Rise of Isengard: Dev Diary Feedback: Stat Updates

[Idiotvillage]

I would tend to think not ooga, the lore master ancient cures spell presently gives a disease and wound resist buff after diseases and wounds are removed, the proposed changes to lore masters abilities has these buffs removed. It would seem inconsistent for cappy? resist buff to be applied across all resistances.

[Gilean-EU]

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

Okay, there's no need for an attitude like that. I didn't read the whole thread this time and didn't realise it was already asked (by Lilka) and answered (by someone else) already. So I understand it now.

[furtim]

Stats will be getting an update with the launch of The Rise of Isengard™. Read more about these changes in the latest developer diary from Ken "Graalx2" Burd and post your comments here!

So, two questions about the content that I haven't seen addressed amidst all the doom, gloom, and whining. (The more my fellow Captains complain, the more I think you need to nerf our melee damage HARDER just to get them all to just quit already.)

Re Finesse: As a "new stat", will it be something that all characters have and progresses by level, like the existing stats, or will it solely appear on gear? Because, when it comes to concerns about "gating" and "Radiance 2.0", giving everybody a scaling, baseline amount seems like a good way to mitigate the worst consequences of the old Radiance system. Providing Finesse food, etc., and basically just treating it like any other stat would go a long way, I think, it easing acceptance of it.

Re consolidated ratings:

These changes are being made to make items with these bonuses more useful to more classes.

Are you consolidating ratings on gear or on players? If the latter, does this affect monsters, too? How does that effect, for instance, that boss fight in Haudh Valandil where one boss is basically invulnerable to all but Westernesse damage?

That is, do the split up resistances still exist in game, or will all specific resistance buffs, including ones from cure skills like the Captain's Muster Courage, be reduced to one stat?

[GDavey]

This is looking really good

My sole concern is that Finesse will be the new Radience. "Sorry, you can't come to this raid w.o. this or that gear. You need at least X Finesse to do raid Y or you'll hit squat". I'm sure the devs have learned from the Radience backlash and won't go down the same path

Exactly, and even if it isnt intended this way you know this is how its going to be used.

[PycBouH]

I think that the finesse system is very raw yet because it looks like different classes have different soft caps of fenisse rating.

For example, tanks have to maximize fenisse rating for stable threat generating because they stay face to face with boss.

At the same time melee/ranged DD can do their work with minimal fenisse rating, stayng behind boss, because in that case Block and Parry are always 0% and Evade is only half of base value

Next, tactical DD/Debuf classes have to maximize fenisse rating, but healers dont need it at all.

I hope that Turbine rethink the finesse idea.

[ANewMachine]

Will Virtues be updated for the Resistance changes? I mean, how many will just give generic Resistance boosts now, where once they were Poison/Fear/etc. resist?

[furtim]

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

We don't deserve it. Purely based on the terrible attitude of other Captain players, I'd say we should LITERALLY have all of our weapons turned to nerf. Or convert all of our skills to Tactical cries. But keep the Will*1 to damage.

I've never met a more miserable, ungrateful, whiny, demanding bunch; considering how long I've been around the internet, that's saying a lot.

[Alanras]

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.

In other words: Radiance is now called Finesse. More gear gating fail. Sorry if this has already been said or disproved. I don't have time to read all 14 pages.

[Ayrolen]

I've never met a more miserable, ungrateful, whiny, demanding bunch; considering how long I've been around the internet, that's saying a lot.

Clearly you haven't spent much time in the Hunter forums.

[maradakia]

I started a thread on the General Discussion forums, thinking that was an appropriate place for this, to discuss, and bring to my community and my dev's attention, some concerns about the stat updates. Since it seems to have gotten overlooked there, I guess I'll link it here.

Please take a look at this: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...y-Stat-Changes

Thanks.

[furtim]

Clearly you haven't spent much time in the Hunter forums.

There are Hunter forums? What do they even have to talk about other than making "pew pew pew" noises at one another?

[Ayrolen]

There are Hunter forums? What do they even have to talk about other than making "pew pew pew" noises at one another?

lulz.

"You have given out too much Reputation in the last 24 hours, try again later." Too many funny posts to rep this morning!

[Graalx2]

About Finesse:
So does this mean that Guardians will be getting that many fewer block responses on raid bosses?

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.

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?

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

[Bowman_lp]

I'm more directly concerned about the vast superiority a warden will have over a Guardian with the ability for a warden to continually buff their avoidances to stupid levels, meanwhile a Guardian can do it for a certain time then it goes onto cooldown.

I'm expecting Guardians to get a severe buffing since this is happening or a warden will be able to tank stuff that a Guardian cannot due to how difficult it will be for a Guardian to get their BPE up to 25% (30% with block stance?)

Infact... why hasn't the guardian dev diary been announced yet? We got told it was coming a long time ago and everyone else (except rk) has had theirs already, meanwhile we sit here twiddling our thumbs reading through stuff which seems all doom and gloom until we know how it'll effect us.

