Rise of Isengard: Dev Diary Feedback: Stat Updates

[Chris91]

I have yet to find out how that will affect game

The cap removal could be positive and negative..we have to see how it turns out to be, but it'll definitly make freeps overpowered in the moors after the first update..because the new sets will change the overall strength to a greater extent

[Lilka]

I totally brushed over Finesse. If it's only on 'a few pieces' then chances are hardly anyone will have them, so I won't either, so I don't care. I don't remember the bit that said the raid will be barred for you without Finesse, or you'll be ridiculously crippled without Finesse.

It's not radiance.

It's the same rule we've always followed and that we still follow now - a nice piece of raid loot or raid armour is nice during a raid boss fight, probably better than a quest reward or a crafted. Ultimately they could have stuck "This is NICE armour" on the pieces and people wouldn't be going so nuts. It's a handy hint you might like to wear it during a boss fight.

[Ravenware]

Some thoughts on Finesse:

*) It gives increased hit chance (reduced miss rate), right? So someone without Finesse will still be able to hit the boss but with a lower hit rate. Sounds fair:ish, at least as long as high Finesse raid bosses are not constructed to be downed using DPS race tactics.

*) Consider using the Finesse stat to reduce healing aggro thus making Finesse a desired stat for healers. A refined minstrel/RK (someone with Finesse ) should be able to heal in a less threatening way.

*) Consider granting Finesse (up to some cap) as a continued accumulation stat, e.g. based on play time. Thus allowing players to acquire some degree of Finesse w.o. gear through normal game play. This also has the interesting side effect that fast-cooked power leveled characters will be less viable than those where people take their time to do quests etc rather than power-leveling.

*) Consider time limited Finesse boosts granted from daily/weekly quests, like the chain from Thaurlach. This boost should not stack with gear, instead they can/should be used to buff a player that lacks sufficient Finesse for a particular raid. These quests should require a full fellowship.

Hmmm... The first two bullets are more connected to reality than the last two

[Golledhel]

Melee, Ranged, and Tactical Offence is NOT being merged into just 1 Offence stat.

What is changing is the way that classes get their different offence ratings increased. Will will increase both the Tactical and Melee offence rating for Rune-Keepers, Minstrels, and Lore-masters. Might will increase both the Melee and Ranged offence rating for Champions, Wardens, and Guardians. Agility will increase both the Ranged and Melee offence rating for Hunters.



Now, the real question is, how will the new Critical Hit rating stat work. As in, what increases it?

[Gilean-EU]

Hmm. With caps raised and/or removed, my concern is that eventually LOTRO will became even harder for casual gamers.

Because now that hardcore players are able to tweak their characters to be almost invincible (not that I have anything against hardcore players!), it will mean that whenever devs release new content (normal quests), those players will complain how everything is so easy and devs might tweak the difficulty up as requested. Of course normal content might seem quite easy when player has pumped his/her stats to sky, but for soloer or someone who doesn't raid or do instances might experience the same content hard, if not impossible for them to complete.

So without critizising anyone's playstyle, I just want to say that I am a bit concerned that these changes might widen the gap between casual players and hardcore players, and that means it will be even more difficult to create content that everyone will enjoy.

[4tesZeitalter]

I look forward to test the changes.

My concern are once more with the Captain class (as already stated by others in this thread).

My main is a Cappi and since SoM release most of the changes were big nerfs. The non-changes for cappies will make it more difficult to us gear up.

And as always no comments from the Dev.

[TomDragon]

Anyone else think "Finesse" should be re-labled "Accuracy" given its function? ... Accuracy kinda works well for all classes where as Finesse kinda sounds like an agility-based thing. Plus, I really don't see a Dwarf "Finessing" his way through battle; or even a Hobbit for that matter.

Yeah, it is Radiance ver2. Think of it this way, the bosses in the new raid have to be designed around people having ZERO Finesse in the first place. The first raid with Finesse won't be bad because the bosses will be able to be taken down with (relatively) no Finesse. Once they start making more raids, however, there will be harsher Finesse requirements on bosses to make you grind through previous content.

Graal just said that bosses have about 35% avoidance chance with no Finesse. If you don't think that in later raids it'll be bumped up to 50-60% with no Finesse you're kidding yourself. They're going to want to make an instance thats super hard even with Finesse. In doing so, however, they will make a Finesse requirement. It will happen eventually.

There are people that think Finesse will be different from Radiance, they existed back when they introduced Radiance saying things like "Oh Turbine would never do XYZ." There will always be those who question every situation carefully and there will always be those who simply accept and move on; isn't it wierd though how the ones who don't question are usually trashing the people who do?

Flame me all you want but I will continue to question until I have seen otherwise.

