Update 37 - Stat Crunch

[LordOfTheSquids]

Update 37 - Stat Crunch!​

1) Numbers went down across the board. Mostly by about a factor of about 10, in order to improve readability and reduce stat bloat.​

2) The balance of the game level over level has been smoothed out to reduce some of the more severe spikes and troughs in difficulty.​

3) Monster damage has gone up a bit overall, as has player healing - both relative to the player's overall morale pool.​

4) The level slighting tables have been updated to be a little more aggressive, to adjust to the fact that level over level differences in stats across the game are now smaller.​

--- This means that fighting mobs above your level now results in a small bonus to their damage and mitigation for each level of difference. However, we've reduced the 'automatic miss chance' that those tables applied, so that mechanic only kicks in once monsters are considerably (6+) levels above you. None of this has any effect when you are fighting enemies at or below your level.​

Update 37 - Beta#4​

• Reverted most of the mainstat changes as we're not going to be able to do proper itemization support for them in the short term.
• Did another pass to tweak the gearing ratios, and figured stats should now come out much closer to where they were prior to the stat crunch.
• One change that remains is that the figured stats gained from vitality and fate have both been reduced for all classes, as these stats now operate at a higher ratio compared to the other mainstats and they were over-contributing to figured characteristics. This should generally just keep their overall contribution similar to what it was.
• PvMP
  
  • Free Players now gain +50% Morale from having full Audacity equipment worn. This is because the stat crunch lowers player damage more than it lowers monster player damage, so this 50% morale bonus keeps the ratio of monster player damage to Freep morale where it was pre-crunch.
  • Monster Player morale and healing values have been adjusted as part of the stat squish.
  • Toxin's power drain is no longer increased by a Weaver's tactical damage or venom multiplier. Post stat-crunch, power is too tightly bound for toxin to have that degree of variance while being balanced.
  • Creep base ICMR has been adjusted, and Racial Traits which improve ICMR have been adjusted to match their pre-stat-crunch potency.
  • Creep max power has been adjusted, and should now match the reduced power costs of skills with the stat crunch.

 

[Sera67]

Whats reason for Edit to Fate? Its across so many Armors, And we all know alot of old armors will never get edits. (team is still getting beorn gear in check...(Didnt see Big Battle Beorn fixes listed) I use it over main boost like crit/fin, since it added to crit and other things all these years.

Fate is often pre-lv50 your main option across alot of armors. We don't need power regen that early, we need other bonus? don't we?.

I get IDEA of Beorn using Light Armor (will) to be a Healer and Heavy Armor Might to be a DPS. It Works. Its a good balance.

Why not leave Fate alone? I got so many characters who have Fate pre-lv140.. There no replacement gear really. And none of them need OCPR.
/shrugs.

I'm 100% looking forward for bloated numbers to be gone, looking to get back into PVMP cause of it.

 

[istvana]

until we actually level squish.

This is quite interesting, since I haven't seen an indication that you intend a level squish before.

Whatever you do - please do not take the approach WoW did of pretty much making leveling a one day affair and turning the entire world into a short and almost optional lead-in to maximum level. Gutting the experience of going through Middle Earth is very much not what LOTRO needs.

Also please do not make all or almost all zones level-agnostic so that any zone resets itself to match the character's level. Yes that gives more flexibility in what zones a character can go to in what order but it disasterously eliminates the value of gaining levels in the first place and prevents us from choosing whether we want to go to a zone below our level, at our level or above our level.

 

[Happy Kirby]

No matter what please don't do level scale in landscape and level squish, they never work in a story driven game like lotro, and never will work.

 

[TesalionLortus]

Maybe "until we actually do a lvl squish" was a typo. Because this would be a huge investment from the team and enormous project, taking into account all the content, stories etc, and they pretty much said they don't have resources.

Unless... gently squish it down to lvl 100 circa, stop classic levelling (and stat growth) and introduce new ways of progression? If, then that sounds easier and more interesting, to be honest. The current leveling with nothing new involved is boring anyway.

 

[Cordovan]

This is quite interesting, since I haven't seen an indication that you intend a level squish before.

Whatever you do - please do not take the approach WoW did of pretty much making leveling a one day affair and turning the entire world into a short and almost optional lead-in to maximum level. Gutting the experience of going through Middle Earth is very much not what LOTRO needs.

Also please do not make all or almost all zones level-agnostic so that any zone resets itself to match the character's level. Yes that gives more flexibility in what zones a character can go to in what order but it disasterously eliminates the value of gaining levels in the first place and prevents us from choosing whether we want to go to a zone below our level, at our level or above our level.

I have adjusted the wording in the OP. This was not intended to imply an upcoming level squish, which is NOT happening. The intention of that line was to explain that a stat squish above the level of 10 would be difficult without doing a level squish, but we are NOT intending to do one.

 

[kudurru]

I will need a guide for gearing up again. Only took me a decade to sorta understand what my champion needs

Fate does seem prevalent on the lower level pieces so that change is indeed curious.

 

[Cap]

The wording of OP also sort of implies that mainstat is being normalized across all classes, which thankfully is not the case.

 

[Rovano]

Taking the crit chance off of fate seems like a pretty big nerf, especially for caster classes- is anything being done to help compensate?

 

[Cordovan]

Updated text of the OP.

