Thread: Major Legacies upon reforge, odds and advice.

What is this "small chance" that turbine says we have on grabbing a major legacy at lvl 10, 20, and 30 reforges?

If no one has documented this I think I'd like to propose a group of 5-10 people recording 10 third ages they take to thirty and the legacy types they get at each reforge, major or minor, so that we can get a decent estimate on what this chance is.

That way we can definitively show players whether or not it's worth it to roll through multiple LIs when they hit cap hoping for additional major legacies if their classes benefit from it.




I'm particularly motivated to find out any info on how likely it is to grab a fourth major legacy because of my experience with staves after hitting cap with my LM. I think either I was extremely lucky until my recent staff experience, or extremely unfortunate with lvl 75 staves, and since a 2nd age is an eventuality that will diminish the importance of having four major LIs (with its huge tactical damage modifier advantage) I think it'd be nice to be able to make an informed decision concerning whether or not I should level new viable staves instead of passing them off to new LMs.

I recently restarted playing for the first time since shortly after Mirkwood's release. Slowly taking my three mains to 75; a lore-master, warden, and captain.

So far I've been a fan of the LI changes. But I'm thinking I may have been biased by good fortune.

See, I had been keeping my slots filled, purchased a 7th LI slot on the WDN and LM when they were on sale in the shop, and upgrading my both LIs in an alternating sequence every 1-3 levels. Each time I'd get a fourth major legacy, and three times a fifth, and had no difficulty deconstructing extras for plenty of my scrolls that kept my current items with the legacies I wanted.

I identified a staff that was way too good on my LM when he got to 74, equipped and leveled it, and am currently stuck with it.

Since I had a good staff I focused on a book first. My first try picked up two major tiers and has all the damage legacies with a -debuff skill resistance as the sixth. Pretty amazing, might even upgrade the tiers and put some nifty relics in it.

Now onto the staff... I've by this point purchased or found as loot about 40 staves and slot the most promising. No fourth major, which is what my goal is: tactical direct, staff strike cd, fire skills crit multiplier, and burning embers initial damage.

Now I'm positive that having a 74 with with the four legacies will outdamage a lvl 75 third age missing part of the huge fire damage equation. But I'm hesitant to let one level all the way to max to parse and find out when I can keep deconstructing them at lvl 31 and trying a new 75 third age staff with decent stats or legacy tiers. I also feel guilty for destroying so many staves that some players might have really enjoyed.

I know the point will be moot since the tactical damage rating is insane on 2nd ages, but I'm a casual player, and I've been doing all this leveling as I stroll through all the quests, exploring, and mat gathering for my crafting, grabbing the LIs during regular AH visits, etc.

So advice or info on the odds or a motion to discover them would be appreciated.

Thanks!

I lay no claim to a statistically significant contribution; I post only to stimulate others to contribute. The following observations are purely anecdotal...

I have a number of alts, as you can see by my sig. I've levelled to 31 or better at least 150 level 65 or better Third-Age LI's across all those alts. It seems to me that 20-25% of those end up with four majors by the time they reach level 30. That works out to a chance of between 1/12th to 1/15th (6.7% to 8.3%) on each reforge to receive a major for a Third Age LI.

I'm sure I'm wildly off. It is a small sample, and I've taken no notes. This is just my impression.

For Second Age, the odds seem to be much higher, but my sample size is so tiny that my experience is meaningless. Nevertheless, I've observed - between me and my kin - close to a 50% chance to receive a fourth major on a Second Age level 75 LI.

I'm convinced that LM staff LIs are bugged.

I've crafted 3 level 75 Second Age LM staves and not a one added a major legacy on reforge. That's 0 for 9. I thought the point of Second Age LIs was that you had a higher chance of getting a major legacy on reforge.

I've leveled dozens of level 75 Third Age LM staves but do not recall any of them getting a major legacy on reforge.

I've been inspecting LMs I see on my server (Gladden) and have noticed that not a single staff had more than the three starting major legacies.

