Showing posts with label level 100. Show all posts
Showing posts with label level 100. Show all posts

Saturday, 2 July 2016

Level 100 Beorning

Hooray! Tyravorth my Beorning has reached level 100 in Central Gondor. It might not be the max level, but it's the beginning of the end.

Questing along the Gilrain river at night

Now she has to start worrying about essence gear and getting the perfect legendary items for imbuing.

Essence Gear


As a tailor, she has made a set of Anórien armour and cloak for starters. She didn't have anywhere near enough essences to fill the 18 slots, and certainly not with the essences she needs. Questing through West and Central Gondor since level 95 has so far earned her about half a dozen essences. A couple for morale and finesse, and one each for evasion, tactical mitigation essence and critical rating.

She still needs new jewellery, and the crafted jewellery has more essence slots to fill too! 

Crafted Anórien Medium Armour

There is other gear available at level 100 with stats or essence slots, but the crafted gear is easy to get.

Where can fresh level 100s get essences?

  • The skirmish camp - the curiosity vendor sells level 100 major essences for 500 marks each. 
  • The auction house - since level 105 is now the max level, level 100 essences have reduced in price a lot.
  • Essence vendor in Dol Amroth - completing quests for the city guard factions in Dol Amroth rewards tokens used to buy essences (some RNG involved for which essence you'll get though).
  • Crafting - The Dol Amroth quartermaster has level 100 greater essences recipes, and each crafting profession can make a few types. 
  • Quartermasters in Central Gondor - class-specific essences can be obtained with rep tokens. 
  • Questing - some quests have guaranteed essences as rewards, particularly in the epic quest chains.
  • Mob drops - occasionally. Elite mobs and instances may have a higher chance of dropping something.

I decided to go the skirmish camp route for essences - I'd rather have cheap level 100 gear and save up for good max level gear.

Dol Amroth Skirmish Camp

As an aside, I hated Dol Amroth when it first came out because of all the extravagant building decorations, but after travelling deeper into Gondor where the zones become more gloomy, Dol Amroth seems beautiful and bright by comparison, and now I quite like it.

So what essences to get for a Beorning who is mainly questing?

  1. Mitigation - My physical mitigation was nearly capped but I needed a lot more tactical mitigation, so that was my first priority.
  2. Avoidances - My parry was capped at 13% but I didn't have much evade, so that was my next priority.
  3. Defence - My critical defence wasn't too bad for solo questing - I don't see my health dropping suddenly from enemy crits, but I increased it to 50% to be on the safe side.
  4. Finesse - I've noticed mobs avoiding too many of my attacks, so I wanted more finesse.
  5. Might - I grabbed a couple of might essences so that I wouldn't lose too much dps/healing. My mastery has still gone down, so I will aim to add more to my jewellery.
  6. Morale - I filled the rest of the slots with morale. From everything I've heard, morale is the best for survival.
Your priorities may be different, especially if you do lots of instances or pvp or have already capped your stats.

Some people suggest grouping similar essences together so that you can easily switch pieces of gear and stats to suit the situation. For example, switching between one pair of boots with lots of critical defence and another pair of boots with lots of critical rating.

Legendary Items and Imbuement


Legendary items can be a real grind if you want to max them out, and if you do - good on you! Fortunately, the grind is mostly optional. You can get through most, if not all, content without maxed out legendaries, but the more effort you put into improving them, the easier the content will be.

While I'm saving up materials and/or gold for first age items, I'm going to be trying to get lots of third age items so I can extract the legacies I want and get plenty of relics and IXP runes.

Many of the consumable items for enhancing legendary items can be used before or after imbuement with only minor differences in outcomes.

