Tag: Update

Mordor 21.1: T2C builds

 

Unless you want to run some old t2c instances on level 115 these builds aren’t something you would need right now when we only have new landscape and crafting instances that don’t have t2 penetration, but like I said in the article about best available gear, I do not like having landscape builds and always build for t2c, so I can have less swaps. The less I have the happier I am. I said I would soon have the captain done and let’s say I do. So let’s see the three classes I got ready for t2c: Minstrel, Warden and Captain. I have another 3, but since two of those are tactical and one is a Guardian, I’ll just wait untill I see if tactical classes get fixed and the Legendary Items get scaled dps.

Keep in mind that I do understand that these may not be the best builds for the future instances (or at all), but we have to start from somewhere and this is what I will be tweaking if needed. Also, this article will be showing you the numbers that you can achieve, not the individual items and traits how to achieve those.

 

Stat caps

 

The stat caps I’ll provide here are only for t2 builds.

Light armour mitigations: 62,160

Medium armour mitigations: 70,618

Heavy amour mitigations: 77,840

The following have only t1 caps.

Critical rating: 71,000

Incoming healing: 68,000

Outgoing healing: 282,940

For more of the stat caps you can visit Dadi’s website.

 

The plug-in used to show the stats is Titan Bars. Please keep in mind that the plug-in is outdated and is not showing correct percentages and caps.

 

Minstrel

 

This was my old build, from the last article.

 

And this is the new one with some tweaks.

 

I only build the healing line on Minstrel seriously, don’t really care too much about dps so I will not be providing my stats for a dps build. I only have a few half decent swaps for questing and that’s it. Some swaps for getting finesse higher for distracts.

I have opened many lootboxes on my minstrel and still didn’t get shoulders higher than 309. I have a 310 Mordor landscape drop shield, would be very happy if I could get the 315, but those offhand items are very rare and they don’t drop only for your class. So I really hope that metalsmith gets some shield recipes very soon. Another downside on the Mordor mini build is that we can’t have finesse which was very helpful before when removing corruptions and interrupting, but healing comes first. We’ll see what we will be able to do after instances come.

 

Warden

 

DPS Warden

 

Warden dps is in a pretty bad place right now. From my 105 raid build I went up around 20,000 mastery, went down in critical rating and have less % in finesse. Further reasons are the bad legacies. A warden is using a lot of stat legacies and these don’t do much right now. We also lost the armour sets which gave more DoTs and stronger bleeds. Bad crafted relics applies to all the classes, not only Wardens. These are too low right now that you don’t even worry if you are going to slot them or not.

You could consider using two pieces of 105 gear from Osgiliath to get additional two DoT pulses, but… You lose a lot. I lost around 30,000 mastery, around 6,000 armour, which reflects on both mitigations, 6,000 morale and gained 1,600 critical rating for a 0,4% increase. My Warden is also using the Essence of Physicality on the class item, which if you don’t use you can slot critical rating.

Tank warden

 

A disclaimer for the tanking warden build though… This build is missing five essences. Remains to be seen if I will be using vitality essences or incoming healing essences. This will depend on what morale will be needed for tanking the new instances. The good thing about Wardens is that the maximum morale isn’t always what you can see in your morale pool, but morale pool + Never Surrender. This is good if there aren’t many hits that could bring you too low.

 

Captain

 

DPS/Support Captain

 

Tank Captain

 

A disclaimer for Captain too… Captain is using some landscape drops level 309 and some Rare chest drops level 314 and 323. These are the mitigations jewelry pieces that you can not really barter anywhere and they are pretty good, but you lose some vitality and might. I also still need to get some teal shield, right now I have only a purple one to use untill I get something better. Mordor landscape has a great Captain shield with Outgoing healing for a stat if you play a blue Captain or even for tanking if bpe is not a thing for that fight.

You may want to build your Captain for more dps. This is possible, but there isn’t much wiggle room. If you drop some mitigation essences you can get more critical rating or physical mastery in. As a dps you should probably be fine if you are not overcapped, but I like to play the captain as a support class, not dps. Captain can actually do some decent dps, especially with the LI buff to physical classes, so it’s just a matter of preference.