My Second Age 75 LM book added one major legacy on reforge so I'm convinced this is a problem with the LM staff only. I've submitted a bug report so we'll see what happens.

Zetarond

9? Come on dude Make 100 or 200 of them and you MIGHT get some statistically HALF-useful data.

You must have missed the 6-major LM Staff someone was parading in GLFF a month or two ago on Gladden.

The staffs are not bugged. My staff has 5 major legs. But it did take me several tries to get it. Keep trying and good luck.

Originally Posted by The-Walrus

9? Come on dude Make 100 or 200 of them and you MIGHT get some statistically HALF-useful data.

Walrus, with just 9 reforges on level 75 Second Age staves you are absolutely correct that it's nowhere near any sort of useful sample size. On the other hand, I've leveled and reforged about 40 level 75 Third Age staves so that's well over 100 reforge events. According to http://docholidaymmo.com/2011/10/09/...s-in-isengard/

"You do have a chance of getting extra major legacies at each of the first three reforge levels, but it’s such a low chance (appx 5% each reforge) that you should consider a 4-major item a bonus"

With a 5% rate and over 100 reforges I should have seen at least one by now. I've seen zero.

I continue randomly inspecting every 75 LM I run across but have yet to see a single staff with more than three major legacies. I'm on GLFF in Gladden but missed the 6-major staff parade. That would be incredible...

Originally Posted by ZetaDraconis

Walrus, with just 9 reforges on level 75 Second Age staves you are absolutely correct that it's nowhere near any sort of useful sample size. On the other hand, I've leveled and reforged about 40 level 75 Third Age staves so that's well over 100 reforge events. According to http://docholidaymmo.com/2011/10/09/...s-in-isengard/

"You do have a chance of getting extra major legacies at each of the first three reforge levels, but it’s such a low chance (appx 5% each reforge) that you should consider a 4-major item a bonus"

With a 5% rate and over 100 reforges I should have seen at least one by now. I've seen zero.

I continue randomly inspecting every 75 LM I run across but have yet to see a single staff with more than three major legacies. I'm on GLFF in Gladden but missed the 6-major staff parade. That would be incredible...

You know why you are not seeing many people with 4 or more majors on their LIs? Because the average simple Simon doesn't care - or possibly doesn't have money/patience/time/all of those to go through 10 LIs until he finally gets one additional major. Hell you also need LOADS of IXP to do this, too. It took me weeks on my captain.

5 majors here.

I guess I got incredibly lucky with my L75 SA bow. Since I'm presuming it was born with the usual 3, I assume I got really lucky on the reforges. That said, it had bad legacies and low tiers, and took a lot of legacy changes and tier upgrades to get it fully perfected. But I was solo at the time, and the worn symbol cost me 450 gold on auction in January, so I just did what it took. Never thought about it before, but very happy with it to be sure. I know it's not a staff, but I doubt the stats work differently.

450 gold? Oh my! You could get one in a skirmish... Or not, if you were similarly (un)lucky as me
Still I probably wouldn't bother with it if I was a solo guy


My biggest luck was my 3rd age 65 emblem on my captain long ago. I only realized what kind of diamond I had when I was about to decon it after several months. Five majors, lol. Never managed to repeat that on any char.

Got 6 majors on a level 75 3rd Age Captain's Emblem this week. Couldn't believe it!

Intresting reading so should i always ID any weapon /trinket i get i seem to get loads in Moria. Many of then i can not use

Got 5 majors on my lvl 60 1st age bartered hunter's sword.. Its the first mainhand LI I leveled above 20, so I am glad I came across this thread, or I may have deconned it without knowing how lucky it was. Since dps apparently isn't an issue for hunters on their mainhand LIs, looks like I will be throwing a lesser delving scoll on it and keeping it indefinitely

Originally Posted by Cbollo

Got 5 majors on my lvl 60 1st age bartered hunter's sword.. Its the first mainhand LI I leveled above 20, so I am glad I came across this thread, or I may have deconned it without knowing how lucky it was. Since dps apparently isn't an issue for hunters on their mainhand LIs, looks like I will be throwing a lesser delving scoll on it and keeping it indefinitely

<br><br>I think 'indefinitely' might be a little strong/optimistic as with each passing tier of relics that gets released, you'll become further and further behind with what you can slot into a lvl 60 first ager. While they certainly can stick around longer than a primary dps LI, eventually you'll want to upgrade to something at max level so you can slot the highest level of crafted relics since those give a really nice boost.