[Tainted_Black]

I'd like to say otherwise, but if Wardens became the prefered tank for a while I think that would be a good thing.

Try saying that when your main is a Guardian.

[Digero]

About Finesse:

[Finesse] is a two sided weapon because monsters will have access to it also. Most landscape monsters won’t have much if any Finesse but expect high difficulty instance/raid Boss monsters to have quite a bit.

So does this mean that Guardians will be getting that many fewer block responses on raid bosses? That reduces the Guardian's threat generation capabilities without a corresponding reduction to DPS classes' threat output (the high B/P/E and resistances of raid bosses affects both Guardians and DPS classes roughly equally).

Will you be adding finesse debuffs to Burglar or LM skills?

[Jennifern]

Happy they've removed primary stat caps, thats really great news! Also glad they've removed the crit caps, I loved stacking crit chance on my champ in SoA, was really good fun!

Also, I kind of like the way you are now going to be calculating offence. With agility contributing to hunters melee offence it means their melee skills will now have very high offence rating, thus do a lot more damage. Really good change given that hunters melee is pretty rubbish. Same with loremasters. Melee offence now gonna be same as tactical offence and thus massive hits with staff strike will be even bigger! Very cool buffs without nerfing other stuff.

I do have a few concerns though:

1) Diminishing returns. I've always hated this mechanic when you have caps in place. Theres simply no point! If its gonna be as harsh as you say then why bother raising the cap / removing the cap at all? We'll see very minimal differences compared to now without min-maxing.

2) Given removal of caps and diminishing returns, are you actually going to put some effort into itemisation? So, if I want my champ to have 1000 might in order to reach the 50% offence cap, can I do it? Or if I want my champ to be built purely for crits, will you have enough gear in the game for me to reach 30/40% crit chance like you did in SoA? These changes in stats mean nothing without itemisation and to be honest, your itemisation has been utter rubbish since mirkwood (possibly before...).

3) Finesse will be new radience. Now, I didnt really care about radience much as im a raider, so getting radience was very easy, but it did force you to wear armour purely due to high radience. The same will be true of finesse. Even if its not essential, it will be advisable and thus I'll be forced to wear the highest finesse i can get. That is bad, please dont do it! If you do add finesse, de-couple it from gear and add it to traits / deeds etc.

4) Where's the love for captains? For every single other class I can see benefits, be it through increased crits, removal of useless stats, increased/removed caps, increased DPS through these changes. But nothing for captains. We still need every stat, which means removal of caps means nothing to us unless we min-max for a certain role and thus stop fulfilling our role in raids. Please, get Raskilnikov onto the captain forums so we can actually have a discussion with him about his proposed captain changes which are rubbish. These changes wont affect us, his changes are rubbish, so effectively captains being left behind again

[Galahadur]

Finesse is a rating. It will subtract directly from the Resistance of Monsters. It will subtract directly from the BPE ratings of monster in proportion to the total Avoidance.
That's not really clear so I'll give an example.

Say I have 1000 Finesse. I attack a monster with 3243 Resistance rating, a Block rating of 3000, a Parry rating of 2000 and a Evade rating of 5000.

The monster will resist with a 2243 rating.
It will Block with (3000-(1000*(3000/(3000+2000+5000)))) = 2700 rating
It will Parry with a 1800 rating
It will Evade with a 4500 rating.

Will the Knowledge of the Lore-Master skill be changed or, hopefuly, upgraded to accomodate this changes and give some Monster info back to us, players?

[SungXe]

You can tell just how bad radiance scarred people given this hysterical reaction to finesse. Seriously it's not that bad people. I'll try to do an analogy on what the problem was with radiance and how this isn't even close.

Radiance situation: Leader: Ok guys we need one more for Dol Guldur raid. We really need a champ for AOE in the gaunlet. Jeff, you've got a champ don't you? Jeff: Yeah, but he's only got 60 rad. Leader: Ah, that's not good. You'll just dread out so basically you can't go in at all. Ah well people, guess we're not raiding this week.

Finesse situation: Leader: Ok guys we need one more for [insert ROI raid here]. We really need a champ for AOE'ing the ads on the first Boss fight. Jeff, you've got a champ don't you? Jeff: Yeah, but he's only got 2,500 finesse and everyone I talk to says you should really have 3,000. Leader: Ah, that's fine, you'll still be hitting most of the mobs and the hunters can help lock them down for you. Let's go people!

It's a soft cap people. Not really any different to what we have at this very moment with all the other stats. Would you want to take a healer with minimal or no outgoing healing on a raid? Of course not. Would you want to take a tank with stuff all morale on a raid? No. This is the same thing people.

Don't twist and sweet talk this into a "softcap" if you twist it like that, radiance has been only a softcap too, it wasn't hard to get enough to not cower, with 7Dread you can still hit and fight just with reduced stats. Ah, that's fine, you'll still be hitting most of the mobs and the hunters can help lock them down for you. Let's go people!