Guardian updates should have been announced before this so we knew how this would effect us.

Benefits from givin up heavy armor for medium??? Finally pay off... Lol

[Baslin]

How (if at all) are creep classes being considered in being able to raise ratings/avoidances to account for the new cap?

[Galahadur]

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

Sad to hear that. Eventually = probably never in Turbine's terms.

[Elderban]

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

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

Sad to hear that. Eventually = probably never in Turbine's terms.

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.

[JBriz]

I like the upcoming change to the stat caps (Might just have to dust off my annuminas set ). As my main is a runekeeper, I am a little curious as to where fate will come into play and if crit chance will receive a cap increase or if it will stay at 15 (I see it as staying else many dps could then be considered OP). If someone could help clear up what will happen to crits and where fate will come into play that would be great.

[SaintBass]

Overall, I really like the changes, but like most, I have concerns about the "Finesse" stat. At a glance, I really like the idea, but in thinking it over, I feel that it should affect more than just offense, but defense as well (finesse counters finesse). This would make the stat important, but never have a chance to become overpowering. In addition to that, it could also be influenced by primary and secondary attributes in addition to armor. With a multitude of factors influencing it, as well as the ability for it to be countered, it steps away from being a huge game changer and back to being merely influential.

[funkygrunt017]

30% crit chance for cappys, awwww yehhhh.

[moebius92]

4. And then finally topped off with ... diminishing returns. You thought after all that enormous amount of work, when you finally got that you'd have made some advance ...

"...but they were, all of them, deceived."

You're right, and you're wrong about this. You're wrong on the defensive side of things in that diminishing returns doesn't really exist, but right on the offensive side of things in that diminishing returns is ... weird (especially considering that there aren't exactly diminishing returns on the defensive side of things). So, I'm going to talk about why diminishing returns don't exist on the defensive side of things.

First, start off by assuming that there are no diminishing returns and that for simplicity's sake, there's one defensive attribute that is damage mitigation. Consider your effective survivability, which is 1 / - what this means is if you take full damage, your effective survivability is 1 - you're as hard to kill as your morale bar says you are, but if for example, you took half damage, your effective survivability is 2 - you're about twice as tough as your morale bar, or twice as tough as someone with the same stats, except for having an effective survivability of 1. In terms of effective survivability, not all +1% increases are equal. To demonstrate the extreme case, if you have 0% mitigation and you get +1%, you go from 100% incoming damage to 99% incoming damage, or a little over a 1% increase in effective survivability. If you have 99% mitigation, and you get +1%, you go from 1% incoming damage to 0% incoming damage, or an infinite increase in effective survivability. Which is understandable, at 99% mitigation, you are killable; at 100% mitigation, you are no longer killable.

Now, the diminishing returns formula is / ( * + ). So, incoming damage is 1 - / ( * + ). Which means effective survivability is 1 / (1 - / ( * + )). Doing some simplification, we get that effective survivability is 1 + / ( * ), or effective survivability increases linearly with your defensive rating.

It's actually better than that, in that the best guess is that avoidances are summed, so on the avoidance side of things, your effective survivability increases faster than linearly assuming that you distribute your avoidance ratings amongst the three avoidances.

There's no equivalent set up for the offensive side - i.e., the amount of rating needed to make you twice is tough, will not make you do twice as much damage. In fact, due to way the diminishing return equation is set up, it's impossible to get +100% damage solely from ratings. On the other hand, I note that there are numerous traits, legacies and set bonuses that give fixed +% increases to damage, but no real equivalents on the defensive side of things, which may be an attempt to balance things out. I don't know.

Edit: I should note that the 25% point mentioned on the dev diary doesn't match the currently known formula for diminishing returns - as far as I know, it's not known what form the diminishing returns equation will take with Rise of Isengard.

[CWood]

Simplified mechanics and neo-Radiance are exactly what this game doesn't need. Doubly so since it looks like they're just being superimposed over the existing stat mechanics.

[Sangahyando]

Ok...developers just need to remember to let the MP's increase their stat caps to match.

[.Six]

Many sensible improvements. Can't see the problems others do with Finesse.

Way to drive the min-max people mad, the normals mental, the oldies insane and the newbies twizzle.

[Beldacar]

In other words: Radiance is now called Finesse. More gear gating fail. Sorry if this has already been said or disproved. I don't have time to read all 14 pages.

Actually, there's one big difference: with the Radiance mechanic, if you didn't have enough, you simply were useless due to cowering; with the Finesse mechanic, you can still participate, even if you experience a few more misses or resists.

Most importantly, it makes it way easier to bring an alt healer along. With Radiance, even your alt healers needed to be geared up in order to do their part. With Finesse, you can bring the alt Minstrel/Rune-Keeper along and still perform your primary role.

So the content isn't really "gated" per se. There's still lots of incentive to gear up, but it's no longer "mandatory" in order to =try= the content. And that makes a huge difference.