Rise of Isengard: Dev Diary Feedback: Stat Updates

[Tyveil]

Thank you for removing the caps. This will give us more options on how we want to build our character and consider trade-offs, rather than just a single optimal build for every class. This is an excellent change.

I hope this paves the way to eventually removing caps on traits as well... or making it into some sort of soft-cap type system (primary trait trainable to X, secondary trait trainable to Y, etc.. you choose your trait rankings).

[MordecaiKell]

As I see Finesse is the "Critical Defense" equivalent for DPS classes. You need to stack it to be more efficient in raid play.

As long as Finesse or Critical Defense requirements are not too high and average values can be get with other than raid gear I see no problem.

By the way, Finesse is changing both damage magnitude (resistances to damage) and damage chance (BPE) while Criticial Defense is only reducing chance to receive criticals.

Will Critical Defense be modified to finally reduce both chance and magnitude? It would be a nice improvement since it would difficult non tank traited and geared people to tank. So it would end "Fervour Tanking" finally.

I have a concern, it is that these stats (Finesse and Crit Defense) are more necessary for Tier 2 fellow and raid instances, but problem is that people is only doing Tier 2 version of them.

As I understood, Tier separation was done have average people (gear/skill) doing Tier 1 and only advanced people doing Tier 2. This had logic since there is many people claiming that game is too easy.
Problem is that Tier 1 rewards are lackluster so people is only doing Tier 2, and it is completely negating the idea behind Tiers.

Could be checked that Tier 1 rewards are meaningful. For example Tier 1 and Tier 2 giving the same type of medalios but Tier 2 giving 50%. And also Tier 1 and Tier 2 giving the same loot but with Tier 2 having more probability to get good one.

This way people would do first Tier 1 and when they are properly geared or familiarised with the instance they could go to Tier 2. This way difficulty for Tier 2 could be increased as necessary.

[furtim]

Yes...well eventually. It may or may not be done for Isengard launch.

Does that mean it'll still be showing the outdated split-up resistances and ratings? And will lack a way to see the Finesse rating of bosses?

That does trouble me a little bit. I know it's not the most amazingly useful skill, and the info can be easily looked up elsewhere, but it's a nice little "feel good" skill for the Lore-Masters out there.

[Thoroval]

Yes, if you maintain the 15% block in ratings that you are allowed now. However if you increase your Might and add +block rating gear you'll probably see even more blocks.

Are you talking about current content or new (Isengard) content? Just what impact will all these changes have on existing content? I doubt you'll have the time to go back and rebalance 65 levels worth of previously released content and any changes of this magnitude will likely have significant impacts on content that isn't rebalanced with things like Finesse in mind.

[Lestache]

Eventually = When we get around to it, if we do, which probably wont happen...

Another word to add to Sapience's "Soon" definition list?



Eh...not many Loremasters that I know of use it. The same information can be found on many of the LOTRO wiki sites on the web including the LOTRO Lorebook.

Doesn't the information on those sites come from people first using the skill, though? If not, where does it come from and why does the skill exist at all then?

As I see Finesse is the "Critical Defense" equivalent for DPS classes. You need to stack it to be more efficient in raid play.

As long as Finesse or Critical Defense requirements are not too high and average values can be get with other than raid gear I see no problem.

By the way, Finesse is changing both damage magnitude (resistances to damage) and damage chance (BPE) while Criticial Defense is only reducing chance to receive criticals.

Will Critical Defense be modified to finally reduce both chance and magnitude? It would be a nice improvement since it would difficult non tank traited and geared people to tank. So it would end "Fervour Tanking" finally.

I have a concern, it is that these stats (Finesse and Crit Defense) are more necessary for Tier 2 fellow and raid instances, but problem is that people is only doing Tier 2 version of them.

As I understood, Tier separation was done have average people (gear/skill) doing Tier 1 and only advanced people doing Tier 2. This had logic since there is many people claiming that game is too easy.
Problem is that Tier 1 rewards are lackluster so people is only doing Tier 2, and it is completely negating the idea behind Tiers.

