Need help...

[Halphast]

After asking questions here in the forums I keep thinking I've figured out my Loremaster problems but they keep persisting:

-my skills all do less damage than they claim to
-the combat log claims I do more damage than actually comes off the enemy (but still less than the skill says it should).

Example:
Fighting a green-name enemy that has 20,000 morale.
My lightning-strike says it does 29-42K.
I use the skill. It's not "resisted" nor "deflected", but only about 19K comes off.
I look at the combat log afterward, and it says I did 24K, which should have one-hit killed the enemy-- but it didn't, and 24K is STILL well below the minimum damage listed on the skill.

I'm currently level 97. My Tactical Mastery is 33,333 and my Finesse is 13,200.

I started off the game focusing only on maximizing Tactical Mastery, but eventually my attacks started missing, so I then focused on adding Finesse. Now I feel like my numbers are better balanced but the results are still way under what they should be. Can anyone help?

(edited for clarity)

[LagunaD2]

Just like you, enemies mitigate a fraction of most damage (due to their armor, natural or magical defenses, etc). The fraction depends on the enemy's stats and the damage type of the attack. Your tooltips show unmitigated damage.

You'll probably find that using Ancient Craft on an enemy will make your abilities deal more damage to them because it reduces their armor, which contributes a lot to mitigation. Your raven's debuff will reduce enemy defense against fire, making it a good one to keep on auto-cast.

Also, you have a unique ability, "Knowledge of the Loremaster" that will give you a rough idea which damage types enemies have strong, or less strong, defenses against.

Finesse reduces the chance that enemies will block, parry, evade or resist attacks, but it doesn't reduce their mitigation.

[Halphast]

Also, you have a unique ability, "Knowledge of the Loremaster" that will give you a rough idea which damage types enemies have strong, or less strong, defenses against.

Good idea, thank you- I just tried KotLM. So... in this case, a green-name enemy with "good" lightning resistance is able to reduce my damage from the 29-42K range down to 17K (which just happened)? That's like 58% of the minimum, which is awful. But, at least I understand where it's coming from. Again, thanks!

[LagunaD2]

Relative level makes some difference, but I would guess that the enemy is a signature or elite, meaning its defenses are substantially better than an average creature.

[Halphast]

Relative level makes some difference, but I would guess that the enemy is a signature or elite, meaning its defenses are substantially better than an average creature.

It was not elite, just a blue-frame landscape enemy. Some are grey-name and some are green-name. Mounted goblins in the Broadacres, "defiler / flanker / spearman"

However, as I mentioned KotLM showed their resistances as "good" whereas later enemies in the Stonedeans even elite enemies only had poor/weak/pathetic (whatever the term is, it sounded worse, haha)

[Gandolf_TheOld]

In Order

Vitality – If you do not group or raid, you can trade Vit off for TacMas, but not much.
Will
Tactical Mastery – yours is too low - you want this to be as high as you can get
Fate – Want ICPR as high as you can get it – goal regenerate power pool in 15 seconds, you never run out. Go to an on level training dummy and burn for two minutes (no pet) if you do not run out your good.
Tactical Mitigation
Resistance
and
Finesse – More of use in groups or raids, but always good to have just in case.

NOTE: LM and Power mechanics are changing. So the above may change.

IF you group or raid you should have two complete sets of armour and LIs customized for Red the other set for Yellow/Blue

Good Luck

[Halphast]

In Order
Tactical Mastery – yours is too low - you want this to be as high as you can get
Fate – Want ICPR as high as you can get it – goal regenerate power pool in 15 seconds, you never run out. Go to an on level training dummy and burn for two minutes (no pet) if you do not run out your good.
Finesse – More of use in groups or raids, but always good to have just in case.

Thank you! Yeah, I used to focus only on Tac Mas, but like I said above, all of a sudden everything was getting "deflected" / "evaded". Someone suggested Finesse might help (since I had almost none)- and it did help- but I probably swung too far in that direction. Thanks also for the ICPR tip- I had been ignoring that, but of course landscape fights are short.

[Mithithil]

Worth noting that mitigations can depend on what sort of mob you are facing.

Casters wear light armour, the maximum they might mitigate tactical damage is 40%
Ranged mobs its 50% assuming they have the equivalent of medium armour
Melee mobs is 60% assuming they have the equivalent of heavy armour

Ancient Craft, sticky tar and the raven debuff will more or less negate the effect of light armour mitigation may have on fire damage but lightening will not gain the ebenfit of tar and the raven unless your lighting sets the ground on fire, you may well get a viable alternatice effect from Cracked Earth or Ents Go To War, both of which do fire damage (why EGTW is fire based I have no idea!)
Medium armour is also messed up well by AC
Heavy armour is, I think, reduced to roughly the equivalent of light by your debuffs.

Beware, all the numbers I recall are old, dating back to pre Mordor stuff, signature mobs have resistances and mitigations above standard, elites more than that and so forth.