 

What gear was used in these examples

 

The gear used in these examples, with only a few exceptions, is the gear that I have described in my previous article. So please check that one out. The essences used are the Shadowed essences, except for incoming healing on Captain, since those give the same number all across the board. Using stat essences was “the old way” and now if you are going for the dps build you will be going with mastery essences, since those give almost double the mastery of stat essences. I would love if this stayed like it was before, that the stat essences give more mastery. The reason I liked that and the reason I like that vitality is good now is because stats always influence more stats than the raw increase to morale for example.

 

If there are any questions, I’d love to answer them or to see some other builds and hear some thoughts and suggestions, so feel free to write in with any of those.

 

Mordor 21.1: Best available gear

 

Gearing up in Mordor is a little bit difficult when you’re doing it for the first time, because the gear comes from several different sources and you can’t even access them all right away to eventually plan it. So in the hopes that this clears some things up for you, I’ll just introduce (if we can call it an introduction at this point in the game) a few pieces of gear and their sources.

 

Questing

 

Questing will usually give you some gear to get by while questing and leveling, but the rewards aren’t really worth much, other than the Light of Earendil that prevents the shadow debuff.

Where questing does give you the best items is near the end of the regions Talath Urui and Agarnaith. These will give you 2 pieces each – chest and legs. For some reason, and this is likely not a bug, light armour classes get the same armour twice, while medium and heavy have dps and tanking versions.

 

Ash

 

While questing you may come across some rewards you do not like or need – you can turn those to Ash. You will be getting drops from enemies and these may not be for your class even – you can turn those to Ash. This is a decent system which allows you to clean your bags on the go by using the Flame of Ancalmir, but it has some downsides. These would be that the Ash is not that easy to get unless you’re in the Ash farms and buying a lot of keys to open lootboxes. The green, purple and teal items will give you 5, 10 or 20 ash respectively, but the same items from lootboxes will give double the ash, so 10, 20 or 40 Ash.

From Ash you can get earrings, bracelets and boots.

You will need 2525 for a “regular” build without the Ash gold rings, which makes it 5050 for two builds.  With the two gold rings the number goes up to 8025 or 16050 if you want to go for four of those rings, but you can also make them work in both builds by slotting some essence that will be universal to both or, as I suggested, keep the Allegiance build for tanking and healing.

 

Allegiance

 

Best items from the Allegiance system will depend on the fact what class you have and how you play it. But let’s say that you are not getting ready for dps, then the Allegiance will provide you with best rings on chapter 4 (rank 15 Allegiance) and best cloak on chapter 7 (rank 30 Allegiance). 

Which would mean that if you are gearing for one role, let’s say tanking or healing, then you would need to get one Allegiance to rank 30 and another to rank 15. If you are making 2 builds for your character, then you will be bringing two Allegiances to ranks 30 and another two (3 and 4) to rank 15, so you would have two cloaks and four rings. And I do suggest to go with Allegiance rings and hope the gold ones drop from a box one day, rather than spending almost 3000 Ash for something that is clearly inferior from the lootbox rings. There is no content right now that says that you NEED those now anyway.

The best gloves are also from Allegiance. Unlike the rings and cloak, these are not a quest reward, these are a barter item from an NPC for the tokens you claim while leveling up an Allegiance. This would be your Allegiance Quartermaster. The gloves will cost you 75 Tokens of Service or 150 for both versions.

 

Crafting

 

Crafting is now back and for now is a source of several best in slot items. You will be able to craft the best helmet, pocket, necklace and essences. Sadly, by design, bug or just forgetting about it, we have no new crafted relics and the current ones in comparison look so miniscule that you could even unequip them and not feel any difference. Hopefully we’ll get some of those soon too.

The recipes for these are bartered by the tokens that you get from questing, but the recipes are not bound to character and you can send them to any of your crafters.