I'm no doom sayer, just common sense. Finesse is bound to be a Gear Gating by Design. Simple Logic.
Artificial Gear dependent Stat is just that. Limiting Gear choices and creating an artificial border as much as a Gear gap. Doesn't matter if you sweet talk twist it into a [soft] cap.

I thought they learned their lesson after admitting it as an horrible idea gone beyond wrong. Yet someone labeled Finesse over Radiance and thought it will turn out different. oh yeah this time it's not involved with dread, but still limiting your combat capabilities. Suprise eh?


But i will tell you why they create Radiance 2.0. Once they lift the Caps you would face 20+% Crit rate Hunters and Champions. It doesn't need a genius to figure out why they put finesse on Armor parts which happen not to enforce such stats. Why? They already done that.

Unless they remove Finesse from Gear i have zerooooooooooooooooo_ faith for it not to be Radiance2.0. Zero.
I'd be gladly pointed to this post if i am wrong, but i moreover will gladly point anyone to this post if they implement Finesse into Gear.
This is another day when i hate to be right.

No i will not quit lotro over it, but bad design is bad.

[Gilean-EU]

Also, I kind of like the way you are now going to be calculating offence. With agility contributing to hunters melee offence it means their melee skills will now have very high offence rating, thus do a lot more damage. Really good change given that hunters melee is pretty rubbish. Same with loremasters. Melee offence now gonna be same as tactical offence and thus massive hits with staff strike will be even bigger! Very cool buffs without nerfing other stuff.

Tbh, I think there's typo in dev diary. It says:

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.

I think it is supposed to be:

This means that Lore-masters, Minstrels and Runekeepers will use Will to contribute to their Tactical offence. Hunters will use Agility for their Ranged offence and Guardians, Champions and Wardens will use Might for their Melee offence ratings. The Captain’s offence ratings are unchanged.

Of course I am not sure though, maybe Graalx2 can confirm this?

[Ravenware]

Graal just said that bosses have about 35% avoidance chance with no Finesse. If you don't think that in later raids it'll be bumped up to 50-60% with no Finesse you're kidding yourself. They're going to want to make an instance thats super hard even with Finesse. In doing so, however, they will make a Finesse requirement. It will happen eventually.

In Graal's post he explicitly stated that:

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.

(emphasis added by me)

He also said:

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.

(emphasis added by me)

So, looking at those speculative numbers we get... A small ferocious white rabbit (pun intended) rather than a boogeyman You'll be able to mitigate almost half of the boss' resistance using crafted and/or quest gear. Since Finesse will be available on crafted gear it becomes a lot easier for the devs to balance the needs of (and how I hate this term) casual raiders vs. the rewards for (another term I hate) hardcore raiders. Take this mind experiment as an example: If you'd been able to craft decent radience armour (say a total of 150 rad using single-use recipes) would radience have been hated as much as it was?

Conclusion: I don't think it's a Human Right to have the hardest content on farm if you've just started playing the game but I do think it's bad policy to lock out players from content through poor gating systems. Finesse is still Under Development and is thus Subject To Change. Feedback and dialogue will hopefully give us a soft gate that is durable (the failure of radience) and everyone can live with.

P.s. I dislike emphasis formatting so I'm disliking myself right now

[Gummii]

jeez... Gilean-EU try reread the whole thread and you come upon this assumption a couple times and just as many times an explanation WHY there is NOT a typo in the blog

[Ingaras]

Interesting stuff...

Removing caps makes sense... there's already diminishing returns, so balancing those will enable them to keep the numbers in control while allowing more personal builds (want a true glass-cannon RK with 25% crit chance and 2000 morale, go ahead!).

Finesse will be a fine balancing act. It sounds like they're trying to do what Radiance should have been, but can just as easily go wrong. It will all depend on balance... if a Hunter with 1000 finesse but 300 agility is going be more useful than one with 200 finesse and 700 agility, it will end up being the same thing as radiance was.

[Thoronthor]

How about giving the Captains a finesse buff, we can stand in the corner and spam it while the real classes do the actual fighting.

[Chrysamere]

Solid changes Graalx2. So solid that you keep derailing from balancing pve, the dev team, 3 years now to the same extend. I really cba explaining the whole thing but i ll give you a hint. Burglars need nerf on their dps, not overall tone up, as you do. Start from that, and in the next 10 years, you might actually understand what kind of game you have designed.

[Brethwyn_EU]

Finesse makes me shiver............. Turbine.......I warn you, don't be hasty!!

[Celebrawn]

Though I can see why... it will allow them to make the difficult content more difficult.

