The second round of Bullroarer testing for Update 13 has started, and with it have come a new set of patch notes. There aren’t too many this time around as you’d expect, but there are a few quite significant changes that are worth noting:
- Might, Will and Vitality will no longer contribute to our Physical or Tactical Mitigations. This means that as of BR, the only way to get these stats is via Armour Value, Virtues, LIs, gear pieces and various traits and skills. In my brief experience on Bullroarer, this change has made combat significantly more challenging. Even signature mobs gave my LM a bloody nose(although naturally I wasn’t trying my utmost to survive). Jinjaah has responded to concerns over this change;
We do have some time to massage these numbers and do have a plan internally for how we are approaching this issue. Please feel free to enter out into the world and play how you would normally play and then report back how your experience was. Couple things I want to address that have already appeared in here:
ZOMG!! What an extreme decision!!
– It is a pretty extreme switch from where everyone’s stats were before this. That does not mean that this is not a calculated decision and does not mean this is a final decision. We will let you all play around with it this weekend and report back your feedback and I will hold back what our internal testing has told us for now as to not muddy the water. In summary, breathe and try it out.Vitality contribution should remain while might/will should go.
– Personally, I have the opposite feelings towards this. Vitality has been giving characters a lot over the years, making this stat almost too important for all. Now I am not saying that this means it shouldn’t be important because it is, its morale, the thing that keeps us standing. However, having it give such a steep contribution to both mitigation types in addition to 4 points of morale per vitality, makes it a little too much of a super stat. I would much rather see some form of contribution from might/will come back than vitality. To me it makes sense that Will based classes would have a little more experience against tactical foes, and big bad Might based classes would have experience being struck. You are welcome to leave all the feedback here if you think I am taking crazy pills. I am certainly not stubborn on this.Overall, lets pause for a moment, head out onto the battlefield and give this a test drive. We are actively watching this issue and will continue to work on it leading up to update 13. Please feel free to drop feedback on both the PvE and PvP side of this change.
- Come Update 13, LOTRO will have a new client and downloader, Akamai NetSession(AFAIK, the same kind recently enabled for DDO)
- The voice shouts present in previous rounds for Bullroarer have been removed due to player feedback
- The maximum level for tasks has been removed
- Components for First Age Legendary Items will now drop from T3 Skirmishes(assume all sizes until stated otherwise) as well as classic raid instances.
Note: As always guys, these are very much subject to change. So keep that in mind when you consider your response.
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With the tac mit change, i just wish lotro would take the approach to ease up on the gas instead of slamming on the brakes, i really dislike the sudden changes in class and combat models and prefer a more delicate ease over time to a good spot.
Skraids are popular now, the lotro players in M.E. are going to be going skrazy over skraids!
Brewstyr of Brandywine
Unless there are unannounced changes coming to the Epic Battles in terms of difficulty, all these changes are going to accomplish is to move the blanket of acceptable difficulty toward the raider/challenge people and away from the solo/casual people, particularly with regard to the Epic Battles. This will further exacerbate the entire solo/group feud that is happening.
Like I have argued for before, there needs to be inclusive measures taken, rather than exclusive or neutral ones, in order to make progress here, I believe.
Epic Battles should never have been advertised as solo endeavors, not with the way they are currently implemented. But that ship has already sailed. I believe there should be a concrete distinction between the solo and the duo battles, and both should be balanced accordingly.
Not long ago, Turbine had said they were going to look to balance things by adjusting our foes rather than ourselves. That was the right course, I think. Rather than lowering everyone’s masteries, avoidances, and mitigations, why not adjust our foes according to the challenge we are seeking? Make foes in T3 skirmishes be able to hurt us, even with high mitigations. Make foes in T2 Challenges have greater armor to negate our powerful strikes, and leave them alone for the easiest instances and landscape versions. That would be an inclusive measure.
We need to stretch the blanket rather than kicking at it in a hopeless attempt to cover the entire body. The tug of war is only hurting us all.
This measure would just about require a complete reitemization as well, I would think. Unless I am wrong, with these changes in place there would be no way whatsoever to improve one’s mitigations save from virtues, taking away further choices from the player, further removing meaningful choice from the player.
These exclusive, railroading measures really need to be reconsidered, in my opinion.
Vitality and might not contributing to mitigations would be a nightmare for Guardians I’d think.
I would think so. The way to increase mitigations at that point is through armor and virtues. Sneaking onto Bullroarer for a moment, my tactical mitigation when from 17,000ish to 3,500.
The frustrating thing about this is that there are no choices we can make, equipment-wise, to make ourselves stronger (or weaker) with regard to mitigations, save for armor-quality and virtues. And all yellow armor of a certain level gives the same Armor value, all purple the same, and all teal the same.
Rather than extreme measures such as these, a change to our foes’ ability to damage us, depending upon the danger and challenge we face, would seem to be a better method for giving us the appropriate challenge we seek.
One change I haven’t seen documented elsewhere is that freeps can purchase an additional ten quest log slots for 40 Mithril Coins per character. That’s up to 70 slots total:
40 free
+10 per account (from Helm’s Deep premium edition)
+10 per character (from deed completions)
+10 per character (bought with Mithril Coins)