Thread: Rise of Isengard: Dev Diary Feedback: Stat Updates

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!

No caps on main stats at all? holy...

And we get tact crit passives... while not really, but same effect lol

Umm, i dont really know if this is better or not

This seems like a really solid change. I can't wait to see additional Dev Diaries.

Brushfire

how can it be bad besides

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.

Which really sounds like their just re doing rad but rather then locking the person out if they don't have enough from previous raids they can go in and help... just be slightly less helpful. (means you can use healer alts more then you could use DPS alts)

caps being removed from basic stats like Vitality sounds interesting, this has the potential of allowing massive morale pools (for Guards/Wardens in particular), but then, how much more of a stat can we expect on gear? there may not be a fixed cap on stats, but I expect there will still be a severe amount of limitation based on what's actually available.

Woah...
This should be interesting to test out.

A huge change from the past couple years. Though I can see why... it will allow them to make the difficult content more difficult. If a tank really has to gear out for mitigations that will be a huge when tanking a hard hitting boss. Same thing with healers wanting to heal those tanks.
Plus it gives them room to grow with new gear that gets added later on.

Removing stat caps means my tanky morale pools are gonna be huge! Not to mention tactical power pools ofc.

The consolidation of crit i do like, no more 'trash for everyone but hunters' gear

Agility for burglars is interesting, I find it easier to get agi atm so can't complain too much, and about time they had comparable offense calculations.

My one and only concern is the future of non class specific medium armour (book rewards etc). With hunts and burgs both relying on agility completely I hope there will be plenty of options for Wardens (as things stand heavy tanking armour options are miles better than medium).

Burglars are a special case. We decided to switch their primary offence rating to be based off of Agility rather than Might. We felt that this Agility focus more closely matched our vision for Burglars and would have minimal impact on current burglars as Agility was already highly desired. And yes all of you burglars out there, you will get 10 times your Agility contribution to Melee Offence.

My burg is loving this change, brilliant.

We have also changed the contribution to most class’s Offence ratings to use their primary stat * 10. 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.

Okay, so my question about this, then. . .will we see stats like Might removed off of hunter gear, and like changes with all classes and their gear?

Ah I forgot to say thanks to the Devs, in a similar vein to the recent switch to making Meds of North Men bind to account, these changes are looking brilliant.

Keep up the good work!

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

Remember there will be huge diminishing numbers.

Concerns about Finesse:

-Seems like useless stat for healers.

-Will be there recommended numbers you want to have for instances/raids? For example I don't want to miss or get resist on my hunter/rk/warden so I need 200 Finesse for 6man instance bosses and 400 Finesse for the raid bosses?

Wow! This is huge! I have no idea what to think...

... other than getting rid of all might on hunter gear, yea, that's basically it XD

It will be really interesting to see how this plays out.

Originally Posted by Fin.

Will be there recommended numbers you want to have for instances/raids? For example I don't want to miss or get resist on my hunter/rk/warden so I need 200 Finesse for 6man instance bosses and 400 Finesse for the raid bosses?

I'm sure there will be more specific numbers once we get closer to launch. I wouldn't worry about it too much right now.

Other than that, I'm very excited. I really want to see what you guys are coming out with next!

Originally Posted by Fin.

Remember there will be huge diminishing numbers.

Concerns about Finesse:

-Seems like useless stat for healers.

-Will be there recommended numbers you want to have for instances/raids? For example I don't want to miss or get resist on my hunter/rk/warden so I need 200 Finesse for 6man instance bosses and 400 Finesse for the raid bosses?

I think it will be less an exact number, since its just a resist chance decrease, but more the better type thing. You'll most likely end up wanting people to have a good amount if they are expected to DPS in any form. Of course without testing it there is no way to know how much the bosses will have their finesse at (Speaking of which will finesse be on the lore-masters "knowledge of middle-earth" or w/e skill that reads defenses?).... Mind you by the second raid we'll know basically what you need, just from the fact we'll have the previous raids finesse gear, and know that is what the dev expects lol.

