Legacies for RK stones

Alrighty! Let’s talk about Runekeeper Legacies for Legendary Items (LIs).

As a RK, to be your best in any situation, you need to be able to work effectively as both a DPS leader and as a main healer.

In lotro, there are four classes whose primary role is Damage: RK, Hunter, Champion, Burglar. When played correctly, all four equally do the best damage in game. Like all classes, there is more to it, but the RK is a Tactical nuker, the Hunter is a Ranged master, the Champion is master of Area Damage, and the Burglar can disable a foe and carve them up.

Similarly, the main healers in the game are the Minstrel and the RK.

One thing to realize is that the RK is NOT going to be the best Damage Dealer AND the best Healer at the same time. There is an Attunement bar that forces the RK to choose what “stance” she is in. Know your role in the group and plan accordingly and effectively.

Furthermore, the build, specifically the choices one makes with LIs and traits, will determine the Healing or Damage ability of the RK. Therefore, to be effective, we will build 4 Legendary Items: 2 healing and 2 DPS.

How do we choose legacies for legendary items?

Let’s break down the options. First, we will look at the RK stones. Next lesson will be on RK bags. (Update 06/05/12: see legacies-for-rk-bags for RK bags).

When considering Legacies, there are “Major” legacies and “Minor” legacies. You can see the difference by the color of the ring around the icon. Major = gold, Minor = silver.

See the picture below. Gold. Silver. Got it. Yeah, I know it is hard to see. Trust me, and know that there are Majors and Minors.

When you first identify a LI, it will have three major legacies. At level 10 Reforge, you get another Legacy, At level 20 another, and level 30 another. All LIs these days have exactly 6 legacies.

On the Reforge, you will usually get a Minor legacy, with a slim chance to get a Major. So, at level 30, you will likely have 3 Majors and 3 Minors. That is really just fine for a RK. Do NOT begin your build until level 30. But do start your plan before level 40 (when you are offered tier upgrades).

At levels 40, 50, 60, and 70 (via a scroll of delving), you gain the option to gain +1 tier to a legacy. So, you will want to have your 6 legacies locked down between level 30 and 40 to maximize the natural upgrades without having to use more Scrolls of Empowerment than necessary.

Major Legacies for RK stones

Here are the major legacies for RK stones. I subdivided them by what they do. There are 7 Major legacies. You will likely get to choose 3 of them for your RK stone.

Major:			Set	Min	Max
Battle Attuned Skill power cost			power	-1%	-15%
Fury of Storm Damage			Lightning	1%	15%
Fire skill Damage			Fire	1%	15%
Wrath of Flame Damage over time			Fire	1%	15%
Healing			Heal	1%	6%
Healing Attuned Skill power cost			Heal	-1%	-15%
Healing over Time			Heal	1%	10%

Minor Legacies for RK stones

Likewise, here are the Minor legacies. There are 8 of them; or you can slot a Stat legacy instead of those.

Minor:			Set	Min	Max
Chill of Winter Damage			Frost	1%	15%
Chill of Winter debuff duration			Frost	1s	10s
Distracting Flame CD			Fire	-1s	-30s
Steady Attuned Skill power cost			Power	-1%	-15%
Finesse			debuff	670	750
Fury of storm critical multiplier			Lightning	2%	30%
Vivid Imagery targets			Lightning	1	5
Legacy stat			x	28 / 33	36 / 41
Glorious Foreshadowing duration			Heal	1s	9s

Let’s build a RK stone for maximum DPS. Which to choose?

Of the 16 choices… 4 are Healing, 2 minimize power consumption, 3 add Lightning damage, 2 add fire damage, 1 adds cold damage, 1 changes fire CoolDown, 1 changes Cold Debuff, 1 adds Finesse, and finally the last is the for adding a Stat.

No, it isn’t scary. Walk with me…

Healing (4): First and most obvious, we will not choose Healing legacies for a DPS stone; scratch out the 4 healings. (Healing, Healing Attuned skill power cost reduction, Healing over Time, Glorious Foreshadowing duration)

Power (2): Second. You are a RK, you are soaking in Will & power, you aren’t seriously running out of power, so scratch the power consumptions. (Battle Attuned skill power cost, Steady Attuned skill power cost). We are here to maximize Damage.