Some of the items, like captain standards and Lore-Master brooches, are level 323 on regular crafting and as a critical success also, so I’m guessing this is a bug and should be fixed some time in the future, so the Doomfold captain standard should then be the go to item at least for tanking. But this is pale in comparison with scholar and cook not being able to make any essences.

The necklace will cost you 90 silver signets of the Thandrim. Pocket will cost you 30. Helmet will cost you another 90 signets. So, this brings us to 210 signets for gear. The essences are one shot recipes with no chance for better ones and depending on your build you will need different number of essences. Without the gold rings it’s 14 essences. One essence recipe will cost you 15 signets, which is another 210 and we get to 420. You still need to get the new relics. For some classes the relics that reduce speed will still be the best most likely, but let’s say you’re changing all – one relic costs 50 signets – 150 signets per LI makes it 300 in total for a single build. Total signets needed for one build 720. This number is very easily obtainable just by finishing all the quests and continuing doing the dailies, etc. And I’d say it’s a great start to barter for the return to Udun foothold at the start and with that skill we get to 730 signets. 1450 in total with a full second build.

 

Landscape

 

Landscape has a chance to drop off-hand weapons and shoulders. It can drop some other things, but those are covered. Usually, the level of the shoulders and off-hands is 309, it can drop a level 310, which is a little bit more rare and a very rare 315. Some of these off-hands are good, but for some you may want to run some of the scaled instances and get what you need. You can get some other shoulder pieces in Mordor, but these are purple versions with one slot less for the essence.

Also take good note what drops stay in your pending loot. Landscape has a rare chance of dropping the best essence – Shadowed essence.

 

Gorgoroth Steel-Bound Lootbox

 

I didn’t mention the gold rings before with Ash, because this is where they are best in slot. The same actually goes for shoulders. The lootbox has a chance to drop items which are much higher in level than the ones we have available. The gold rings obtainable with Ash are level 326. For some time I have tought that the highest level from the lootbox was 329, then I have been told that there was also a 330 and recently on the forum someone posted an item level 331. Given how SSG handles informing the players about the content they put out, we can only assume that it can go even higher. But the lootbox also has a chance to drop other items of a higher level than what is available to you.

The SSG executive producer has also said on the forum that lootboxes aren’t intended to have the items with best stats exclusively.

There will never be a design that has loot from lootboxes that is statistically better than what you can gain someplace or somehow in game. Finding that loot in game might be hard, but it will be possible. Our overall design philosophy is that loot boxes are not required to reach the best gearing. If players do find some piece of gear that is best in slot and can only be gained through loot boxes then 1.) it is a bug or 2.) it is an oversight and will be fixed or 3.) there was some release timing issue and the loot will be available someplace in game soon.

In this case the intent is that those rings can be purchased from the Ash vendor for an appropriately large amount of Ash.

Sev~

The discrepancy in item levels has been noticed right away and reported and there have been hotfixes, patches and updates, but this still happens.

This makes this system, especially after buying the Mordor expansion for no small amount of money, the biggest pay to win in this game. Gorgoroth boxes are dropping like crazy, yet the keys are very limited. And we only recently find out from Cordovan that the “bugged” dailies that didn’t have the key are working as intended and that we should only have 3 keys per week, with no chance for a landscape drop.

This is working as intended. Not every daily offers a Black Steel Key. They are also limited to three Keys per week.

So, if we want to prepare for instances and min-max the gear, we are not only pushed to buy the keys, but also inventory (which is on sale right now) and the vault space and maybe shared storage to keep the huge amount of boxes that are dropping.

Untill recently I was using the PvMP plug-in only to not miss a lootbox in the pending loot, now I just don’t care if it gets deleted and timed out.

Personally, I do not think that we wanted to pay for the expansion so we would have the privilege to be milked for keys with a massive RNG – some get it on the first box or don’t get it on 100th. Do we have to do it? Of course not, but the fact that it is “optional” does not diminish the recent business decisions, lack of information about the game or misinformation. 3 keys intended per week with this amount of boxes? Who are we kidding? Is one key per day going to make or break someones bank?