Could be checked that Tier 1 rewards are meaningful. For example Tier 1 and Tier 2 giving the same type of medalios but Tier 2 giving 50%. And also Tier 1 and Tier 2 giving the same loot but with Tier 2 having more probability to get good one.

This way people would do first Tier 1 and when they are properly geared or familiarised with the instance they could go to Tier 2. This way difficulty for Tier 2 could be increased as necessary.

There are a few decent T1 rewards, I hear. A decent dagger in Stoneheight, and a couple wings of OD T1 have dropped the odd nice item (I honestly can't remember what, though, as these were in pugs I did a while back and I didn't win the items. :P).

I don't think that the problem is with any inherent disparity between T1 and T2 rewards - frankly, T2 should offer better rewards than T1, and T2 Challenge should offer better rewards than T2. Otherwise, what's the point (beyond challenging oneself/the group) for people who want to improve their toons? I understand that your idea is to have a better chance at good items on T2, but since we're never made aware of the drop rates all we would see as players is:

"I got awesome item X on T2!"
"I got awesome item X on T1!"
"Why am I doing T2 then?"

I think the problem lies with the players themselves. People want the best shinies, and it's hard to admit to oneself, "perhaps I'm not/my group isn't good enough to do T2". I don't play WoW, but apparently the WoW playerbase ran into this same issue with the launch of the recent expansion - folks expected to be able to waltz into the new instances, run them on the hardest difficulty, and breeze through with a PuG. They didn't want to try the instances at a lower difficulty and learn the place first, because the best gear came from the hardest difficulty and they wanted/expected the best gear.

My friend who does play WoW linked me this blog by a WoW dev - the blog (I think) is just fantastic:

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/blog/1690800

tl;dr of the blog - Challenging instances are supposed to be hard; learn to strategize and communicate; get better as a player; get better gear.

-------

Back to the topic at hand... um... Captains are getting shafted! Rargh!

(Kidding... I really am sympathetic to your plight, Cappies)

[OptimusNaught]

These changes sound great, except for one thing: Captains need offense rating love more than anyone! Either tie their melee to will like other healers, or tie their healing to their might. Why would they not deserve the same straightforward gearing as other classes?

[witchking782]

Graal is there a reason why captain's tactical offense was left out of the might? Are you guys going to look into the problems captains have of maintaining two opposite roles when the gears of this game are always meant for either melee (might,agi) or tactial (will,fate) but what the captain requires is might,will.

ECHO from capt thread:
Our lowest healing skill cooldown is at 3 seconds, and rally at 6 sec if we have death responses.

That means the BEST POSSIBLE healing rotation that can maximize healing is:
Woc,damage,WoC,damage,WoC...So W at every 1:30&ToArms at every 60secs.

That shows that between each to arms you have the potential to use healing skills 50% of the time, the other 50% are consumed by other skills. Which include mark, death responses (since these are "fast" skills they don't generally disrupt combat at all). Additional 13.3% for adding in inspire rotation in the fix. Therefore your total ability to heal during combat is around 64%. We can then put out around 10% for any other utility skills such as marks, death responses,threat shouts, muster. But that means you're still doing 25% dps in the MAX POSSIBLE HEALING ROTATIONS.

Of course we have LOT more damaging skills then compared to healing which means that in our max potential damaging rotations, we can ignore out all the healing skills. Still leaving 10% for utility rotations and still considering this between every to arms of 60 sec we can put out 90% damage skill rotation and 10% buffing ones.

So where does that leave this class?
We're the one and ONLY hybrid class of this game. If you consider your self as a healing captain, you're still dpsing 25% of the time. If you consider your self as a dpsing capt, you're still using other skills 10% of the time. If you consider you're self as a buffing captain, well then you're sitting around doing nothing 90% of the time.

So definition of a captain is a class that can:
Heal: 0 to 64 % of the time
DPS: 25 to 100% of the time
Buff/tank: 0 to 10% of the time

So where does that leave our primary stat at?
Even if you consider Will as a primary stat, its usage is only ever applied 64% of the time, which is little over half and that can't really be primary. If you consider might, well that still leaves you out with an entire off-role to fill up. If you consider both will/might and actually playing the balance card, well sure that's how it should be except there are hardly pieces available in game that has vit/might/will/morale build.

