Company of the Tortoise

Dear Fellow Turtles,

Virtues are your friends. Since they can only offer limited offensive support, their primary function is to boost your survivability by contributing to defensive statistics. For this very reason they are usually neglected by a wide range of players as most can survive long enough to score on landscape and T1 regardless of Virtues equipped.
This isn't the case however when it comes to challenging content - group or not.

Looking at lotro-wiki's chart we can see their potential. You can see the gains-per-Rank and a list of the relevant Deeds to acquire them if you click on the individual Virtues.

Depending on your class, role, encounter and equipment choices Virtues will be used either as the main source of a given statistic or as a necessary boost to some. In order to pick the right ones we have to understand the importance of each.

The single most important defensive stat is Mitigation as ALL damage your character receives will be mitigated based on type (regardless of combat state or positioning). Out of the two types of 'mits' Tactical Mitigation is usually the one characters will struggle with due to both its limited presence on items and the 5:1 Armour contribution ratio (compared to Physical's 1:1).

There are currently six Virtues that contribute to Tactical Mitigation: two as primary bonus (Fidelity, Tolerance), three that have powerful primary bonuses (Innocence, Compassion for Physical Mitigation and Honour for Resistance) and a sixth (Mercy) that should be neglected due to its extremely poor primary bonus and the fact that you are only allowed to slot 5.

Farming up the above Virtues will give you a substantial advantage especially since the recent Virtue revamp. (Up to Rank 10 nothing changed but beyond that the gains-per-Rank are exponentially increasing making it worth the extra effort!)

Some encounters will not involve Tactical damage so you can focus more on Physical Mitigation, Morale and Resistance. For those cases I usually recommend that (if people have some time on their hands) another 3 Virtues are kept at a relatively high Rank for swapping (Charity, Zeal, Confidence).

Happy Deeding ;)

Nice guide Sig! 😀

I have gotten Tolerance and Fidelity up to (nearly) max level.
To hell with you..Sammath Gul

nice one Sig appreciate the effort - for the content when virtues are useful i wonder about resistance and how effective it is at mitigating the damage and other effects it helps with? obviously more resists are better than fewer but as a general rule (rather than for a specific instance) where does resistance fall in the grand order of Tac Mit/Phys Mit/Res?

#13477049 Lirduiniel wrote:

when virtues are useful

Allow me to emphasize: they always are useful.
The difference in T2 - especially at lower levels - is that they become a necessity due to not having access to Essences (other than luck).
There isn't a single class (not even the Guardian) that can get to the T2 mitigation caps without the above. Most classes can barely get to the T1...

#13477049 Lirduiniel wrote:

where does resistance fall in the grand order of Tac Mit/Phys Mit/Res?

Right there, in the third place 😁.
When an effect is Resisted one (or a combination) of the following will happen:

1. the intended debuff won't apply
2. the (present) debuff will not tier up
3. one of the (present) debuff's 'ticks' won't apply
4. the debuff is removed

Let's take a tiering bleed as an example!

Tiering means that certain circumstances will make it more potent, examples (including but not limited to): time passing, reapplication of same, fellowship member gets defeated, given mob gets defeated, fellowship member too close/far, (not) moving, (not) interacting with objects, etc.
Bleed means it does x amount of common (Physical) damage periodically - aka 'ticking'.

If the application is resistable (not always the case) the system rolls for you:
(Res%-OppFinesse%=actualRes%). If succesful go to 1!
If not succesful then the system will continue to roll for each tick if applicable (not always the case, some debuffs just require the initial roll and then apply full effect for the entire duration) using the same formulae to determine whether the damage for that period will apply or not (3).
A separate Resistance roll is made (again, if applicable) when the Tiering would trigger. If succesful go to 2!
It is important to note here that some debuffs will be removed completely even if you resist one of its ticks/tierings and some are completely uneffected by Resistance (powerful effects like the Balrog's Hope wipes and certain Boss' specail abilities).

So to sum it up, Resistance's usefulness is situational. It caps at 50% so even maxed out you will - statistically speaking - take half the damage. It is nice to have, though, and the next best choice once the relevant Mitigations are capped.

Yours Best ;)

i might actually be beginning to understand the mechanics behind the game now Sig - thanks once more