 

Tactical classes

 

We still do not have any information if the tactical classes are working as intended. The dps has dropped significantly and the heals have too. The only buff we have had is from leveled legacies. We have spent star-lits only to then notice that nothing has moved at all in terms of dps or healing rating. Which brings me to the conclusion that it can’t be intended. How does someone spend something to upgrade only to stay in place? I don’t mind a slight nerf to RK dps or mini heals, but with the damage mobs are putting out or group taking and not being able to cap certain needed stats, this should have been done better than just letting us use star-lits, but not advancing. There could have been some cap to reach and not pass, but not moving at all is too much and broken. This is not only bad for grouping, but has also made questing in Mordor considerably harder than on physical classes.

 

Conclusion to the gearing

 

Obviously, you do not need to build your characters for t2 right away, but I did. I do not like to have too many swaps or change the gear all the time for t1, for landscape, for this or that. So, all I’m running with at all times is t2 gear. Below are my builds for warden and minstrel. Soon I’ll be able to add captain too. Please disregard the yellow letters and percentage, as the plug-in is outdated and doesn’t show the correct caps. But as a reference I’m providing you with my numbers on the builds. These can and will be further tweaked, but for now this would be it.

 

Mordor: Update 21.1

 

This Monday LOTRO has had a curious update to the game. I think most of us were expecting a patch of some sort, a 21.0.3 or something like that. But we have had a full on dot update – 21.1 – you can read the release notes here. It’s not that there isn’t enough in the update, there is, update 20.1 has been a lot poorer in what has been done if we’re going to compare those. But the expectations, especially with this being an expansion people have spent a lot of money on, have been a little bit greater.

Which would be my outtakes from this update as the best ones?

  • Tooltips in the Crafting Panel now properly reflect the increased item level on critical results for Doomfold tier Armour, Jewellery, and Weapons.

  • All Battle Lore and Warding Lore scrolls will stack up to 50.

  • Now once you have completed Chapter 1 of the Kingdom of Gondor Allegiance storyline, you can use the Black Lebethron Casket on the top level of Minas Tirith (After-Battle) to enter the Hall of the King (Elessar, not Theoden lying in state). To enter the original version and see Theoden, you will use the original door as normal.

  • The exit door from the Hall of the King now leads to the top tier of Minas Tirith (After-Battle).

  • The quest ‘Mysteries of the Ghâshghurm’ is now playable as part of the endgame content in Talath Urui.

 

  • All Doomfold armour, Weapons, and Jewellery now Bind on Equip as they always should have.

This one here just shows how fast SSG reacts when something is not so good for the company, but eventually beneficial for the player. I do not mind this fix, but what I do mind is that other things that needed to be fixed haven’t been. Metalsmiths still cannot craft shields, Scholars still cannot craft Shadowed essences. Similar thing happened with the crafting in the Wastes never being fixed, but what made gearing up easier was quickly taken away.

 

  • Scourges of Gorgoroth have now appeared for you to find and defeat. Quests for defeating the scourges will automatically become available when you approach these foes.

This would be the newest content. The Mordor rowing threats. We got new bugged RTs without even having the hidden threats we already had fixed. The hidden threats from Dor Amarth and Agarnaith are still missing in action. And the new rowing threats, or as they like to call them now, Scourges, have bugged locations and loot. Dor Amarth RT appears in both Udun and Dor Amarth, Udun RT appears in Lhingris. The Udun one is even a Warg. Talk about something being out-of-place. No wargs in the whole new area, but there is this one. Each and every one of these RTs has the same so-called mechanic – kill the adds or the main boss takes next to no damage. The loot from Spoils Box – Scourge of Gorgoroth: 69 marks, Major essence of Fate (t7), East Gondor Silver pieces.

Everyone, doesn’t matter if for or against Mordor and its pricing and such, can agree that Mordor was a rushed release. Now that it is released I guess it is not too much to ask to not even rush out new dot update content, especially if it is something as mundane as another set of rowing threats, which could have been a part of 21. Even the deed for these threats doesn’t show correctly. It says that it is a slayer deed, but it is a quest deed – meaning, if you kill these without having a quest, you do not advance the deed.

