Thread: How much morale is normal for a 75 Champ - Unbuffed.

I know the answers will be all over the spectrum here but I'm curious so I'm going to ask. At level 75, what is the 'normal' or 'average' Morale that Champions should have - unbuffed? I'm strictly interested in the numbers when you first log in with no cappy buffs, no food, no tokens, Glory not enabled etc. What do you consider normal for Fellowship play? What do you consider normal for Solo play? Please give your actual Morale number (not the vitality stat number) when answering but feel free to include any details about how you obtained this number. I've been watching in Galtrev for quite a while and it looks like the numbers are all over the place so I'm just interested in hearing everyone's opinions.

Answers will no doubt depend a lot on play style so feel free to include details about that in your answers.

6000+ and you are fine...

Under 6000 and you've got problems.

Also keep in mind that the more morale you find on a champ the more they hit like a wet noodle...

The champs that are stacking morale and vitality have very poor might, agility and finesse stats.

Me and most champs I know, would feel weird if under 7k but builds can differ greatly. A lot of people go all dps and try to stack morale with it, but if you can get a fat stack tactical and physical mitigation, 10k+, while maintaining respectful mastery, you won't have to worry too much about a specific amount.

I mostly play solo but prior to Update 5 I did a lot of 3 mans trying to get a few better gear pieces. I saw a lot of level 75 champs with under 5K of morale and that seemed low to me. I saw one that was around 3K! They died quickly in School / Library. Currently my morale is 8910 unbuffed and my might is 1356. I know that's not great compared to some others but for my solo build it seems to be going okay so far. I would like to make that morale an even 9000 but I don't want to lose anything in the process so it's difficult. I just keep working on it though.

Roughly.. my morale is around 8K with 1300 might .. hmmm, 5,3k crit , 17k phys mastery ... and phys/tact mit in the 7K range .. but I'm just now getting better gear and need new leggings and the draigoch cloak.. expect my might will go up along with my phys mastery

I agree less than 7k is not a good number. Keep it above 7k with a high physical (approx 10k) and tactical mitigation(approx 6k). Personally, I'm sitting at 8164 morale, 3194 power, 1782 might, 846 vitality, 23k physical mastery, 6k crit, 9170 physical mitigation and 5409 tactical mitigation.

I've got 6k morale, 2k power, 9k crit and 27k phys mast. Served me well so far. Best not to let it get any lower than 6k morale, though.

Your build sounds inline with mine Joroc. After a couple fairly easy items to get ill be at 7.5k morale, 7k crit, 5k finesse, 11k physical and 10k tactical mit, all while maintaining around 21.5k mastery. I take a slight damage nerf but with those mits my survival skyrockets. I'm having a hard time finding a better compromise.

Ignoring the people giving advice on how you should build using full raid gear, I'd say about ~6,000 is minimum for the average Champ. After that, just build for damage. You'll be able to do most anything except T2 ToO with that much. Obviously, if you start doing things of more than average difficulty, you'll want to build to suit and trade some damage for survivability.

Right now I'm running around with about 6.6k morale, 25k mastery, 7.4k crit and 5.2k finesse. I could go a little more glass cannon than that, but wouldn't gain much DPS statwise for significant drops in morale, so I'll stay about where I am (morale, crit and especially mastery will go up significantly as soon as I hit kindred with the Limlight dudes in a couple of days). For most DPS situations, this is really enough. Even if I pull aggro, the bubbles are enough to keep me up until I can ebb or the tank can otherwise get aggro back. I will swap a couple of jewelry pieces to get up around 7.5-8K morale in situations where I know there's a guarantee (or pretty reasonable chance) of getting hit with some big AoE, like the Acid Trash in ToO.

I'd have to agree, under 6k is a bit dangerous, especially if you're heading for Orthanc. You can easily do most of Orthanc t2 with a 6k stack of morale though as long as you're aware of what's going on in the fight. I've seen champs with 10k+ morale but usually they hit worse than a melee RK. The golden spectrum would be 6-7k i think, though if you go for a glasscannon (which is a lot of fun to play) you'll end up at ~5.2k. If I see a champ with 8k+ unbuffed there's usually a lot of dmg missing and in most cases dmg is why we're there.
Just build according to your playstyle

i like to be around 7000. get much under that and your chances of surviving one of those exploding cold wisp things in a skraid decrease greatly (yeah, i know, bubble). my morale basically hasn't increased since level 65.

of course if you're tanking or in the moors you may want more.

