stat-caps
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Is reforging a hit or a miss?
It's always the same. Just when I get everything all sorted out neatly, a new piece of upgrade gear drops. If I win the gear, the next half-hour or so after raid is spent digging up gems, cutting them to the appropriate cut, then nabbing enchant mats and making sure the item is enchanted properly. And after all that is done and I put the gear on, I log out and back into the game so that the armory updates. Then I alt-tab out of the game and pull up my reforge site du jour (rogues, Shadowcraft is an amazing, amazing thing), put the window on my second monitor, tab back into the game and reforge it all. And hopefully when I'm done with all of that, I'll have precisely enough hit to cap without going over, and all of that useless crit will be a thing of the past. It's not a hugely complicated process, but it is a process -- one that I repeat with each new piece of gear I obtain. I generally get far more out of reforging than I ever did with simple gemming and enchanting from the Wrath era. However, I also understand all these different stats and which ones are good, something a new player might not be aware of. So is the reforging process a hit with this expansion or a miss?
Lord of the Rings Online bringing in major stat changes
If you've played Lord of the Rings Online extensively, odds are good that you're familiar with the concept of stat caps. Functionally, stat caps are that certain point at which further increases to the stat in question will be wasted -- useful for balance purposes, but rather frustrating when players find new abilities and equipment useless due to the stat caps. So it's probably going to be a good thing when Rise of Isengard makes stat caps largely a thing of the past. That's not the only useful takeaway from the new developer diary, however, as the game's statistics are also undergoing further revision to make the game easier to understand at a glance. A new stat, Finesse, will be added to specifically reduce your target's ability to evade or resist attacks. Resistance, Mitigation, and Critical Hit will all be merged from their current state (so melee, ranged, and tactical critical hit will all become simply Critical Hit). Finally, there are some changes incoming in terms of interactions with primary stats. It's a short diary, to be sure, but the implications for Lord of the Rings Online players should be far-reaching.