Here are a couple of guides that may also help explain the legendary item and imbuement system:

Pre-imbuement

  1. Level a legendary item up to at least level 30 to unlock six legacies.
  2. Use a crystal of remembrance to add a seventh legacy.
  3. Use legacy replacement scrolls to swap out unwanted legacies for more useful legacies. Most legacies will have the same effect before and after imbuement, but a few may have a different effect. Check LOTRO-Wiki (the Legendary Items page has a comparison table) to find out which legacies are affected.
  4. Use a scroll of delving to unlock an extra 10 levels. This will also increase the maximum tier by one for each legacy when the legendary item is imbued.
  5. Level the legendary up to level 70 and get legacy tier upgrades (saves scrolls of empowerment).
  6. Use 3 star-lit crystals to increase the base dps and passive stats on applicable legendary items (e.g. 2H-weapons).
  7. Spend points to rank up legacies. Make sure the default legacy (e.g. the dps legacy on weapons) is at max rank so the highest possible base stats will be on the item post-imbuement.
Imbue legendary items at the Forge-master.

Post-imbuement

The maximum tier for each legacy will initially depend on what tier the legacy was pre-imbuement.
  1. The maximum tier for the default legacy can be increased towards the final tier with star-lit crystals.
  2. The maximum tier for normal legacies can be increased towards the final tier with scrolls of empowerment.
  3. Use IXP runes or gain IXP through game-play to increase the current tier of each legacy.
When all legacies have full final tier experience bars, the item is maximised (until the next update that increases the final tier level). Don't forget to add some good relics and legendary titles to boost your stats too - these may help reduce the need for some essences!

Saturday, 7 November 2015

Comparing Level 100 Armour Sets

Following on from looking at what level 100 armour sets are available in Level 100 Gear Updated for U17, the next obvious question is which one is best?

There has been some debate about this on the forums and some of the feedback there related to how many essence sockets were available and what quality of essences you used.

I mostly play a level 100 Lore-master so I will be using light armour sets as an example, looking at the potential stats for each set and with different essence qualities.

The main stats I will be prioritising are Will, Vitality, Tactical Mastery and Critical Rating. Fate is nice-to-have but I assume I'll either pick up some passively or will get it from elsewhere (e.g. accessories/virtues).

Skirmish Camps

I thought the Skirmish Camps had a full armour set, but it is only helmet, shoulders and gloves in the non-essence gear and head and gloves with 3 essence slots each. Here are the base stats they could provide:

StatNon-EssenceEssence (Empty Slots)
Armour18911376
Will513238
Vitality51334
Tactical Mastery7680
Critical Rating23040
Fate8534
Finesse23430

I would pretty much only use these if I was desperate for gear and couldn't find anything on the AH or any crafters who could make something.

In such circumstances, I would only use the essence armour if I had some appropriate essences in the Vault but I wouldn't waste good quality essences on armour which I would hope to soon replace with something better.

Dol Amroth - class-specific armour set

These armour sets have fixed stats. The Armour of the Night Watcher for lore-masters provides:

Armour6039
Will1434
Vitality1230
Tactical Mastery1382
Critical Rating2918
Fate255
Finesse1874
Critical Defence1544
Max Power377

Dol Amroth - Nadhin armour set

The armour available from the vendors have 4 essence slots per piece of armour - 24 in total for the set. Assuming I used Will, Vitality, Tactical Mastery and Crit Rating essences in each piece of armour, the potential stats are shown below:

StatMinorMajorGreaterSupreme
Armour6039603960396039
Will1410142815301548
Vitality696714816936
Tactical Mastery6318645073747374
Critical Rating6318645073747374
Fate000102
Max Power000564
Critical Defense0002316

Based on this, if I was going to use this armour, I might only use 2 or 3 Critical Rating essences and replace the others with more Vitality to improve survival. I could also swap a couple of Tactical Mastery essences for other stats such as Fate or Finesse.

Using Supreme essences provide extra stats (e.g. Supreme Tactical Mastery also gives a little Max Power) which is a definite bonus compared to using the lower quality essences.

Scalable Instances - "Greater Resolute" sets

These items drop by chance so obtaining a full set may be difficult, however, you could also mix and match sets based on what's available or which pieces have better stats for you.

These might be useful gap-fillers until something better is available.

World Drop - light armour set with bonuses

These armour sets have fixed stats. These items drop by chance so obtaining a full set may be difficult. The stats below include the set bonuses.

