently it is might*10.

Do caps not get outgoing healing is will*10 as well? (I have no idea what the current tac offense is for a cap)

[Belisar]

As if the game is not easy enough already.

With 25% B/P/E, no limit to stats and simplification to 1-2 stats that matter (primary+vitality) you remove every finesse from the game.

You decided to remove every choice between more crit, more offense, more hit chance for an overly simplistic focus on the main stat and vitality.

That what you call "Finesse" is going to become Radiance 2.0. It's a raid gating stat, just like radiance was.


Things you could have simplified:
Skirmish Marks/Exchange, the Legendary Item system.


Oh well...

[Overtone]

Overall, I like the stat overhaul.

I have a question though. Will the stats that contribute to Critical Hit Rating still remain the same? i.e. Agility for Melee/Range and Fate for Tactical.

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.

I have a similar question in regard to Gear. I assume the current Gear will be changed, although it will become obsolete rather quickly come RoI. For instance, the line bonuses for Shadow Mitigation on my RK's BG gear will now change to Tactical Mitigation? The new -disease/poison/fear/wound stats on the OD set will change to the general -Resistance stats? Just wondering.

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

Agreed. This is a better way to go. It also encourages players to participate more in the general raid progression without the blatant slap of gating.

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.

This looks to be a great solution for the melee and ranged classes that currently have limited ways to combat high resist rates for tactical attacks. Should help to ease that pain and make their traits/legendaries for the tactical based skills more effective as they should be.

Are critical/devastate chance caps remaining the same?

The Crit cap is being raised to 25%. Don't know about Devastate. It wasn't mentioned.

Graalx2: "The caps on Block, Parry, Evade, Incoming Healing and Critical Hit ratings have been increased to 25%."

[Isy]

My burgy loves you right now! Question though... will Burglars need to focus on Might at all now (apart from the increased parry chance and common defence it provides)?

Am intrested to see how the changes will affect my RK. Hoping my base level of "finesse" is high enough to be effective in corruption removal!

Really brave to put no cap on Might/Will e.t.c. but I think with diminishing returns this will be fine.

Am very excited what no cap on block/parry/evade will do for tanks... hopefully this means a well-geared "true" tank (i.e. guard/warden or traited champ) will take even less damage, making healing on hard-hitting bosses a little easier.

Nice work Graal!

[Eliel]

Question: What do the resistance changes to do Virtues? In particular, my Guard uses Zeal for melee defense, and the benefits to Disease and Poison removal are the other 2 stats. If resistances are getting combined, that implies some serious changes for what Zeal will give. Much as I might like to wait and see, it's kind of relevant now, as I've been eying which virtues I want to level to 12 while I wait for Isengard. And it hints at a potentially larger change to Virtues overall, not just Zeal.

I kind of lament the end of stat caps and the elimination of "secondary" stats. It seems like stat caps encouraged players to find new ways to build their characters. Rather than every Guard racing for the most Vitality, we had to get good Vitality and then see what other stats were worthwhile to build up. Maybe this will be for the better, but I worry it's going to lead to one-dimensional character building, especially for DPS and tank classes.

I think I like the change to Burglars. I always felt torn between Might and Agility, and I wound up balancing them both. Now I know I can go with Agility and be happy, and not worry about the melee crit cap nearly as much.

I'm not concerned about "my build". We'll be wearing all new gear by level 75 anyway. It'll probably be like Moria, where we all log in the day of the patch feeling way weaker than we were the day before, but by the time we get to cap we'll be back where we were.

[witchking782]

Do caps not get outgoing healing is will*10 as well? (I have no idea what the current tac offense is for a cap)

Ya our outgoing healing is from will and melee offense is from might which are two completely opposite stats that are never seen together in any jewlery. That is whats frustrating about our class that we have to switch between gears to be really effective.

[delphinius81]

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.

As described, Finesse is concerned with OUTGOING hit rates. If you are concerned about INCOMING damage/to-hit rates, then you need to work on your mitigation and avoidance ratings.

[Fin.]