 

The Fushaum Bal area and players having issues with completing the quest deed or the resolution quest is the reason I wrote a short guide to it. Now, to fix this the SSG has done following.

  • Fushaum Bal: Upon completing the instance ‘The Fushaum Resolution’, 18 additional quests will unlock in Fushaum Bal. These one-time quests are similar to the repeatable quests in Fushaum Bal that disappear after completing ‘The Fushaum Resolution’. They will allow players to complete the Talath Urui quest deed and gain additional rep for the Fushaum factions.

Sadly, after running around and checking, there are no 18 additional quests. There are the same quests you had before, but now they are on the resurrected bosses you killed, now without a name. Game of Thrones, anyone? We can now get some reputation back if we lost it during the Black Book, so that’s good, but I really have something against overselling it as something that it is not. I guess you can now count the gold and get fast 2 coins.

 

Mordor release was postponed because of the pathing in some old areas, but it is acceptable to have these issues in the new one, which wasn’t cheap? The new RT has some crisis of identity and thinks it’s an ostrich, putting its head into the ground, not moving and hoping nobody will see it and kill it. The Zavar Hai in the caves in Lhingris are hitting objects in the cave, so they need to port beyond them eventually. The merevail in Seregost can skip a long way like a deja vue in Matrix. There is probably more examples.

 

 

The ground in Ghashgrum still doesn’t have the proper look to see where we would be taking damage while collecting the treasure caches or doing the new RTs. It is probably considered a fix that tactical classes when maxing out their LIs do not get any change in dps or that minstrels heals didn’t scale. Some of the dailies still do not give a Black Steel Key.

But this was an important one to do

  • The saddle on the Steed of the Eldar has been adjusted forward to more comfortably fit both mount and rider.

And not to forget the Tarkrip shield, a very important addition to Mordor.

  • The Anniversary Year 4 reward, Tarkrip Clan Shield, now has its correct appearance.

Mordor Beta 3 testing: I reached 115 and shot +Loft

Welcome to LOTRO Players News, your source of Sleeping Beauty lore.

I am never too happy when there is a server wipe and I have to do everything all over again, but I understand that it must be done when some changes need to get implemented and it’s always nice to see the game move forward and develop in front of your eyes. They did fix some things from beta 1, even though you still can fall through some of the rocks, but it seems that they didn’t get to beta 2 still.

I was very glad to read in the notes that SSG has reconsidered the difficulty level of the starter are in Mordor – Udun – and that they have lowered the rating drop on levels 106-110, but that it will become steeper 111-115. The rating drop decrease is not that significant in terms of numbers, it’s a 0.8-0.9% change, but it does feel easier to go through the landscape and I do commend SSG for this. I did get to 115 and I was actually very happy that there was enough quests to be able to do this and as confirmed by +Loft in /World in one of the videos below the next beta will not wipe the server, so we will be able to test more content at the cap.

I have forgotten to say that I was happy that some of the travel locations have gotten new icons and do not look like Minas Tirith anymore. I am uncertain how lore breaking it is to have the stable masters in Mordor, since we didn’t have them in Wastes, but I love this addition. It makes some of the quests much easier. Especially with the Black Book and Gandalf not moving anywhere when you need to turn in the quest. Another welcome change was the addition of the “bridges” over some of the “canyons” with lava underneath, the only issue is that some of them you can still fall through. I LOVED the part with finding the lore items through Mordor and the audio that comes with it, but this is when I revert to my complaining part… Lore quests are a level 115 quest you only get once you reach 110 or 111, not sure. I would have even missed Udun had I not died in an area that doesn’t send you to the nearest rez point, but only to the Wastes. This move is very unreasonable for me because Black Book and the “regular” quests will lead you through the area, some of the closed locations too, where you will need to revisit again only to get those quests done. So, I would say that the Lore quests need to be assigned as soon as you enter the region.