[Glornt]

I do hope that more thought gets put into dealing with the captain issues -- buffing every other class while leaving cappies alone is at least a comparative nerf, and we've had enough nerfs lately (one dork's complaining about the complaints notwithstanding). On the other hand, my melee LM should love this.

On Finesse... the concept sounds okay (and like others have said, particularly if it is not tied strictly to equipment), but the name is teh suck. Are going to start taking breaks during combat for a spot of tea, making sure that we hold out our pinkies? There are so many better words to describe what it does -- accuracy, precision (although this is the name of a hunter stance), etc. -- I have a hard time imagining a dwarf champ swinging a pair of axes with finesse. I already dislike the names of some of the virtues, but I don't have to see them very often; please don't give us a new major stat with a goofy name.

[Iracham]

Eh...not many Loremasters that I know of use it. The same information can be found on many of the LOTRO wiki sites on the web including the LOTRO Lorebook.

Where do you think the original source of that information was?

Protip: Lore-masters

[Almagnus1]

Echoing Kriptic's comments...

Captains work best if you can stack will and might, will for outgoing healing, might for melee offense. I've found that stacking crit to cap also helps a bit, because guaranteeing crits off of Devastating Blow or Pressing Attack means that I can get off another Rally Cry. Trying to gear with this in mind is extremely difficult, and arguably impossible without buying stat tomes. Even then, you still want to have enough vitality so that you can do the off tanking when the captain is asked to go stand next to something doing distributed damage and live through it. The amount of might/will items in the game, let alone might/will/other nice stats, is pretty small, and with the exception of the captain armour set items, there's not a lot of jewelry that helps to support that style of build.

Realistically, there's not good reason why I need to maintain at least 40 items in the vault to switch between a LtC build, to a 3 man HoH build, to a raid HoH build, to a raid LoM build, to a Moors support role build, to a Moors DPS build, and to an experimental tanking build - because each change requires me to head to the bank to change out large sections of jewelry and/or armor in addition to traits just to be effective. When compared against any other class in the game, they can usually get by with one, maybe two, sets of gear.

I do hope that more thought gets put into dealing with the captain issues -- buffing every other class while leaving cappies alone is at least a comparative nerf, and we've had enough nerfs lately (one dork's complaining about the complaints notwithstanding). On the other hand, my melee LM should love this.

On Finesse... the concept sounds okay (and like others have said, particularly if it is not tied strictly to equipment), but the name is teh suck. Are going to start taking breaks during combat for a spot of tea, making sure that we hold out our pinkies? There are so many better words to describe what it does -- accuracy, precision (although this is the name of a hunter stance), etc. -- I have a hard time imagining a dwarf champ swinging a pair of axes with finesse. I already dislike the names of some of the virtues, but I don't have to see them very often; please don't give us a new major stat with a goofy name.

Finesse works rather well. A dwarf champ swinging axes with finesse means he is extremely accurate in taking down his opponent, to the point where he can take one or two swings, look exceedingly cool doing so, then have the orc beside itself, wondering what just happened.

[Whirling_Dervish]

Isn't the idea that you have to concentrate in either healing or DPS? It's the same with minstrels, war-speech or healing (and rune-keepers). Do you want both at the same time?

No it isn't the idea, captains can build to favour one area over the other, but they can't focus on one area and virtually ignore others, they need every stat / aspect, they often have to offtank, off-heal & DPS in the same instance and most of the time they do it in melee range. Hence they can't just foucs on melee offence, they also need outgoing heals, etc.

This new system appears to make things even worse for a captain as it makes it easier for everyone else to concentrate (and therefore stack) on their primary stat + build to the higher cap, which will mean the gap between captain healing & mini/RK healing will grow, same for offtanking, same for DPS.