I have over 7.5k morale, 26k+ physical, 8.3k critical. That is enough to both hit like a truck & not feel squishy in the Moors.

could you guys please add if you make use of the stat scrolls for might, vit, fate, agility or not so I can put your numbers in relation, and what is achievable by gear or store?

I drew the line at 6,5 k morale... since I almost never (except for 3-man-instances and questing) run around without a captian anymore, so you have around 7,5k buffed (even more with the moral-banner).

If no cappi is around, and there is to be some inc. damage expected, i try to reach the 7,5-8k unbuffed, dropping some might of course.

What seems to happen is that as you raise your morale, your crit drops pretty sharply. I'd consider 5.5k crit significantly gimped in damage output. The main reason I think for this is the selection of morale relics on LIs in place of crit ones... I have about 6.7k morale, 1700 might, 8k crit and 10k phys/6k tact mitigations unbuffed. I can switch to a build with 8k morale and higher mitigations for group content (where you'll be further buffed anyhow) and lose a little phys mastery (about 2k) but maintain high crit numbers (about 10k buffed afaik).

At one extreme I can build for 2.1k might/29k mastery/8k crit ... and just under 5.8k morale.

At another I can build for 1.5k might/22k mastery/5.5k crit ... and over 9k morale.

All with gear and jewellery I carry around. I have another whole set of gear in my vault for actual tanking and can get over 12k unbuffed with that, with significant reduction in damage but also far higher mitigations/resistance. I have +70 tomes in all stats, to answer one query raised.

Usual solo build is about 6.5k morale, 1.9k might. Grouping a little more morale, Ettenmoors even more. Also varies depending on who I'm grouped with and the nature of the content. The days of "one build to rule them all" are loooooong gone (and a good thing too).

I run at just about 7k morale exactly, a bit more than 1600 might, 6k crit, 5k finesse, 10k Phys Mit, 6k Tac Mit and 23k Mastery

I do have the old T1-5 stat tomes for M/A/V but I haven't gon to get the 6 and 7 versions yet. I could drop a bit more morale (and do) when running 2H but I get some extra crit and PhysMastery in that build (almost exactly +100% Melee when in Fervour) still I like my DW setup as a sort of middle of the road, a few jewelry swaps and I'm back up around 8.5k morale, trait blue and I'm ready to tank.

Well i run with a so called extreme built right now. 5.65k morale, more than 31k mastery and 7.35k crit after i lost some crit with the new jewels. it works pretty fine for me as things use to die fast. I change some gear for more morale or tact mitigation in ToO t2 bosses according to the situation but in t1 i maintain the same built fo almost all fights. As i said its pretty extreme but i love raw dps xD

In dps mode at the moment I sit at 7.9k (thank you turbine for raising the virtue rank limit!!) Mit: 10k(p)/7k(t)
Not too much of a dps drop,8.3k crit with 90% melee (with Fervour). Works well in raids and solo skirms. But if its soloing big stuff you're more interested in, you'll need a whole other setup. Just remember that you can give your morale a huge boost using virtues

Originally Posted by AmazingX

...90% melee (with Fervour)...

Just for comparison, with a 6k morale, 2.1k might and 29k mastery build I sit at 123% damage in Fervour.

Originally Posted by Tarmas_Eldar

At one extreme I can build for 2.1k might/29k mastery/8k crit ... and just under 5.8k morale.

At another I can build for 1.5k might/22k mastery/5.5k crit ... and over 9k morale.

All with gear and jewellery I carry around. I have another whole set of gear in my vault for actual tanking and can get over 12k unbuffed with that, with significant reduction in damage but also far higher mitigations/resistance. I have +70 tomes in all stats, to answer one query raised.

Usual solo build is about 6.5k morale, 1.9k might. Grouping a little more morale, Ettenmoors even more. Also varies depending on who I'm grouped with and the nature of the content. The days of "one build to rule them all" are loooooong gone (and a good thing too).

thanks for the info about your +70.

I don't have these, and since 4*+70 contributes severely to the relevant secondary stats, I can put the numbers I achieve with my current gear/LI setup more into relation (which still suck, btw ).

My limit is 7k morale.
Right now i am around 7,5k with crit 7,4 and PhyM of 24k.
Still missing some basic gear but i will not go under 7k morale.