Speaking of those lore pages and the 115 quests… While looking for those I did notice that Udun yet doesn’t have the quest locations on the map. But Dor Amarth does. So, while looking for one of those pages at a camp I come across level 115 mobs in a lower level area. I die there fighting some ghosts. Then I go back to Udun and try to find some more rare chests so I could get better gear and I come across the same level 115 mobs, this time orcs. One orc camp was protecting 2 rare chests. I have gotten a few of these chests where they weren’t protected by things so overpowered for the region. I am hoping this is something that will get adjusted. I don’t mind the occasional 700k morale troll, but “regular” 115 orcs in a 107 area where the whole camp is linked together and they all attack you at once and you get 100 Shadow is an overkill for something that has nice rewards, but not THAT nice. Once you do finally finish a quest and I only managed to finish one out of three I picked up, you get a story and a book to throw on the floor.

 

While leveling it was easy enough to get to level 111 if you’re using the 200% experience from the store. And for the eleventy-first level you will also get a deed and the title ‘Well-preserved’. If you’re leveling by doing quests on landscape solo you may run through a lot of those. While I was leveling I had some set backs and AFK moments, so I can’t be too accurate, but I believe I went through 20 of those, which is almost 5000 LP. You will most likely go faster if you go through Mordor with a small fellowship group or you may just decide to power level first. But without the Black Book past chapter 2 and some quests still not working it was a bit unclear what area was next in line, so I may have made a wrong turn first and then went to Agarnaith, which I suppose is the correct order after Dor Amarth.

 

Another thing that is still lacking while leveling is the rewards. I truly hope that there will be enough of the rewards to equip a character to the level it is needed to be able to run alone through Mordor. Not saying it should be easy, but it shouldn’t be so because of lack of the gear, at least to help you get the LoE/Shadow neutral. At level 111 I had to visit the E&G tavern and upgrade everything apart from my earrings to the teal armour and jewelry and get the relics too. Only when I got those and when I was able to deconstruct some of the rewards I had I had enough Ash to barter for something else. But the thing that is missing here is that in order to get those items you need to be 115 and you will have issues getting there if you don’t have Light of Earendil items. It’s a vicious circle.

The drops, of course, still didn’t change. Still we get the Eorlingas recipes, green items without LoE stat, crafting materials for Anorien tier and third age legendary items. For ffffffPete sake, please remove these already. We are not getting the ‘Destroy all’ button, yet we still keep getting items we don’t even want to sell, let alone use for anything. Or even better, put a +1 LoE on the items, so we can deconstruct them since there isn’t enough of those in the rewards to get for the gear. With crafting we can’t get them either. I tested this also and on the sample of 540 ore I have 2 shards – 1 is from the rare chest I believe and 1 is from mining ore. Even if both were from ore, this is a too small number and needs to get buffed. If it is this rare the item should be giving 50-100 Ash and I’m pretty certain it doesn’t.

If you are a Warden, like I am, you will also be interested in gear that is used for tanking. Sadly, Wardens have been lacking stat bonuses on items before, so I hope this will not be the case again. What am I talking about? If you remember the Pelargir gold items the rings for a might class had a dps version and a tanking version. The rings for an agility class did not have any tanking version to it, only 2 dps versions. So I hope that the current stats on the defensive set are not final as most of those have Resistance on it. Instead of resistance I would much rather prefer BPE, mitigations or even finesse (but not that much).

For those of you wondering how do you deconstruct the items and which ones can be deconstructed… You basically get an item that is called Flame of Ancalamir, which I mentioned in the first article about the build. You will have to right-click it and sadly, there is still no animation to tell you that it is active or which items you can deconstruct. A good rule of thumb is that if the item has a Light of Earendil bonus on it, it can be deconstructed. In the build 3, we get 2 of the Flames for some reason, 1 we can buy and 1 we get after finishing the quest of deconstructing the dagger.

Speaking of LoE and Shadow… While adding this, something did not adjust properly, so right now the buffs you get from food and scrolls and debuffs can get in the way of the bar that shows the LoE/Shadow level and sometimes they even go a little bit more to the left on the portrait. I did not play with resizing or changing the portrait in any way, just noticed that and that the LoE bar now has a nice smoke-like animation when you go into an area with less shadow.

