Thread: Suggestion for Merciful Strike

Since Merciful Strike requires at least 1 Fervour, I thought it would be logical to also increase damage by 10% for each point of Fervour up to a maximum of 50% for 5 Fervour pips. This will make 'Merciful Strike' a more transparent 'execute' skill which I would be more prone to use in my day-to-day combat with foes. Merciful Strike may require a minor damage tone-down to balance it out, but I thought this suggestion would be required since I find it weird that Merciful Strike requires at least one fervour pip, rather than simply one.

Merciful Strikes already does exactly what you suggest .

Originally Posted by Thruili

Merciful Strikes already does exactly what you suggest .

Following up and reinforcing the above I present the following:

So went and double checked with my current build I have:
0 pips = 613-869
1 pip = 613-869 (?)
2 pips = 752 - 1,050
3 pips = 827 - 1,145
4 pips = 905 - 1,243
5 pips = 985 - 1,344

Now I'm pretty sure the fact that the 0 and 1 pip tooltips are the same is a result of the skill requiring at least 1 fervour, so it calculates the 1 pip level as the absolute minimum and then just displays it for both 1 pip and 0 pips.

Anyway the min/max differential percentages are as such:
1 pip to 2 = +22.6% min, +20.8% max
2 pips to 3 = +9.9% min, +9.0% max
3 pips to 4 = +9.4% min, +8.5% max
4 pips to 5 = +8.8%min, + 8.1% max

The damage per pip average (that is min+max/2*pips) works out to:
1 pip = 741 dmg/pip
2 pips = 376 dmg/pip
3 pips = 329 dmg/pip
4 pips = 268.5 dmg/pip
5 pips = 233 dmg/pip


SO basically the step from 1 pip to 2 pips is pretty decent (between 21 and 22% increase) but after that you start to see heavily diminishing returns particularly as regards dmg/pip. Now that being said on a per pip basis I don't think there is a better skill at 2 pips (Brutal is better at 3, and Ferocious at 4, Remorseless is better at 4 than Merciful but less than Ferocious...not taking crits in to account)

Oh, I see. It would be helpful if the damage increases would be mentioned in the skill description. The Turbine developers made it clear as to how Sudden Defence/Adamant would be affected depending on the amount of fervour pips. Thanks anyhow! :-)

Considering the gate and cooldown, unless it does more damage then remorseless it'll be useless.

use it to spend the rest of your pips after your brutal clobber / feral / remorseless. it can easily hit over 1.5k with one pip.

5 pips -> brutal -> clobber -> merc strike. fires off almost all at once if you hit them simultaneously with even less than a 1s delay between then. and since its a fast skill it does a pretty good job at interrupting other skill animations just like clobber (not sure if they fixed that but it used to)

easy way to spend the last pip and to follow with wa / ss and add a potential 1-2k on a crit. (as long as its traited with the 50% morale gate and you can use it more than once in a fight)

don't know why more ppl dont use it i almost always have it traited for pve or if im full glass canon spec.

Originally Posted by klover307

use it to spend the rest of your pips after your brutal clobber / feral / remorseless. it can easily hit over 1.5k with one pip. <snip>

^^ This. The damage/fervour ratio is also higher when used at 1 pip. The only things I'd want to change about Merciful are the base crit/dev multipliers. They're currently at 1.1/1.6 (which is normally used for autoattacks and off-hand attacks) instead of 1.5/2.0 (the standard values for skills) for some reason.

Since the skill is only marginally useful, I say just change the trait so that, instead of increasing the gate, it just increases the damage by a truckload. Make the damage per pip linear at least and give it the same crit/dev multipliers as Remorseless when traited.

I know how much people hate LotRO being compared to WoW, but one of the things I really miss about playing my warrior in that game was watching bosses melt when they hit 10% HP from the warriors wrecking them with Execute. I wanna do that on my champ. (Having the WoW warrior's Charge and Intercept abilities would be sweet, too, but probably way OP in the Moors I guess).