 

[Cap]

4) Mainstats (Might, Dexterity, Will)

Updated text of the OP.

One more time Cord. Bless you.

 

[squirle]

Other stats then main ones seem to be hit a lot harder then the 10x.
Physical mastery dropped 50%, Mitigations dropped 10%. Crit only 0,1% weirdly. Finesse went up 15%.
Physical mastery essences seem to be be hit by 20x same as crit. Heraldic Pmas also hit by a 20x.

 

[Norr]

Does this mean that people who worked out BiS items, virtues, essences etc. will be punished by more grinding? I primarily play endgame, and I feel like these changes just invalidate my effort that I have put in the game. I don't mean to be a negative Nancy, and I do agree that the game needed a stat squish, but did it really have to entail that people who actually tried to optimize their builds are being punished with more grinding?
Was there really no other way to accomplish the same goals while allowing endgame characters to retain their strength?

 

[Sera67]

Does this mean that people who worked out BiS items, virtues, essences etc. will be punished by more grinding? I primarily play endgame, and I feel like these changes just invalidate my effort that I have put in the game. I don't mean to be a negative Nancy, and I do agree that the game needed a stat squish, but did it really have to entail that people who actually tried to optimize their builds are being punished with more grinding?
Was there really no other way to accomplish the same goals while allowing endgame characters to retain their strength?

You basiclly called out what I wanted to say... I put abit of effrot into fate and slowly getting stat books.. I feel like abunch of work was just knocked off table. I've never need OCPR... (maybe back in SOA lv50cap days and Moria) Its a non issue. (outside a few power sapping instances they you couldn't over come)
I feel like some of my work is undone. I get after 13+ years (for me) games will change.

I really wanna fight Fate Change. There so much work to be done with this game, and adding "changing all armors of 16+ years" Feels like staff is shooting itself in Foot with a change that does not need to happen. Or had a Reason to happen.

 

[Maphyr]

4) Mainstats (Might, Will) have been redesigned to be more role specific for each class. We have long had a problem where a classes' main stat simply did not benefit one or more of their roles, resulting in a lot of badly allocated stats. The new design allows classes with multiple roles to use different mainstats that are designed to support those roles effectively. The general scaling of main stats have also been improved to make them more favorable.
--- Morale and Fate now specifically contribute to Morale and Power pools, and their regeneration. They generally no longer contribute to other stats (with the exception of Fate for Beornings, who don't use power as a class).
--- The gearing of the game has not yet been altered to fully support this, so players will still have to contend with the problem of their main armor pieces not necessarily supporting their role as well as it could. Jewelery is more flexible so that will tend to be less of an issue. Future itemization will more fully support this design, and we'll be working to expand the older gear pools to reasonably support the new statting as well. This will be an ongoing process for a while.

This is concerning. You've changed stats and what they do, knowing it will make peoples current gear worthless. The itemization changes should be completed with the stats changes, not something that "will be an ongoing process for a while". That really blows my mind.

 

[Elmagor]

If devs just decrease everything in game by 10, it will be more easy for players

In what style what we have, not only we have no idea why our stats looks like this now, we don't have any idea what we need do with that and what 140 level caps we have now.

And we even can see that only when BR servers online. So in next month or 2, not only devs will adjust (I hope) that stats, we will have idea what gear we need now, in 1-2 months when update actually hits live servers. Such update can work only if BR work longer when 3 day per 4-5 tests + method to copy characters into test must be less complicated

 

[Eddrick]

This is concerning. You've changed stats and what they do, knowing it will make peoples current gear worthless. The itemization changes should be completed with the stats changes, not something that "will be an ongoing process for a while". That really blows my mind.

Would think the might/will/vit/fate changes would have been better implemented with the level cap increase since everyone would need new gear and essences anyway for the new level cap. This way people with be scrambling to replace items just to have level cap increase and the need to replace items again. The team could also save the trouble of redoing all gear before expansion as well. Just my thoughts.

 

[Vernon]

I've read that gearing is really difficult past 105. In a future update, perhaps the expansion, will this be addressed? As far as the stat crunch, as long as leveling is not impacted, I have no issue.

 

[Eddrick]

Also, not sure if this was intended but doing quick math on a dps champ. might Phys master livid essence give 1412 mastery a might will give 1275 + 425 crit and 425 finesse. Which would reduce how many of each you need. Every 3 might essences would eliminate the need for 1 crit and 1 fate, which could be replaced with another might and a vit or mit so all new essences will be in order. And this seems to be a change back when Mordor came out and master, vit etc was made to be better than might, morale will etc. If this was intended, then no biggie but wanted to point it out. Please feel free to recheck my math. I have not done all the other essences yet but expect the same for DPS agility and will based toons. And one member of my kin is already saying they are seeing similar issues with healing.

 

[Eddrick]

one other thing I noticed I HOPE is a bug. on My RK might is giving mastery at 3 masteries to every 1 might. Will is giving mastery at 3 masteries to every 1 will. Seems a bit backwards to mention nearly no light might Armour. This will make it near impossible to max DPS/crit and have decent mits on a red RK as you will have to go tactical mastery essences for everything which give 1412 for lively which is only slighly higher than the 1275 for a might essence on a will based class. All those extra essences will mean less crit, vit and mit essences :<