Distracting Flame CD: Next, let’s look at the Fire Cooldown: Distracting Flame. Maximizing this legacy would make Distracting Flame have a near nil CD, effectively it would be like a heftier DOT version of Fiery Ridicule. It is a worthy consideration. If you use it, be sure to get it into rotation.

  

Damages (3): Fire skill Damage, Fury of Storm Damage, & Chill of Winter Damage are all straight damage across the board. We like these.

Wrath of Flame Damage over Time: This one increases the DOT portion of the Fire skills. It is a very useful thing when you are in a group and able to “fire” off Fire skills.

Fury of Storm Critical multiplier : This one is excellent. What RK doesn’t like seeing the crits start to roll and landing shots that do damage over 10k several times in a fight? Along with good traiting, good stats, & fortuitous combinations, this legacy is a must to get the big hits.

Vivid Imagery targets:  Let’s look at Vivid Imagery. There is a good daze, and the chance for crits start to roll. The CD is long so this skill is one of the most cautious of the skills as to when to pull the trigger. The base targets = 3 (this picture is older and doesn't match my current LI if you are keeping score). What is it worth to you to take out more foes?

Chill of Winter Debuff Duration: What is it worth to you to have your Chill hits last longer? How many are you using per fight?

Finesse: This legacy adds +670 finesse, up to +750 finesse at max. +670 finesse reduces an enemies resistance, block, parry, and evade by about 1.87%. Is it worth it, or would a better legacy be more damaging?

Stat: You can always add a stat to give a bonus to Will, Vitality, Fate. For DPS stone, I am certain we have enough good options without using a Stat legacy. Plenty of these other legacies will maximize more damage than the addition of a Stat.

Narrow that DPS stone down for me Danania,

Choose 6 from these 9: 
Fire skill Damage,                                  Fury of Storm Damage,             Chill of Winter Damage, 
Wrath of Flame Damage over Time,    Fury of Storm Critical multiplier,           Finesse,
Vivid Imagery targets,                         Chill of Winter Debuff Duration,           Distracting Flame CD.

You can see that I chose to maximize first and most importantly, the Tactical Damage Rating of the Damage stone. Yeah, I didn't talk about that. For your DPS stone, always always maximize the Tactical Damage before fidgeting with the legacies. (For your Healing bag, always maximize your Tactical Healing.)

Then I maximized (1) Fury of Storm Damage and (2) Fury of Storm Critical Multiplier. These are obvious to me to have the biggest impact.

Then, I made some tougher choices. Fire is powerful in group. I nearly maximized (3) Fire Skill Damage and (4) Fire skill DOT, but I wanted another (5) Vivid Imagery target (I really like that skill).

A couple of points were left over so I put them in (6) Finesse. I could have chosen a different 6th legacy of some of those above, but then you ask the questions, what is worth more… 1.9% enemy resist reduction from Finesse, or a 2 second improvement in Chill of Winter debuff duration, or 2% extra Chill of Winter damage?

You can see that I have spent all I can spend. Every legacy worth adding points to is at Tier 6 (the icon that looks like a spider); the last one (Finesse) holds what was leftover.

Ah-ha! But you NEED to be an uber-healer also dear RK!

Change your frame of mind and look at the Stone legacies from a healer perspective. When you are a main healer in a group, everyone is counting on you to keep the bars full. Heck, when I was younger, I sometimes didn’t even know where we were. It isn’t important. Let no one die and everything else will work itself out.

Again, we have 6 Legacy choices.

The first four are no-brainer. Take the 4 Healer legacies (Healing, Healing Attuned skill power cost reduction, Healing over Time, Glorious Foreshadowing duration).

The other two? Well, you are healing, which of the rest of the legacies will help you heal better?

I will not take away from my ability or my focus to heal my group. The other two were a clear choice for me… 2 stat legacies. I chose Will and Vitality, though Fate is a good alternative.