StatWestern ShoreGuardian of the Watchwood
Armour60396039
Will8541110
Vitality513854
Tactical Mastery76807680
Critical Rating30723072
Fate1281938
Finesse70290

Both of these sets are low in will and vitality. The tactical mastery and fate are high, critical rating is ok and the finesse in the Western Shore set is pretty good if you need it. Personally I think the low will and vitality but high fate and secondary stats makes these armour sets more suitable for "glass cannon" builds rather than general purpose builds. I think even for "glass cannons" they would want more of the primary damage stat (in this case, will).

Maybe a few pieces of these sets may be helpful for filling in gaps until something better is available.

Osgiliath Instances

There are class-specific (even spec-specific) armour sets with fixed stats and set bonuses, and essence armour set available for barter with 5 essence slots per piece.

Class-specific sets for Lore-masters


StatOsgiliath Armour of the Animal-friendArmour of Osgiliath's FuryOsgiliath Armour of the Ancient Master
Armour623962396239
Will216021602160
Vitality540540630
Tactical Mastery402016081608
Critical Rating160840201608
Fate270270270
Finesse245024502450
Morale578578578
Critical Defense004040

Very nice having the slightly different flavours of stat distributions. These are clearly more suited for instances compared to the Dol Amroth class sets - these have more will and finesse and less vitality (can focus more on damage when you have a healer looking after your health), whereas the Dol Amroth sets have more balanced stats.

Osgiliath essence armour (Armour of Faramir's Faithful)


With no base stats except armour, I would be looking at using 2 will, 1 vitality, 1 tactical mastery and 1 critical rating essences for starters (shown below). Some of the critical rating and tactical mastery essences could be swapped for other stats - some more vitality, fate and finesse for example.

StatMinorMajorGreaterSupreme
Armour6239623962396239
Will1392142816321668
Vitality696714816936
Tactical Mastery6318645073747374
Critical Rating6318645073747374
Fate000102
Max Power000564
Critical Defense0002316

This is almost identical to the Dol Amroth Nadhin armour, just more armour and more will when using greater or supreme essences.

Crafted Anórien armour

By default, the crafted armour is of incomparable quality and has 3 essence slots per item. Critical results are epic quality but only the amount of armour and base morale increase from what is shown below.

Since these already have a chunk of morale on them, I would skip the vitality essence and just use will, tactical mastery and critical rating, maybe swapping a few for other stats.

Version #1
StatMinorMajorGreaterSupreme
Armour5922592259225922
Will696714816834
Vitality000102
Tactical Mastery6318645073747374
Critical Rating6318645073747374
Fate0000
Max Power000564
Critical Defense0002316
Morale6246624662466246

Yuck. That's not much will! I think I'd have to sacrifice some tactical mastery and critical rating and use 2 will essences per item, and 1 tactical mastery for half the set and 1 critical rating for the other half.

Version #2
StatMinorMajorGreaterSupreme
Armour5922592259225922
Will1392142816321668
Vitality000204
Tactical Mastery3159322536873687
Critical Rating3159322536873687
Fate0000
Max Power000282
Critical Defense0001158
Morale6246624662466246

That looks a little better, in terms of will, but the loss of tactical mastery and critical rating means that this is probably not as good as the Nadhin armour. Let's check.

Comparison of crafted armour (version #2 essences) and Nadhin armour using Greater essences. Note that 1 Will = 8 Tactical Mastery and 1 Vitality = 3 Morale.

StatAnórienNadhin
Armour59226039
Tactical Mastery3687 + (1632*8) = 167437374 + (1530*8) = 19614
Critical Rating36877374
Morale6246816*3 = 2448

The Nadhin set is better than the crafted Anórien set for armour, tactical mastery and critical rating but won't increase morale by as much.

Minas Tirith Fellowship armour

This is similar to the crafted armour in that it has 3 essence slots and morale, but it also comes with baseline primary stats (will for light armour). It should therefore be better.

Assuming that 1 will, 1 tactical mastery and 1 critical rating essence is used in each piece (not using vitality because the armour already has baseline morale):

StatMinorMajorGreaterSupreme
Armour6306630663066306
Will1464148215841602
Vitality000102
Tactical Mastery6318645073747374
Critical Rating6318645073747374
Fate0000
Max Power000564
Critical Defense0002316
Morale4944494449444944

This might actually be quite similar to the Nadhin armour in stats. Again, comparing using Greater essences:

StatMinas TirithNadhin
Armour63066039
Tactical Mastery7374 + (1584*8) = 200467374 + (1530*8) = 19614
Critical Rating73747374
Morale4944816*3 = 2448

Hooray! We have a new champion!