Moving from draigoch set to Orthanc set will give you more morale but you will loose agility and i do think you will notice the "misses".

I have the new Lime Gorghe jewelery set and i personally don't like it as it cuts your critical hit ( and even some morale). Unfortunately since westfold there were never any good pockets for DPS.

The new great river crafted pocket item, something something (forgot the actual name) of defense, is very very good with nice +crit. I have it equipped on my champ. Does have a 6 day cool down to craft though

If I go glass cannon build then Im at 6,2 atm and possibly lower in the future (in raids with cappie buffs it isn't that bad then again). In the moors I wouldn't ride around with under 8 and prefer 9. I use glass cannon for questing as well - stuff mostly dies before it can do serious harm. For harder mobs, soloing stuff and tanking muster up as much as you can get while retaining a decent might still (I won't go under 1,1k).

Originally Posted by Nuth_KM

The new great river crafted pocket item, something something (forgot the actual name) of defense, is very very good with nice +crit. I have it equipped on my champ. Does have a 6 day cool down to craft though

Have that one and really like it 9x vitality 6xx crit 681 physical mit and 681 tact mit

I personally use 2 different builds:

1. (Raid):
6.568 morale, 10.4k tact. mitigation, 1774 might (23.4k phys. mastery) and 8.3k crit.
Really like that build in Orthanc, you reach about 60-65% tact. mitigation (buffed) while having damage-stats fairly high.

2. (non-raid):
5.644 morale, only around 3.4k tact. mitigation, 2250 might (28.9k mastery) and 8.6k crit.
Obviously much more fun than #1, but you'll need a pretty good healer/tank to make it work and pop your bubbles at the right time.


Note: I'm using Tomes of Might/Agility/Fate/Vitality (all Rank 7) and (old) profound Runes of Action, but I'm still missing that sweet reinforced Threkappi-Helm (75) for that extra Dev-Magnitude (so stats will lower just a little bit in near future).

Please excuse any grammar or language mistakes, I'm not a native.

Juhany

I got all 3 Stangard teal items now and i am at 6021 morale, 2300 power, 2200 might and 27k PhyMastery with my full dps set on. I have 5 ToO set2 and dragon boots on my dps set. I am 15k unbuffed with glory when i have my tanking set on.

Originally Posted by Tarmas_Eldar

Just for comparison, with a 6k morale, 2.1k might and 29k mastery build I sit at 123% damage in Fervour.

Mastery is overrated in my opinon. Crit is more important.
If you want to know why just check your tooltip damage on a skill like remorseless without fervour active and then check it again with fervour active so your "damage" increases by 20%. You will see that the actual damage increase is about 11 or 12%.

On topic.. As RK's and minstrels etc. can now get around 6,5K morale easily with high crit and mastery I would feel really silly if my champ had the same or less. 7K is the bare minimum to distinguish yourself from the squishies.

You already distinguish a lot from the squishies because you take around 20-30% less of any incoming damage then they do and also have more options to to make up for the low morale-pool.

So its actually those squishies who should have it higher if something isn't going swimmingly .

Originally Posted by Leanya

You already distinguish a lot from the squishies because you take around 20-30% less of any incoming damage then they do and also have more options to to make up for the low morale-pool.

So its actually those squishies who should have it higher if something isn't going swimmingly .

Except the squishes are usually able to DPS at range and can still parry/evade.

Replying from a more casual player's standpoint (I've done Saruman T1; not attempted T2. Done Foundry T-2 challenge; but, still nobbing around at acquaintance up around Stangard), my experience is it's safer to be at around 8k morale. There are times in Foundry or a 3 man where a boss or sig spins out a big hit(s) and whether the run succeeds or not depends on whether the champ is still standing. The most specific situations occur in Foundry Challenge- members of the group go down really fast at the end. My ability to have just enough morale to stay up made the difference.

There's great posts on alternative jewelry or armour that can be swapped for different situations, but, if I did that, I'd spend all my time arranging what I wear instead of playing.

All I can do, personally, is to run with 3 LI weapons and 2 champ runes. I swap them mid-fight as well as stances. I generally run with 4 blues and 3 reds; so, when entering a fight, I can be "up" at around 9+k (one of my champ rune is defensive rune which stacks vit/morale) in Glory when I take the first hit. I figure my being melee, I'll end up taking a hit first most of the time. After taking the first hit (or drawing aggro if I'm tanking), I switch to fervour and my 2H. This way, I can start out with more morale but hit decently once the fight starts. If my morale gets low during the fight, I switch back to Glory and the defensive rune (which carries a higher +incoming heal) until I'm in safe territory.