Clearly, with this Healing Stone, I didn't add anything to the Tactical Damage, which would be a waste of points as I am focused on green bars only.

The observant will notice that my Healing Stone is actually a 3rd Age LI (the purple colored title). Well, I made it before the skirmish camp started giving away Worn Symbols of Celebrimbor (cost is 2394 marks and 207 medallions) used to make the 2nd Age LIs. What is the difference?

At this point, very little. My 3rd Age LI needed more Scrolls of Empowerment to gain the same effectiveness, but with the Tiers at max, it got there. The grand total of what I am giving up by comparison is about +3 Will and +3 Vitality (which is not worth a remake at this point). I would recommend getting the 2nd Age level 75 if you are just starting out.

Update 06/05/12: Go to legacies-for-rk-bags for RK bags.

As seen on CSTM, summary post

I normally wait until Tuesdays to post, but today I interrupt the regular schedule to bring you a “holy moly”!

Spring Festival is here, and as I do nearly every morniing, I headed over to Casualstrolltomordor.com to check out everything my hero Goldenstar has to say. I choked on my breakfast soda when I saw that my blog was featured on the front page! Link here ~ CSTM ~ recommended reading = danania-net. Go see. I will wait a moment.

<checks the clock...> Glad you are back! Ok, I noticed that I have now possibly sent some of you on a cyclical DO loop, linking to cstm, which links back to danania.net. Lol!

Let me break the chain by showing you around to some of the visitor favorites @ danania.net.

The 5th Anniversary post is statistically the visitor’s top choice. It is written in story form about the Anniversary party. 

Followed closely by "lotro stat math & RK gear" which is an analytical exercise in lotro math and how stats work coupled with some thoughts about how to build an end game RK. 

Speaking with peeps on the street, the "fastest skirmishes & marks per minute" analytical compilation is useful and certainly gets regularly visits. 

Relics and Virtues lay out all of the current (Update 6) virtues at rank 14 and relics for easy access and build planning. 

The Herbalist is an explanation of how to build a good Herbalist skirmish soldier. I have this link at the ready since I see this question asked about once a week. 

Some of my favorite stories were the Draigoch stories (Draigoch1  & Draigoch2), Isengard, and the introduction of the lil danas.

I hope you enjoy just clicking around the site. I love comments so fire away! You will see lots of horses, festivally things, Sailor Moon, and more horses. And lots of pictures.

Tuesday will be a post on RK legacies. I know you are excited. J

Tonicbars, lotro horse corral

Someone asked recently how I keep up with all my horses. I built a corral for them of course!

When I was younger and had fewer horses, I slotted them on my skill bars. That worked just fine until I ran out of skill bar slots and had to choose between seeing all my horses and having easy access to things like potions. What I needed was MORE skill bars, and possibly something that I could toggle on and off. Behold, there is a plugin for that, called “TonicBars”.

Ok, I’m no plugin master like some, but this particular one let me construct exactly what I needed. Tonicbars is particularly useful for opening “skill bars” for “tonics”, like when you need a potion. I’m not sure if anyone else (so far) uses it as a horse corral, but I'm going to lay out how I did it.

First of all, download the plugin named Tonicbars. Don’t be freightened; it will be ok, and you will be happy that you did. http://www.lotrointerface.com/ is a home site for the plugin. Follow the directions for getting it into the correct folder on your computer.

My friend Dandur tells me that lotro has a plug-in manager that can be useful for starting the plugins. I keep it fairly simple though without the manager and slot loading the program like this:

Type /shortcut 1 /plugins load tonicbars and it will put a button on the skill bar that you can click and start the plugin when you want to. Move the button to a happy place for you.

I put my button out of the way until I need it.

So, to set it up to look like a corral…

Main menu is first to come up; go to “quick slots”.

For me, I don’t really want to see ALL the steeds all the time, so I set a “Trigger” of when I “press Alt” so they will show up only when I need it (see what the screen looks like below).