Originally Posted by Dark_Toad

I have a number of alts, as you can see by my sig. I've levelled to 31 or better at least 150 level 65 or better Third-Age LI's across all those alts. It seems to me that 20-25% of those end up with four majors by the time they reach level 30. That works out to a chance of between 1/12th to 1/15th (6.7% to 8.3%) on each reforge to receive a major for a Third Age LI.

That sounds broadly in line with what I've seen over the years. I would have said more like 1/3, but 1/4 likely isn't far off either.

I also think the chance is per legacy option, not per reforge.

At each reforge, you get two options. It does happen occasionally that both are majors.

Incidentally, in RoR the store sells "Crystals of Remembrance" which automatically add a major legacy to any LI (so it's even better than a reforged major, because you end up with seven legacies, although the added legacy is blank and will start at Tier 2 when you replace it from a legacy scroll). Pre-orders of RoR get one gratis, a clever promotional move.

Obviously this is a major power enhancement for spending cash (aka pay-to-win). Unclear if these Crystals will also drop in-game, like Star-lit, etc.

Fact of the matter is that with each expansion an entirely new level of LI's is added and these new LI's use totally different items for leveling them.

Level 66-75 LI's use Greater Scroll of Delving (10 more levels), Greater Scroll of Empowerment (Upgrade a Legacy Tier), Worn Symbol of Celebrimbor, Worn Symbol of the Elder King, Star-lit Crystal

Level 76-85 LI's will have an all new version of the above listed items. Rohan Scroll of Delving, Rohan Scroll of Empowerment, Rohan symbol of Celebrimbor, Rohan Symbol of the Elder King (at some point in the future), Star-lit Crystal for lvl 81-85 LI's

The costs for Melding etc. also go up with each LI division. To the point that it becomes entirely to expensive to try to get the best Relics on your LI's because you need nearly 50,000+ shards for just ONE LI.

The LI system has become so expensive that I am not going beyond Tier 6 for melding relics. The cost (especially once Rohan goes live unless they change things) is just way to high.

It's nice to get a 4th Major, extreme luck to get a 5th Major. The fact that you deconstruct your LI so often means that until you get to a fairly high level it's not worth worrying overly much about it. Even at level cap I would not stress over it simply because you will at some point in the future deconstruct all your hard work and start over.

The system is random and can be very painful if you grab the short end of the random number generator.

I wanted a L75 2A bow with 4 majors.

Over the course of almost 3 months, I went through 7 separate L75 2A bows (each of course burning a Worn Symbol of Celebrimbor) and got... NONE with 4 majors.

This with a L75 character that is 98+% solo (second char is L52), so that's a pretty vast quantity of wealth to have spent on the AH, not to mention the work required to run repeatable quests to get enough IXP. I spent between 200 and 300 gold on the bows, effectively for no return.

Thankfully, I have since played through some larger instances (a few times through Foundry T2 and maybe a handful with the dragon), so I have some medallions & seals for barter, in addition to a store of almost 2M IXP for my L85s (plus a WSoC for my next character from the Draig deed).

As far as advice: Don't depend on the 4th major. My experience convinced me to give up the "keep up" grind, and I have dropped my playing time from 20+ hours a week to maybe 4. What's left is now fun for what I do, and no longer worried if others have better stuff (for example, I happen to be the only one in my kin w/o a Draigoch cloak, also a consequence of the RNG ...in this case /roll)

Back in lvl 65 times I went through 20-25 weapons for each of my two chars. It was enormous pain in the &&&, but I also made my first 1000g selling LIs with 4 majors, lol.

Of the 6 LIs I have slotted atm, only my lvl 75 2nd ager ID'd with less than 4 majors... Wth