P.S. When entering a fight at 9+ morale, at least I look more imposing; when I'm really more of a wet noodle.
P.S.S. And, in the Moors, when I draw creeps back to the NPCs, throw on my bubbles and, then, switch to my 2H w/Fervour, then, they realize I'm less of a wet noodle.

Originally Posted by pwl120

Replying from a more casual player's standpoint [snip]

Wow, this makes me realize what a huge gulf exists between my personal casual-ness and other people's casual-ness. I have a 75 champion at 6.5K morale, with no super-special gear. I haven't really done much end-game stuff at all and I think I wouldn't last long if I did.

7889 Morale, 2032 Power, and 1354 Might. (4b, 3y) A decent solo build (post U6) But it works for me in glory, I just have to watch my aggro (some poor 'tanks' out there) But, when a great tank is in group, and pop Fervour (4r, 3y) I have about 6k ish morale and might jumps up a lot more. The best thing for group play is not to worry about morale, you shouldn't be getting hit anyways.

Originally Posted by Ixinix

Mastery is overrated in my opinon. Crit is more important.
If you want to know why just check your tooltip damage on a skill like remorseless without fervour active and then check it again with fervour active so your "damage" increases by 20%. You will see that the actual damage increase is about 11 or 12%.

The difference is that Mastery doesn't suffer from DR (except that 105% Melee Damage versus 104% Melee Damage isn't as big of an increase as say 21% versus 20%) while Crit suffers normal DR up to 15% and then serious DR after that point. Simply put the effort to build for crit over 15% will almost have to steal from mastery/might which means the base value for your hits drops and thus the returns on crits lowers as well. Now that isn't to say crit isn't useful...certainly up to the 15% or so mark the effort to get there is minimal and you can generally do so just by getting the AGI you need to keep your miss rate acceptable and stacking in a few other items that have crit anyway...but building for crit over mastery is...counterproductive IMO.

I think that it is a bit of a puzzle but with some effort you can get both mastery and crit pretty high while also having a decent amount of morale.

My RK is that first char that I ran through the Great River area and is now kindred with both Stangard and Limlight. Pre U6 I had 5,3k morale, 6,5k crit and about 25k mastery. By selecting the proper armour pieces and jewelry I am now at 6,6k morale, 9,5k crit and about 28k mastery. All unbuffed. There are still a few jewelry pieces I want to get my hands on but overall I'm pretty happy with that build. Also, I can really notice a difference in crits between 6,5k and 9,5k. From the top of my head it's going from 17,5% crit to 22%.

I still need to put a lot of work in my champ but I bet it's possible to play with jewels and gear so you get a decent amount of morale while keeping crit and mastery high.

9.5k health

15kish phys mast

19% crit

60% tact mit

~57% phys mit

might 1.4kish

respectively
i swap gear mid fight so some of these numbers will be lower during the fight but these are the highest they're at in a given fight.

mind you for this is for pvp

In my raid-DPS-build I am at
6.7k morale
2120 might
27-28k mastery
7.3k crit (18.something%)
unbuffed.

I lost about 500crit-rating with the Limlight Gorge jewellery, but gained ~200 might, just need to do the math to see what is better DPS wise.
In my opinion if I am not tanking this is more than enough morale, normal mobs die before I loose any significant amount of morale and even the spiders in Limlight Gorge are not to hard to beat solo(trolls only if all cooldowns are available in this build).
For tanking I can go to 12k morale with about 1k might (unbuffed), but in most situations outside of raids it is not needed. Even tanked one of the giants in Orthanc T2 using the DPS-setup(I think the healers had some heart attacks when I switched to CBR ), so no need for more morale.

After getting the Limlight DPS jewelry set, I'm sitting at about 6.7k morale, I believe 2010 might/27.5k-ish mastery, and 7.5k crit. It's kind of hard to gauge the DPS difference since loads of mobs in Limlight/RoF have such ludicrous mits, but then I ran a Foundry run last night and was sold when my DPS numbers were stomping my old parses in there, even without Swift to Anger slotted, which normally ups my DPS on the trash in there substantially.