Originally Posted by Clover

This means that Lore-masters, Minstrels and Runekeepers will use Will to contribute to their Melee offence.

Umm..well super, can't wait to have more melee offence.

I'm impressed this seems a really nice change to make and should open up different specs to classes rather than having 90% of the best players of a class in the same gear.
Only issue i can see occurring is backdating ideas with for example some of the gear at the moment available hunters will be at a huge advantage on isengard release and whilst leveling at 65 as there is incredible agility stacking gear whereas very little might stacking gear so without caps at 65 hunters and burgs would massively outweigh champs for dps. Same for Rk's and Lm's who can get ridiculously high will/fate

These changes sound very interesting and a solid step in a great direction!

There was no mention of mitigations (eg melee, ranged, tactical) only resistances. Will the cap be raised on those as well or will those stats be done away with? I foresee some very difficult choices in gear ahead.

I love the stat cap removal and the increase in BPE caps (I easily get to 8-9k block on my warden if I use most of my +block gambits), however, I dislike the further consolidations. I see the resistance, mitigation, and many skill combinations in classes like LMs is a further dumbing down of an already easy game. I do hate the current uselessness of stacking, say, poison resist, but the solution seems to be to allow more functionality and more ways to increase resistances, not to combine them all together into one rating.

One question on primary stat contributions: does this mean wardens and guards will no longer get +5 morale for 1 vit? Again, I am worried that the "leveling the playing field" is just another blending together of classes and roles in a game where there are already very limited class and skill options. And with no new classes coming in RoI, this seems to mean we will be having another year or two of even less of the same ol'

Finally, I too hope that finesse does not become the new radiance...

Originally Posted by gonewhaned

how can it be bad besides



Which really sounds like their just re doing rad but rather then locking the person out if they don't have enough from previous raids they can go in and help... just be slightly less helpful. (means you can use healer alts more then you could use DPS alts)

Rift uses a similar mechanism to perform gear checks. There are three stats: Focus, Hit, and Toughness. Focus is required to hit with spells, Hit is required to hit with physical melee/ranged attacks, and Toughness is needed by tanks to reduce the effect of critical hits (basically it's the critical mitigation that already exists as a stat here).

Getting geared up enough to participate in non-raid instances is not difficult. It took most players a couple of weeks since a hybrid boss loot + barter system exists. Barter system stuff is better than boss drops, but the boss drops allow the player to progress into the more difficult instances. There are also various crafted items that have Focus/Hit/Toughness, and other buff items that add to those values that can be placed on your gear.

So the stat acts as a gear check, but it 1) is not too difficult to achieve for non-raiders, thus allowing them to access all non-raid instances and 2) minimally detracts from those more focused on progressive raiding, as they will be able to rely more on skill to make up for potential lacks in gear.

If the RoI instances use this type of hybrid approach, where instance drop gear can be used until enough barter items are collected to get the "best" non-raid instance drop, Finesse won't be a big deal. If RoI continues the current model where only the bartered gear is an improvement, then Finesse will be Radiance all over again.

Originally Posted by duamarth

Finally, I too hope that finesse does not become the new radiance...

In terms of gating instances, no, finesse will not become the new radiance. Turbine learned from that mistake, and they won't gate instances with some useless mechanic again. Don't worry.

In terms of forming groups to run said instances, I can see a little bit where you're coming from. Obviously, if someone gets invited to your group that doesn't necessarily have the recommended, or even any finesse, among players, yes, this might become somewhat of a gating issue.

The only way finesse is going to affect groups is if the players themselves see it as a sticking point to form groups upon. Other than that, I think it's a great addition and just gives us another 'stat' to improve ourselves with.

Better late than never--fantastic news. Please keep it up.

Couple of items...


Why not simply remove all caps? For BPEs and other Pre-Moria stats, this would just be like SoA when we didn't have any caps aside from the Primary stats.

Finesse - the new radiance?

Huh. Not sure exactly what to make of this yet. It is different. Just not sure if it's better.