One last comparison - class-specific armour versus Minas Tirith armour:

StatDol Amroth class setOsgiliath's Fury setMinas Tirith
Armour603962396306
Tactical Mastery1382 + (1434*8) = 128541608 + (2160*8) = 188887374 + (1584*8) = 20046
Critical Rating291840207374
Morale1230*3 = 3690578 + (540*3) = 21984944

The Osgiliath class sets are better than the Dol Amroth set, but the essence armour is better still.

Conclusion


With the introduction of essence armour and empty essence slots, it can be more difficult to compare armour when you can't see all the stats. There are so many different ways people could fill those essence slots - some people might stack one stat, while others try to balance their gear. I have described what I would do. Your mileage may vary.

In conclusion, I would have to pick the Minas Tirith fellowship armour, obtained with tokens earned by completing daily quests around Pelennor Fields, as the best armour currently available.

Thursday, 29 October 2015

Level 100 Gear Updated for U17

Last year when West Gondor was released I wrote an article about level 100 gear for Lore-masters. With the arrival of update 17 and a new tier of crafted gear plus new factions, it seems time to reconsider how we gear up, but I'll try to be more general so as to be relevant to all classes.

Skirmish Camps

Item Level 192

Skirmish camps have rare quality level 100 armour, weapons and accessories available for marks and medallions. A few pieces of the rare quality Nadhin armour set with essence slots are also available from the light/medium/heavy armour vendors.

Dol Amroth Faction (West Gondor)

Item Level 192

Dol Amroth offers barterers with incomparable quality armour sets; class-specific sets (including legendary second age weapon) plus light/medium/heavy sets with essence slots for customisation (variations of the essence slot armour may also be available as quest rewards or world drops). These items are purchased with tokens earned by completing quests and daily quests around Dol Amroth.

Scalable Instances

Item Level 192

Scalable instances set to level 100 can drop incomparable quality armour, jewellery and off-hand weapons of the Greater set (or rare quality items of the Potent set) but there are no set bonuses. These items may also be found on the auction house.

World Drops

Item Level 192

Light/medium/heavy sets of incomparable quality gear with set bonuses may drop from mobs or be available from the auction house. For example, the Guardian of Watchwood set of light armour.

With similar stat weightings to the Greater and Potent sets, the uncommon quality Lesser set also drops from mobs and can be found on the auction house.

Epic Battles

Item Level 192-204

Completing the quests in epic battles can reward jewellery of various qualities or tokens that can be used to purchase class-specific jewellery.

The Minas Tirith epic battles can reward epic quality cloaks with an essence slot.

Rangers of Ithilien Faction (East Gondor)

Item Levels 195-198

The quartermaster sells rare quality shoulders and jewellery and incomparable quality off-hand weapons for tokens earned by completing quests and tasks in East Gondor.

Osgiliath Instances (East Gondor)

Item Level 201

The Osgiliath Rewards Vendor sells incomparable quality light/medium/heavy armour sets with essence slots for tokens earned from Osgiliath instances.

Crafting - Tier 10 (Anórien)

Item Level 201

Rare or incomparable quality items can now be crafted with most armour and jewellery having essence slots.

Minas Tirith Fellowships (Old Anórien)

Item Level 204

Fellowships within Minas Tirith have different incomparable armour available for the appropriate tokens (earned by completing daily quests near Minas Tirith). The armour has essence slots.

Builder's Fellowship - head, shoulders, chest
Smith's Fellowship - gloves, legs, feet
 

Thursday, 14 August 2014

Lore-master Stat Priorities

It's not just the quality of gear, but the stats on your gear that make a big difference in how well your lore-master can perform. Different play-styles may favour different stats but I hope to identify some reasonable goals for improving your lore-master. Please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this.