So if there is a proportionate increase in difficulty of instances to go along with these new super stacked healers, tanks & DPS, where does that leave captains? Will they be able to offtank tough boss adds anymore (or main tank 3-mans) or will they be too squishy for content designed for the new super levels of b/p/e, morale, etc that other classes will achieve, same for DPS, cappies DPS is already the lowest, under this system it woud seem they are going to be left even further behind. Again same for heals, a cappy that tries to build for anything near the 50% outgoing cap that minis/rks will build for, will have scarifice might & agilty, which would be terrible for a melee class that needs to crit to supplement on defeat event skills, so what will happen is the gap between cappies heals and mini/rk will simply increase*.

* - I'm not actually against the gap on heals getting bigger as I think cappies ahve become too heal oriented, but plenty of cappies disgree, but as this gap also looks to be increasing on the tanking & DPS fronts, things don't look good for cappies under this new system.

[GWULFFE]

A few questions.
1 Does this mean we will go back to getting stat increases with each new level as we did from 1 to 50 or will we still be dependant on equipment as the sole way to improve our stats?
2. Will they go back and give us increases in our stats for the levels between 50 and 65?
3. regarding finesse will we get any passives that give us some base finesse similar to how we get passives as we level that add to block/parry ETC or will all finesse come from items?
4 Will finesse be possibly added to some of the virtures that can be equiped?

[Elsydeon]

No it isn't the idea, captains can build to favour one area over the other, but they can't focus on one area and virtually ignore others, they need every stat / aspect, they often have to offtank, off-heal & DPS in the same instance and most of the time they do it in melee range. Hence they can't just foucs on melee offence, they also need outgoing heals, etc.

This new system appears to make things even worse for a captain as it makes it easier for everyone else to concentrate (and therefore stack) on their primary stat + build to the higher cap, which will mean the gap between captain healing & mini/RK healing will grow, same for offtanking, same for DPS.

So if there is a proportionate increase in difficulty of instances to go along with these new super stacked healers, tanks & DPS, where does that leave captains? Will they be able to offtank tough boss adds anymore (or main tank 3-mans) or will they be too squishy for content designed for the new super levels of b/p/e, morale, etc that other classes will achieve, same for DPS, cappies DPS is already the lowest, under this system it woud seem they are going to be left even further behind. Again same for heals, a cappy that tries to build for anything near the 50% outgoing cap that minis/rks will build for, will have scarifice might & agilty, which would be terrible for a melee class that needs to crit to supplement on defeat event skills, so what will happen is the gap between cappies heals and mini/rk will simply increase*.

* - I'm not actually against the gap on heals getting bigger as I think cappies ahve become too heal oriented, but plenty of cappies disgree, but as this gap also looks to be increasing on the tanking & DPS fronts, things don't look good for cappies under this new system.

This is a great way to sum up what I see as many Captain's concerns regarding the Captain Class. After the Dev Post about the updates for the Captain Class it looked like the class was heading in the right direction, and Captains were mostly curious to know a few things but even then were curious but not fearful their class was going to be ruined. Now with this latest Dev Diary, things have changed for the Captain Class and compared to the changes for the other classes, excluding the Captain from these changes are not good for the class, and the updates from the Captain and Loremaster Dev Diary don't make this situation magically disappear.

However, I am appalled by the people who assume that Captains do nothing and complain and view everything as a nerf stick their heads into the sand when anyone confronts them with logic or math to prove something will be beneficial for Captains. I didn't see Captains screaming in outrage like what we now see over the Captain and Loremaster Dev Diary, instead then Captains were asking for more information, or offering opinions on what they think might be a good idea, but I don't recall Captains thinking those changes were going to harm the Captain class. But with these new stat changes, the Captain class is going to be harmed in itemization as they won't be able to gear up with one set of gear for all their roles like every other class will be able to. Captain's won't be able to stack a single primary stat like every other classes will be able to. What Captains are becoming vocal about is the desire to know what is being done to avoid Captains ending up like they were late-SoA/Pre-MoM.

Right now all these changes are still 'subject to change' so Captains are trying to point out an issue that needs to be addressed and resolved, hopefully a Dev will acknowledge this and give a response.