I spoke about a Barad Dur face-lift in this article and I do like it, but it seems that something here went wrong too. The map definitely isn’t finished and it looks like when they were moving some rooms around they didn’t move them on a map too. Barad Dur has a few areas where mobs will go into anti-exploit mode, one of those is shown in the video above. Barad Dur now also has a crafting instance at level 115, but it is more like the ones we are used to have, not the ones from the Wastes. I did forget to watch my morale at times and I died 3 times in this one, but I didn’t have to. But all in all, it was relatively easy to finish it in time. You can see it below, with time stamps in the description to what I found was wrong. One of the things being that you hear the doors open at the boss fight. I imagine that at that point the boss should be getting the reinforcements, but they do not exit the chambers.

I do like the smoke wall that acts as a barrier. It isn’t too different from the old crafting instances, if at all, but I would love if it would actually have something decent behind it, not just a node, especially when it is in a place that you don’t need to go through to get to the boss, like there is in the video above.

Next is the woodworking instance and in this one also you can only finish the main quest, not the 2 side quests too.

It seems that we will have 8 reputations in this expansion. Four reputatios will be landscape ones and four reputations from the allegiance. The Fushaum North and South reputations will be a little tricky as when you increase reputation with one faction, the other one decreases. So you may need to calculate those daily quests you’ll have there. In any case, it seems that you gain more reputation than you lose, so it should somehow even out.

And of course I can not finish the article without protesting the decision of putting a cap on the set bonuses while we do not have gear to replace it with on the level. I and many other would gladly rather use Throne armour for Oathie reset, but we don’t have that option and the Osgiliath instances are too old to grind for the scaled versions if they are any good at all. And for the captain they take away four armour pieces and essence slots with it.

If you are eating right now, I suggest you finish your meal first before continuing to the gallery.

A brief photo shoot with +Loft

And the result of it

 

 

 

Mordor Beta 2: High Elf and more

Beware of the spoilers

So, as you can see we at LOTRO Players have been running the BR and testing the game to bring you what is new and SSG what is broken. So far, so good. We’re keeping up. Some of the bugs and kinks have been noted in the following video. For your convenience you can use the time links in the description.

Other than the ones in the video there are some other issues. Usually you’re not able to aggro two different kinds or species even if they are standing next to each other. So an animal kind should only aggro if you attack its kind. But Dire-Horn aggroed even though I attacked a man. Which in the new area can be an issue, since the mobs actually hit quite hard at times and maybe you don’t want to pull too many for various reasons, be it gear, not full health bar, etc. Some quests do not tell you if you got the item or not. I’ve been killing leaders for a while untill I found this out. And Mithrandir isn’t moving at all. So it was quite annoying to ride even from the second area of Mordor – Dor Amarth – back to the front of the gate just to continue the quest or turn it in. It would be nice to get ported to him once the quest is done, at least, because while doing this I spent quite a few Mithril Coins. Once the Black Book starts it is interesting. When I found myself in Annuminas I tought it was some kind of a bug. Which is what happens in the early stages of beta. Sometimes you do not know if something is a bug or just hasn’t been built in yet or something else is happening.

The trait points have also been changed. You will now get only 3 trait points, instead of 5 – 108, 111 and 114. The reputation goes to celebrated. At level 110 and having finished all the available quests in the 2 first regions, I have 210 Silver Signets of the Thandrim. You use this for non-slotted armour recipes and essence recipes, both single use. You also use them for your muster/return skills, cosmetic items and relics. So I wouldn’t mind getting a bit more of these while questing and there will probably be some repeatable quests to get more. You will die now if you try to swim through lava, but it also has a decent reach when you are standing close to it. Which means no lava fishing for fried fish, but it also sometimes makes it a bit difficult to collect quest items needed.

And given the description you can see when handing in the quest and on the item itself, I think this item should be a bit stronger and a bit less green.