The Basics


Lore-masters need lots of Will and Vitality. Lore-masters are primarily lightly armoured spell-casters who use Will, but it can be advantageous to be in melee range to make full use of special staff attacks, hence the importance of Vitality.

Will increases your major damage stats and some defensive stats as well:
  • increases your damage
  • increases your outgoing healing
  • increases your tactical and physical mastery (increases damage)
  • increases your tactical mitigation (protects against elemental damage)
  • increases your resistance to debuffs (wound/fear/disease/poison)
Vitality increases your survivability:
  • increases your health pool (morale)
  • increases your out-of-combat health regeneration
  • increases your resistance to debuffs (wound/fear/disease/poison)

Other important stats for lore-masters:

50% Resistance, 40% Tactical/Physical Mitigation, Tactical Mastery, Critical Rating

Offense Stats


Critical Rating increases your chance to get critical hits which do extra damage. The maximum critical hit chance from your gear is 25% (the % can be seen when you mouse-over the critical rating score in your character sheet).

Fate also contributes to critical rating and some Lore-master gear will have Fate and/or Critical Rating. For example, Shoulderpads of the Nightwatcher (lvl 100) has 85 Fate (equivalent to 212.5 Critical Rating) plus 614 Critical Rating.

If you want to do more damage, increase critical rating.

Tactical Mastery increases the damage of your tactical abilities. When you mouse-over the icons for your abilities, they mention "Tactical Skill". Examples are abilities that deal fire or lightning or light damage, as well as your healing spells.

If you want to do more damage, increase tactical mastery.

Physical Mastery increases the damage of your melee skills. Lore-masters only have a couple of melee abilities: staff-strike and staff-sweep, so this is not a huge priority. You get physical mastery from Will.

Finesse reduces your enemy's resistance to debuffs such as wounds/fear/bleeds/poison and their chance to block/evade/parry your attacks. Therefore, this makes your enemy more vulnerable to your attacks and less likely that your attacks will miss. More successful attacks means more damage dealt. 

Enemy mobs also have finesse, with instance and raid bosses having quite a lot, but most landscape mobs won't have much.

Lore-masters don't deal wounds/fear/bleeds/poisons but some of their pets can (lynx critical hits can apply a bleed, eagles can apply a fear). Finesse may help reduce the miss chance of your debuff spells (i.e. lore skills). Tactical abilities cannot be blocked/evaded/parried.

Having some finesse may be useful but is not a top priority.

Defense Stats


Resistance, as mentioned above, reduces your chance to be debuffed by wounds/fear/bleeds/poison. As these effects can increase your damage taken or make you deal less damage, avoiding them by increasing resistance is recommended.

Both Will and Vitality provide resistance, as does many virtues, therefore it may not be necessary to specifically gear for it. Resistance is capped at 50%.

Critical Defence reduces the chance of your enemy to score a critical hit against you. This is usually more important for tanks, but if you've got top threat and/or getting hit a lot (e.g. in PvP or soloing), increasing this stat could reduce your damage taken.

This is probably a situational stat that you should increase if you're feeling "squishy".

Tactical and Physical Mitigation reduce the damage you take. They're very important and have a cap of 40% which you should aim for. Instance mobs and PvP "Creeps" tend to deal more tactical damage, while landscape mobs are normally melee or archer types dealing physical damage.

Will and virtues are the primary source of mitigations, and some may also be found on jewellery and legendary item relics.

If you want to stay alive, increase mitigations (to cap ideally).

Tuesday, 5 August 2014

Level 100 Gear for Lore-masters

As I am trying to gear up my level 100 lore-master, I've found limited resources on what options are available (online wiki and databases not being up to date yet) - obviously the class armour set and the slotted armour sets in Dol Amroth, but is there anything else? No crafted gear recipes were made available with update 14 so that leaves PVP, instances and drops from mobs I guess.

PS. See Comparing Level 100 Armour Sets for new Lore-master armour sets available since Update 17.

Light Slotted Armour Set - Dol Amroth

Note: Level 95 Light Nadhin Shoulders (3 slots) and level 100 Light Nadhin Robe is available free by completing the epic questline Volume IV, Book 1.