One thing I don't like at the moment is the whole "Lore-masters use Will for melee offense" bit, nor the consolidation of the three tactical crit ratings into one single rating. It dumbs things down a bit, and I'm not sure I see yet where the big up-side is.

dude... 25% cap on BPE....

AWWWWWWW YEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!

That's just plain hawt, that's crazy hawt.


Most everything else just looks like it's easier to build your toon the way you want to, I'm happy with that as it means less stat juggling. The consolidation of tacticals, resistance, etc. is nice, no objections here. Finesse is meh, its a needed balancing factor to the new changes I guess.

The changes to secondary characteristics looks nice too considering the increased functionality primary stats will be getting. I've always been a bit disappointed with our primary stats because, well, they just didn't seem to do much of anything. Atm a difference of 100 might is hardly noticeable.


My only concern is that wardens need our +Crit Defense secondary characteristic, get rid of this and an already noticeable issue becomes more problematic. Could we at least make this into a gambit if not a secondary characteristic?

Originally Posted by Yosoff

My burg is loving this change, brilliant.

My Burg absolutely hates this change. Meh. Why couldn't Burgs have both instead?

Originally Posted by Regero

dude... 25% cap on BPE....

AWWWWWWW YEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!

That's just plain hawt, that's crazy hawt.

Remember bosses have Finesse too.

Originally Posted by Regero

My only concern is that wardens need our +Crit Defense secondary characteristic, get rid of this and an already noticeable issue becomes more problematic. Could we at least make this into a gambit if not a secondary characteristic?

I assume you are referring to the crit defense passive we have currently and will no longer have come RoI? At least that was my take on the whole all passives are being removed thing. So crit defense looks like it will only come through traiting/gear/relics.

Some of the changes seem positive, although I do have a couple of questions, as some of the points seem unclear to me.

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.

Is this a seperate stat from the existing tactical defence stat? So would we basically have:

Common mitigation
Tactical mitigation

Melee defence
Ranged defence
Tactical defence

If so, it almost seems pointless to retain the mitigation stats - would seem more worthwhile to scrap them altogether and make armour affect defence ratings instead.

My second question is 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.

Although I like the changes to the stat caps, I'm very wary of the stat consolidation. It does seem like a substantial dumbing down of the current mechanics, which is not a good thing imo.

Actually, Wardens using Might for Ranged damage makes some sense -- the stronger you are, the harder you can throw a javelin (and the bigger and more damaging the javelin you throw can be!).

I remember back in other MMOs, where you need specific armor sets for specific bosses (Fire, Frost, Shadow, etc), and not with nostalgia. So, combining those resistances and mitigations looks good to me (having a "Tactical" armor set and a "Melee" set for my tanks isn't too bad, but I'd hope that bosses would have a mix, so that you can't simply min/max two sets and be done with it . . . making a set that blends the two for overall tanking should be the way to go imo).

Cap increases/removals are great, especially with the idea that you have to do stat gymnastics to even reach those caps. This means that your caps are pretty much just the best gear you can get, not having to juggle caps.

Originally Posted by kimano

My Burg absolutely hates this change. Meh. Why couldn't Burgs have both instead?

Why would you rather have offence rating tied to might than agility? Might gives you block (need a shield to block) & parry. Agility gives you evade, parry & crit rating; it's also easier to get. Currently, burgs only get 7 points of melee offence rating per point of might, with this change we'll get the full 10. It's a positive change for burgs in every way.

Originally Posted by brasswire

Huh. Not sure exactly what to make of this yet. It is different. Just not sure if it's better.

One thing I don't like at the moment is the whole "Lore-masters use Will for melee offense" bit, nor the consolidation of the three tactical crit ratings into one single rating. It dumbs things down a bit, and I'm not sure I see yet where the big up-side is.

I agree that this seems like a simplification of the mechanics. One bright side that I can see is server load. Simpler calculations means less strain on the servers. That's a good thing, but we don't know what the cost is yet.