Yay, just what the vast majority of us need, as if the end-game stuff weren't inaccessible enough.

[InTheDogHouse]

Really going to have to wait until I can see this in game to decide if its any good, because it all sounds like Russian to me

[Marguerita]

New Stat – Finesse
For all of those players who think the random number generator has it out for them this is the stat for you. Finesse is a ratings-based stat that will directly reduce the Resistance of monsters as well as their Block/Parry/Evade ratings. 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 but expect high difficulty instance/raid Boss monsters to have quite a bit.

Am i understanding well when i think that this new stat will concern more raid/instance ?

For example my hunter (max stats, all equipped virtues to 10, wearing Loth crafted armor, L2 reforged weapon) she is doing fine actually in every territory and can pretty well fight solo any creature or boss (not the Master Elite) on the outside world, and i can enjoy hunting and such.

Will i need that skill for that kind of play ? and if needed, when you say : there will be a few pieces available with Finesse from quests and crafting, will those be available as recipe loot in Instance/raid only or Raid and quests reward from raid/instance only ?

I dont complain about that, i just want to know what will be my *place* in this new adventure ... and if i still will able to play the game without raiding/instancing as i did until now (i can do 3man fine but barely above unfortunatly because of the time needed in such)Thank you

[oogabooga227]

With the condensing of resistances into one big pool, whats going to happen with our removal skill buffs? For example Purge Poison and Muster Courage apply buffs to Poison and Fear respectively after use. I believe Muster Courage is a +5200 Rating to Fear Resist. Are all of these skills going to simply buff all resistances now that it's a single category?

And if that's the case, I would assume that all of these would then stack?

[Gummii]

With the condensing of resistances into one big pool, whats going to happen with our removal skill buffs? For example Purge Poison and Muster Courage apply buffs to Poison and Fear respectively after use. I believe Muster Courage is a +5200 Rating to Fear Resist. Are all of these skills going to simply buff all resistances now that it's a single category?

And if that's the case, I would assume that all of these would then stack?

Resistance – this stat will replace the various resistance ratings to specific types Fear, Disease, Poison and Wound. Effects will still have a specific resistance type because some skills will modify a specific resistance but in general, you will use your Resistance stat as your base chance to resist an effect.

The message you have entered is too short. Please lengthen your message to at least 10 characters.

[Zetsubousensei]

Removing stat caps is an interesting choice. It makes instance loot no longer "trash" because it has too much of a stat, but at the same time creates uncertainty about how much of a stat is "enough" or a "proper" amount for certain content. I'll probably observe a rule that ten times my level is the appropriate primary stat strength, and if some loot takes it over a bit, fine.

The secondary stat cap increases and Finesse obviously go hand in hand, and were probably developed as a single package deal. My warden will obviously /cheer at this because it is easy to ride near the present caps (and I assume will still be at 75) so my buffs will only get stronger. It also makes me wonder how much Finesse will trivialize normal content, like stacking some 4000 finesse on a hunter to sweep some trash mobs. Or are we going to see some "lateral" motion here like we did with Radiance: poor stats, but high Radiance which made them a must if you wanted to do X and Y.

While Finesse doesn't sound as harsh as Radiance, it is of course a gate, and will be required to run difficult on-level content. It'll just work a little differently as it is an offensive stat where Radiance was defensive; tankers will be switching to BPE gear, dpsers and CCers will be switching to Finesse gear. Healers won't have to care.

This also made me realize that development cycles NEED level cap increases at certain intervals. We've been hitting the caps because better and better loot at the same level cap can go only so far. Since the percentages are a function of rating and level, when this happens, the only way out is to increase cap, which will make he percentages go down as level goes up.

While the resistance consolidation seems like dumbification, I can see the point in this. Generally, they all tend to hover at the same level anyway, modified by whatever gear the character has - and it usually is not worn for that resistance stat. Most people don't even care for resistances, nor try to improve them as 1) they are way down the ladder on stat importance and 2) there's many resistances so trying to improve all is a fool's errand. Having just one may improve the likelihood of getting +resitance because, it is +resistance. Instead of just getting an acid trinket because we're going to Filikul (and dumping it back to vault when done). It is a chore to have A against X for instance I and B against Y for instance K and I guess some didn't even bother. Largely the same reasoning goes for the Tactical mitigation consolidation.

Primary stat contributions are an interesting change. I hope this puts a death-stroke on such silliness as Might on hunter gear. My lore-master will certainly /cheer at this, since my tactic has always been to close in on melee range while my pet tanks, and capped will will have an impact on this because of 1) off-hand sword and 2) staff is a two-handed weapon, with appropriate damage range. At least, until the day the tactical classes get a ranged tactical auto-attack (which will never happen).

What I don't understand is why captains are getting the shaft (again).