I kind of lament the end of stat caps and the elimination of "secondary" stats. It seems like stat caps encouraged players to find new ways to build their characters. Rather than every Guard racing for the most Vitality, we had to get good Vitality and then see what other stats were worthwhile to build up. Maybe this will be for the better, but I worry it's going to lead to one-dimensional character building, especially for DPS and tank classes.

The use of caps also caused the problem with itemization imho. For example when you capped your main stat and you were looking for other stats to improve, that usually meant looking for gear not primarily designed for you. For example on my hunter when I equip full hunter armor set and like 2 pieces of hunter jewellery that is all I need for my primary stats. And other 5-6 pieces are mix of caster or whatnot items.

Also when every new item Turbine made, and it had these +60, +65, +75 stats people were passing on them because of caps.

[Beorthelion]

...dont know what really to feel about this...they added caps when moria came out...but now they are raising them to 25%....trying to figure this out.. 1) they want to make it easier for new people to do endgame by allowing them to be beefier? 2) they want to make it to where all 'tanking' classes will be equals in mit, and all dpser's equals??

And they are not doing anything for capts?...that last line got me worried again for my captain..hope we get more feedback soon

[SirDoctorofTardis]

I haven't seen a dev response yet in this thread, however I am hopeful they will.

I have 2 questions regarding some of the changes to BPE

1) Base avoidance cap is now 25%. Will partials avoidance still exist and if so will it have a cap?

2) The Finesse mechanic seems like a means for raid bosses to still be able to hit players with higher avoidance. Is it correct to assume like most mechanics, the rate at which they are lowered will need to be determined via test, not told before hand?

Thank you in advance

[Azerog]

Ya our outgoing healing is from will and melee offense is from might which are two completely opposite stats that are never seen together in any jewlery. That is whats frustrating about our class that we have to switch between gears to be really effective.

I understand where you are coming from, my cap doesn't get much play any more but I already had 2 sets of gear one more might focused and one more will/fate focused. So the way I read it, graal was saying caps won't be changed, they still get a 10x bonus on might for melee and will for healing. So caps don't get simplified but don't lose the double stat focus either.

[Baslin]

Will creeps have a way to increase their ratings to compensate for the new caps?

[Graalx2]

We have finally decided to level the playing field for all classes as far as secondary characteristics go, we have deleted them all.

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.

Partial Avoidance is still at the present cap.

Finesse will be a much kinder and gentler gate, if it even rises to that level. The numbers in the following example are for demonstration purposes only. Please do not take them as ‘The Way Things Are’. They are only meant to be an example of our intent.

A top-of the line Raid Boss will probably have BPE and Resistance around 35% total with lesser bosses and trash elites having much less. A few pieces of crafted or quest gear give 10-15% off those totals and another 10-15% Finesse available through instance/raid loot this will lower BPE into more than acceptable levels. That’s the plan anyway and as such subject to change.

[CrusaderOfMetal]

Nice changes overall, but it was a somewhat short explanation to the huge overhaul that it brings. As a guard I'm mostly concerned about Finesse and caps to mitigation and resists.

With this additions, a WRD will be able to reach huge BPE values (as he/she should), but if the mitigations don't change somehow, we guards may be at a disadvantage here. Even tough Finesse on the enemy side might compensate for it, how it will work is not very clear. Will it take away some pure percentage or will it take some rating?

I'd find awesome if guards and wardens could have some very explicit difference like this, with a warden avoiding most hits and a guard seeing a lot of tiny numbers rolling over his head.

We still have three months to release and I'm pretty sure we'll be seeing more on this soon(tm). Also Graalx2, guard dev diary, please?

[Harlinator]

Why would this change how you build for solo? Will is the primary stat for tac offense now, that is not changing. What is changing is that will will allow you to hit harder with herald's strike.

You are correct, there is a lot of missing info here. The Dev diary was very vague in many respects. I am choosing to see it as 'If it wasn't specifically mentioned, it is not changing', now that may not turn out to be the correct view but given how little information there was in the diary I don't think we can come to any other conclusions.

LOL I was thinking about tac crit then started talking about tac offense. #$%^&

You're right, of course. Was mainly thinking out loud about my future build. Tack on the new minstrel changes and there will be a lot to consider. For me, at this point, speculation is not possible.