Also, for me, it is not clear on what affects tactical offense vs. tactical crit. Does Will now contribute to both? This is how I read the diary. If so, is Fate going away? If not, what will be its role? Vit directly affects morale pool. Is Will still going to be the stat that directly affects power pool? Not sure if it makes sense to do this with these changes.

Seems like each class just needs 'the one stat' and be done.

Originally Posted by IyvanEU

Common mitigation
Tactical mitigation

Melee defence
Ranged defence
Tactical defence

Damage type versus Attack type.

If a mob makes a ranged attack that deals Shadow damage, you combine Ranged Defense with Tactical Mitigation, for example. Also, personally, as a tank, I like having a greater variety of universally useful tanking stats (unlike Shadow Mitigation or Poison Resist, which are useful only in certain situations, if at all). Otherwise, it is just maxing those that we do have, then just stacking dps/threat stats.

Originally Posted by Regero

dude... 25% cap on BPE....

AWWWWWWW YEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!

Yes, I can't wait to have this on my champ. Oh, wait....^^

The consolidation seems to be good thing, now I have to focus on might and can ignore agility on my champ for increasing hit chances.

Finesse: ääh, I really hope this system actually works. I am sick and tired of seeing standard NPCs b/p/e my melee attacks most of the time. Yet, this new system has a bad taste. Reminds me too much of radiance and I really hope there is no gating character behind this.

Btw.: Do we get an inherited/base Finesse value by leveling up like evade/parry etc.? Or will this only be increased via gear/items? If not, will there be classes who will have a higher base Finesse value?

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

So instead of everyone & their mother blindly stacking for pure offense (Ranged/Melee/Tact), they will have to consider Hit Chance as well (in the form of your Finesse stat). This gives Turbine the option to give bosses high BPE/Resist ratings, which they really can't do right now, and force that choice among us players: do you want to hit hard, or do you want your shots to hit? Both will become important.

Likewise, this gives Turbine a MUCH more elegant way to keep in check sky-high BPEs among tanks/heavies/burgs/etc, without lame solutions like caps. So if your bad-mamma-jamma Guardian is rolling around with 75% BPE + partials thinking you're invincible, no worries: Turbine can keep this from becoming overpowered in the form of Finesse for bosses.

Long story short, this is a great change/direction and should give players far more control over their characters/builds, which is why we all grind for loot to begin with.

Originally Posted by Harlinator

Also, for me, it is not clear on what affects tactical offense vs. tactical crit. Does Will now contribute to both? This is how I read the diary. If so, is Fate going away? If not, what will be its role? Vit directly affects morale pool. Is Will still going to be the stat that directly affects power pool? Not sure if it makes sense to do this with these changes.

Seems like each class just needs 'the one stat' and be done.

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.

As I understand it:
Captains have several tactical-based offensive skills: Battle-shout, Routing Cry, Noble Mark.
Captains currently receive 1 offensive rating for these skills per point of Will.
This 1x bonus will remain in RoI, whereas the other classes will receive 10x bonuses to their secondary offensive skills.

This does not seem right. Am I mistaken somewhere?

This means that Lore-masters, Minstrels and Runekeepers will use Will to contribute to their Melee offence. - Their MELEE? Is this a typo?
Hunters will use Agility for their Melee offence - er... typo?
Guardians, Champions and Wardens will use Might for their Ranged offence ratings. - ....typo?

I feel very stupid not understanding this. But OK, I'll roll with it. Can I safely assume that a Minstrel's Will contributes to their Tactical Offence, a hunter's Agility contributes to Ranged offence and a Champ/Warden's Might to their melee offence too?

As for the rest... yay! Makes things a lot simpler. I never expected to be a 'capped' player, but I have been for a long time and as someone who loves to collect shiny things, stat-juggling and trying to keep under the caps has not been as much fun as dripping myself in all my favourite pieces.

I can't say my burglar has a lot of Agi gear as I focused on Might... oh well, something to seek between now and RoI. High-Agility gear always seemed so much rarer than high Might gear, stuffed in BG and T2 OD and other unobtainable places.