[Symar]

I just want to know, for like, a Minstrel, will Might still affect Common Mitigation and Block Chance?
Will Agility still affect accuracy and evasion for everyone but a Hunter and Burglar?
Is Fate still going to be Tactical Crit or is that moving over to Will?

Or is it changing to only needing your primary stat for everything but morale, power, ICMR, and ICPR?

[Elsydeon]

I just want to know, for like, a Minstrel, will Might still affect Common Mitigation and Block Chance?

Probably, but I've never heard of Minstrels trying to stack Might, especially with the limitations of light armor towards common mitigation. This means it is somewhat useful, but nothing to focus a Minstrel's build around.

Will Agility still affect accuracy and evasion for everyone but a Hunter and Burglar?

Why would Agility not affect accuracy and evasion for Hunters and Burglars?

Is Fate still going to be Tactical Crit or is that moving over to Will?

Or is it changing to only needing your primary stat for everything but morale, power, ICMR, and ICPR?

I'd like to know the answer to this one myself. Although I'm wondering what stat they will use as the primary stat for Captains...but I have the feeling we'll find out 'how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?' before we we are given answers to all the questions this latest Dev Diary has sparked.

[Mandura]

The caps on Primary characteristics, Might, Agility, Vitality, Will and Fate are completely removed.

This is a really good change i would say, as it lets you set up your character how you want it. You dont have to worry about staying under the cap and basically loose the value of your eqipment/skills/traits.

The caps on Block, Parry, Evade, Incoming Healing and Critical Hit ratings have been increased to 25%. The caps on Offences, Outgoing Healing and Resistance ratings have been increased to 50%. The relaxation of the ratings based caps starts at level 50.

That is one of the worst changes i have ever seen! Why do you want to increase the caps on those? You just have to make the content harder than it actually has to be and therefore make yourself even more work in the process. Its just FINE the way it is now!

Finesse is a ratings-based stat that will directly reduce the Resistance of monsters as well as their Block/Parry/Evade ratings.

So basically what this does is make you hit more often if you have more finesse right? If that is so, only DPS classes really need to max it, debuff and tank classes still need a fair bit but healers dont need it at all. That is so stupid in my eyes! Can't you make finesse also increase outgoing healing (and reduce the threat of it) and increase threat generation of tanks, so classes other than DPS ones have a reason to stack it?

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.

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.

This is just creating more work for you and is absolutely irrelevant ot gameplay. Just think about it. Now you have to change all the virtues, racial, class and legendary traits, skills, food, etc. for nothing as it is not changeing anything gameplay wise!

We have finally decided to level the playing field for all classes as far as secondary characteristics go, we have deleted them all.
We have also changed the contribution to most class’s Offence ratings to use their primary stat * 10.

Are you crazy?? Just keep making the game easier and easier so that no one has to think about what stats he needs and which ones he can forget about on his class. Thats so stupid making a class only depend on one stat and thats it. I guess every hunter will only stack agi and one shot every mob in his way, same with champs and might or rune-keepers and will.

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.

You sereously arent saying that every calss will have the same amout of melee, ranged and tactical dmg rating, are you? A mini doing the same amout of melee dmg as a champ is just ridiculuos.

The Captain’s offence ratings are unchanged.

Ok, so every class gets a massive increase in dmg output and the captain does not? And on top of that, every class has to focus on only one stat and the cappy on 5? Is that supposed to be a joke?


______________________________ __________________
Turbine, you did a perfect job with SoA, then tryed to improve it with MoM but screwed it up. With SoM you wanted to fix that but made it even worse; and now this!

DON'T TRY TO FIX SOMETHING THAT NEVER WAS BROKEN IN THE FIRST PLACE!!

[Symar]

Probably, but I've never heard of Minstrels trying to stack Might, especially with the limitations of light armor towards common mitigation. This means it is somewhat useful, but nothing to focus a Minstrel's build around.

Why would Agility not affect accuracy and evasion for Hunters and Burglars?

Minstrel was just an example (and I've heard of ones stacking Might for melee builds before, although that's nigh-pointless come Isengard), and Hunters and Burglars will want Agility no matter what.