High Elf

In this build we have also received the High Elf race and we were able to test some animations. The High Elf still isn’t done and they still look very similar to men, the race movie intro is the same as for regular elves. Personally, I wasn’t impressed when my High Elf captain started with a club with a few nails in it, while he was level 110. Running is still a bit awkward, it looks like tip-toeing and kicking back. It also has something of a balerina-like jump up, but when you are jumping from a higher position then he lands in some parkour style, which I do love. Bellow you can see the High Elf intro.

Some of the High Elf racial traits are decent, but I do think they need still some work. A wider dps buff, possibly a better out of combat rez – 30 minutes is far too long for a cooldown, unless it’s in combat. But so far I am not that impressed with the High Elf that I would invest money to buy the class and time to regrind all the virtues, trait points, etc. Race alone does not give game changing bonuses and I don’t see value in cosmetic changes like looks and animations other than for devoted role players. I have most of the classes, a captain too. So High Elf without some fancy class means nothing to me and to players who have most of these classes, some even all. But if there was an option to pay for an Elf to High Elf transformation, I would probably do it in a heart beat. 5% power bonus?! Whoopty-do. I’d take a High Elf racial bonus over the Elf one any time.

Barad Dur facelift

In Beta 1 you couldn’t continue the quests in Lughash. Once Beta 2 came out, that was the first thing to check out and it worked. One of those quests takes you to Barad Dur to free the king. Seems like dwarves still didn’t fix this bridge, hopefully they get to that. Even if they don’t, just hold to your mount a bit harder and it will be fine. But what surprised me the most, and in a good way, was what happened inside. Barad Dur has actually grown. It felt like I got into the TARDIS – It’s bigger on the inside.

You get a larger map, more quests, more enemies and different ones too. And just a note, once you pick up the quest from the dwarven king he will ask you to search for something in the relic chamber. That is the chamber with the two Cargul. You need to enter it and it will say that the item is not there. I missed it in the first run through. What I also love in Barad Dur is that once you free the prisoners they do not respawn a few seconds after, making it look like you did nothing. This seems to be permanent.

What I don’t like

The players have been asking for a while now that we get the Destroy all loot button, but we didn’t get it. And still we are getting the Eorlingas recipes, random purple LI drops, green items we don’t even want to vendor… I hope this gets fixed and we get rid of this junk loot. The best hope tokens are still made with the Westemnet recipes… So the players have been asking to even get the same token, but for new materials.

I also have some concearns about the gear and rating we are going to have. We have the best planed gear to test. But as per Vastin, this is not the gear that will be available in the U21 update, it will be a part of a dot update. Which one, we don’t know. And even with that best gear, which doesn’t even have a set bonus, which is another complaint, we do not cap many of our stats. Which I find is unacceptable because we can not re-introduce older ways of gearing and playing while the mechanics of the runs stay the same. Bosses get their morale buffed, damage buffed, avoidance buffed, they deal AoE/frontal/distributed damage and we now need to choose where we want to put our essences. If this happens I do not know how it will impact the raiding and PvMP community, but I don’t expect it to be nice.

Vastin forum post

The overall statting balance has been changed with the intent of making it quite difficult to cap everything you might want to cap – you’re going to have to make choices regarding what’s really important to your build – DPS vs. mitigations vs. vitality and so forth.

Pre-mordor it was very easy to cap your primary mitigations with most classes, and then you’d classically start stacking morale or DPS mods. In Mordor you can expect there to be more tension between these decisions as it will decidedly NOT be trivial to simply cap your mitigations – only main tanks would be expected to even really try for that.

Speaking of the best gear issue here… It would be nice to know if the gear stats are close to where they intend them to be and if they didn’t intend it to have bonuses. Then we have an issue here with putting a cap on the level you can use some lower sets on. No level 75 sets and no level 115 sets. I have seen some Dome of the Stars loot has scaled, but I still didn’t see a box drop and how the armour from it looks like. But even if it scaled properly… SSG makes old content sets unavailable, only to make us run old content to get the scaled sets. This content is at least two years old.

I usually don’t intend to make my articles a rant, but if having these rant-like elements does help a bit and pushes the readers and especially the developers to reconsider some things and possibly provoke a different approach, then I’m happy I made it.