ItemiLevelArmourWillExtras
Light Nadhin Hood1925441194 empty slots
Light Nadhin Shoulders1925441194 empty slots
Light Nadhin Robe19218111194 empty slots
Light Nadhin Gauntlets1929051194 empty slots
Light Nadhin Leggings19215091194 empty slots
Light Nadhin Shoes1927261194 empty slots

Light Nadhin Armour

Lore-master Class Set (Armour of the Night Watcher) - Dol Amroth

Note: You need to complete each of the Dol Amroth sub-factions' questing deed to unlock each piece of gear.

2-piece bonus: Water-lore incoming healing buff increased by 3%
4-piece bonus: +5% Tactical skills direct damage

ItemiLevelArmourWillExtras
Circlet of the Night Watcher192544239205 Vitality
768 Critical Rating
1874 Finesse
Shoulderpads of the Night Watcher192544239205 Vitality
85 Fate
614 Critical Rating
Robe of the Night Watcher1921811239205 Vitality
768 Critical Rating
614 Tactical Mastery
Gloves of the Night Watcher192905239205 Vitality
768 Tactical Mastery
1544 Critical Defense
Leggings of the Night Watcher1921509239205 Vitality
85 Fate
377 Maximum Power
Boots of the Night Watcher192726239205 Vitality
68 Fate
768 Critical Rating

Armour of the Night Watcher

You can also buy a Lore-master's Staff of the Second Age (base stats: 475-791 common damage, 253.2 DPS) from Brandarth, the Lore-master Armour vendor in Dol Amroth. However, it requires Mason tokens which won't be available until your server has unlocked the caves of Emyn Ernil.

Guardian of Watchwood (world drops)

This is a set of bind-on-equip incomparable item level 192 gear with set bonuses that comes from random world drops. Pieces of this set may also be found at the auction house.

2-piece bonus: 85 Will
3-piece bonus: 85 Fate
4-piece bonus: 85 Vitality
5-piece bonus: 85 Fate
6-piece bonus: 85 Will plus 768 Tactical Mastery

ItemiLevelArmourWillExtras
Amarthgarab (head)192544171171 Vitality
85 Fate
1536 Tactical Mastery
Eiliadhranc (shoulders)192544171171 Fate
768 Critical Rating
1536 Tactical Mastery
Tiriacham (chest)192181117185 Vitality
256 Fate
 768 Critical Rating
Braigmaib (gloves)192905171171 Vitality
768 Critical Rating
1536 Tactical Mastery
Thorembadanir (leggings)1921509171171 Vitality
85 Fate
1536 Tactical Mastery
Delendail (boots)19272685171 Vitality
171 Fate
768 Critical Rating
768 Tactical Mastery

This set is fairly balanced between Will and Fate and has a lot of Tactical Mastery.

Western Shore (world drops)

This is a set of bind-on-equip incomparable item level 192 gear with set bonuses that comes from random world drops. Pieces of this set may also be found at the auction house.

2-piece bonus: 768 Tactical Mastery
3-piece bonus: 85 Fate
4-piece bonus: 85 Vitality
5-piece bonus: 768 Tactical Mastery
6-piece bonus: 85 Fate plus 768 Tactical Mastery

ItemiLevelArmourWillExtras
Golthol (head)192544171256 Fate
1536 Tactical Mastery
Gweluranc (shoulders)192544171171 Fate
1536 Critical Rating
2343 Finesse
Formen Falas (chest)192181185171 Vitality
171 Fate
1536 Tactical Mastery
Aelin (gloves)192905171171 Fate
1536 Critical Rating
2343 Finesse
Andúnë (leggings)19215090171 Vitality
171 Fate
1536 Tactical Mastery
2343 Finesse
Helegdail (boots)192726171171 Vitality
171 Fate
768 Tactical Mastery

This set has more Fate than Will, with only a little Vitality but a lot of Finesse.

At the Auction House

Scalable instances can drop a variety of bind-on-equip incomparable item level 192 items known as the Greater Resolute set, e.g. Greater Resolute Robe of Tactics. This set also includes jewellery and weapons but does not offer set bonuses. The base stats on the armour are similar to the Armour of the Night Watcher set, but the extra stats vary.