The Fanatical Swordsman

After receiving some really good questions from Lucian about my last post on the Virtues in Isengard, I decided to write some of my responses and some more thoughts on them.

Clarification about Beta Disclaimer of former post

When I said that there might be changes before the Expansion hits the live servers, I meant was that the Virtues I saw in the Beta might not be in the exact same form (like the exact same numbers) when Rise of Isengard goes live. They may increase or decrease values after testing. This often happens in Beta, and I wanted to be sure you wouldn’t get mad at me if you saw that Zeal gave a lesser amount of Morale in Live than I said originally.

Explanation of a few facets of the new Virtues

The Virtues in Isengard will be significantly different than the ones that are currently live. This is in part because of the stat changes that will be going into effect, specifically the ones concerning resistance ratings, as all resists will be under one stat now: resistance. That caused issues for Virtues like Honour, which specifically buffs poison resist.

Another change is that Melee and Ranged Defense will be consolidated in the stat changes under Physical Mitigation, while Tactical Defense will be renamed to Tactical Mitigation, which will now also include damage types like Shadow, Fire, Acid, and Frost.

It is interesting to note that while some attacks that have damage types like Shadow or Fire are melee-based, they will not actually check under Physical Mitigation. In the past (before Isengard), they would have been covered only by the stat in question, e.g. Maul from Wargs would have been mitigated with Shadow mitigation and Flaming Arrow from Blackarrows would have been mitigated with Fire mitigation. However, both attacks are now covered under Tactical Mitigation, even though the first is melee and the second is ranged.

So will you log in on the 27th and find that some of your Virtues have changed? Yes. But for the better, in my humble opinion.

+2 Virtue Ranks in some deeds will be changed to be +1

Lucian also brought up a great point that he had found on the forums: deeds that formerly granted +2 to the rank of certain Virtues, like Worm-slayer in Moria did to Valour, will be changed to only add +1. I had forgotten to mention this in my original post. He was concerned that some people had reported that their Virtues on copied characters had changed to reflect this, in the negative.

Yes, the deeds are being changed to always grant +1 to whatever virtue. Earlier in the Beta, that was reducing Virtue ranks that had already been earned. When I logged on with my copied character, several of my traits had been changed so they were lower, specifically, Valour and Innocence. There was a recent update, however, that they were not going to be changed retroactively, thank goodness. Your Virtues should remain the same rank when you wake up Sept. 27th.

This change to the rewards of deeds obviously has a plus side and negative side. On the down side, I can’t get two ranks of Valour with one deed anymore. On the plus side, all deeds are created equal so to speak, so there shouldn’t be a preference whether you do the exploration deed in the Bonevales in Dunland or do the exploration of all the entrances to dungeons in Moria to get a rank of Zeal. This allows a little more flexibility when picking deeds, so you don’t always have to do 75 quests in the Shire over and over again on multiple characters.

Unless you like delivering pie that much…

Please let me know if you have any questions! Thanks Lucian for the great questions, they were very thought-provoking!