My question is really, are the secondary effects of stats staying and just the offense capabilities consolidating, or is everything swapping around?

[ScroffyJosh]

Poor old captains I hear nails being hammered into coffins already...

[bastiat1]

We have finally decided to level the playing field for all classes as far as secondary characteristics go, we have deleted them all. No longer will there be any need to make petitions to get a Tactical Crit rating characteristic added to your class or complain that that other class gets more Parry rating from their characteristics than your class does. Instead we have increased the rating contributions from primary stats so that you will be able to have the ratings that you desire rather than the ones we gave you.

Graalx, can you give us a little more on how stats will translate into secondary ratings differently now. It seems like you are saying that stuff like Block passives are going away but now Might will give more than 2 Block Rating points to make up for it. Can you tell us what the new secondary rating contributors will be? It would be very helpful for future planning for those of us that have this stuff all mapped out.

Also, for quirky things like Ranged Evade passives, I'm assuming you will just get more than 2 Evade points from Agility, but no real Ranged Evade contribution such that Ranged Evade will really just come from Legacies and Gear. Correct?

[CaerArianrhod]

Hello,

http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdia...tes?lang=en_US

Stat                                     Percentage             Previously
Melee,Ranged,Tactical Offence             50%                        30%

Those numbers must be wrong. My LM has at this moment his Tactical Offence at 43.9% (a little over 10.6K). Without buffs (only usig the Ancient Wisdom with +60 Will).
So this "previously" 30% can't be right.

CA

[bastiat1]

Ok, so every class gets a massive increase in dmg output and the captain does not? And on top of that, every class has to focus on only one stat and the cappy on 5? Is that supposed to be a joke?

This probably doesnt matter if you think that skill damage is going to be normalized around the new system anyway. I doubt that Turbine is just going to give Burglars a big DPS boost because Offense is moving from 6*Might to 10*Agility. They will almost certainly nerf base damage to compensate. So you would similarly expect them to adjust Captain damage accordingly. Maybe that's too optimistic. If I were a captain I would probably prefer this actually because it makes you even less stat dependent.

[Lestache]

Hello,

http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdia...tes?lang=en_US

Stat                                     Percentage             Previously
Melee,Ranged,Tactical Offence             50%                        30%

Those numbers must be wrong. My LM has at this moment his Tactical Offence at 43.9% (a little over 10.6K). Without buffs (only usig the Ancient Wisdom with +60 Will).
So this "previously" 30% can't be right.

CA

30% is the cap from offense rating. Your class traits, battle scrolls, and other buffs can take the percentage higher than 30% - there's effectively no cap on the percentage, just the percentage from rating. Champs can get over +100% melee offense for brief periods of time if they wish.

[Elsydeon]

Minstrel was just an example (and I've heard of ones stacking Might for melee builds before, although that's nigh-pointless come Isengard), and Hunters and Burglars will want Agility no matter what.

My question is really, are the secondary effects of stats staying and just the offense capabilities consolidating, or is everything swapping around?

I figured you were just giving examples, but the agility one I couldn't resist answering like that with how you worded it.

But like I said in my previous post, a lot of people are curious about the secondary effects of stats. I'm guessing that if they aren't saying it is changing, don't assume it is changing. Hopefully the devs will give more details. Just don't hold your breath.

[NinjaGranny]

I m really hoping this isnt just dumbing down like they did in EQ
So what about people who have tailored their charactors ? i Have 650 agility might and vitality and 500 fate 300 will - as i wanted to get the mitigations and high ICPR ( Char is a hunter BTW) will we no longer be able to use the secondary benefits of the stats like the mitigations ?

And finnesse sounds like its the new radiance and thats poor . Also taking off the stat cap means that devs will aim for UBER high kit for top end game rather than it is now where anyone can have a go - PLEASE dont make lotro a grind fest - if people wanted that they would be playing wow or the other grind to you drop MMORPGS .

[jayspeed]

Please don't make Finesse the new Radiance. Don't make it so a raid boss will be unkillable if you don't have enough finesse cause it'll just b/p/e every hit.