Down lower on the quick bars tab, you can see that I set my horse corral to be 10 rows by 10 columns. 100 slots should be enough for the horses to all find a place to be. Of course, set the size however large you want it. Also, you can set how big the actual button slots are further down the page.

Finally, put all your steeds in the newly made corral!

Here is a shot of what my screen normally looks like.

And, here is what it looks like while I’m pressing ALT. (of course, the red lines and text are added to the picture). I can pick out any of those 62 steeds with ease (looks like a few steeds snuck out of the pen as I think I have closer to 70, time to go on a steed hunt through the skill list). I have three tonicbars set up for all my happy convenience: Horses, Travel, Festival... you can set it up for any occasion and use whatever toggle makes sense to you. I think I need a new one for Emotes!

Yay for more horses! Here is the Reveller’s steed, bedecked in red, fresh from the lotro store. Very fancy and matches my outfit fairly well!

And, my most recent horsie, one that I have been working toward (More ponies) is the Isengard War-steed.  It is bartered at the Ox-Clan camp for 99 Orthanc sigil-fragments. It is so classy I feel like I should dress up. :)

Draigoch Statue, lil Danas moving day

As of right now, my 7^th most popular post is the story about when I visited Draigoch (Danania does Draigoch), and some of my most searched items include Draigoch (along with danania, lotr humor, riders of rohan, relics, runekeepers, and steeds). My Draigoch story was lots of fun but I wanted a better picture of the statue. Thorin’s Hall neighborhood ceilings are just too low for a statue that large. Now, with the help of the lil danas, I have a better picture! J As usual, do note that the pictures are larger than they appear if you want to zoom in on something.

The lil danas have been talking about moving for ages. (Lil Danas)

The hobbit quads were pushing for the Shire, but I think all the lil danas were mesmerized by the views of Falathlorn, the elven housing community near Duillond. We elves can draw people in. J Danadelion set out to go for a visit.

From talking to the housing vendor, the Angels had narrowed it down to the houses at 8 Haven Way or 5 Waterbank Road. The irony was not lost on the team that the Angels were considering moving to "Heaven" Way. In the end, it comes down to location, location, location. Here is the view from the front deck of Waterbank Road, looking out toward Celondim.

As Delion looked down the hill, seeing the house in the foreground, and Duillond and the bridge between Ered Luin and the Shire in the background, the choice was all but made.

5 Waterbank Road, Cair-e-faras, Falathlorn Homesteads, Arkenstone is now known as the “Home of Angels”.

DanaOnar, Chief Move Coordinator, was in charge of getting the pet cave-claw to the house and making sure it didn’t dig up any neighbors’ flowers. Thankfully, he is a Trained Cave-Claw. It looks like she had her hands full and will be moving items for weeks. I'm not sure whether she intends to use those fireworks in her pack for fun or remodeling (or both).

I gave the Angels a house warming present. Yep, you guessed it… it is a Draigoch statue. Nooo… I am not lucky enough to win one in raid. What I lack in luck, I make up for in patience and tenacity (and coin… as fate would have it, this statue showed up on the AH… and was the most expensive thing I’ve ever purchased… you don’t want to know).

To really appreciate how impressive he is, you have to back away from it. Here is a shot of me standing in the middle of the Falathlorn neighborhood (near the vault person), looking down on it. The house is partially obscured by the pink tree, but clearly, the statue is taller and perhaps bigger than the entire Angels’ kinhouse!

Another really neat thing about the move was learning that I have friends in the neighborhood, which works out well if the Cave-claw gets loose. Beorhir lives next door on one side (Beorhir was the captain in the first picture in the Draigoch story), and Rruin lives on the other side! Just down the street are more friends Belile, Eryngwae, and Rasphant.

Walking around the neighborhood, we saw more people’s houses… people who are new-friends-in-the-making: Lyndrielle, Honeybuns, Lythari, Nymphsong, Faladir, Eliahnna, Gaspard, Zephorlas, Alderwolf, Zemirah, Jesa, Henduluin, Rimmardar, Feani, Fiionna, Anathelle, Dulond, Destriel, Irideth, Latharuth, and Selendir. The other kin houses are owned by the Descendents of the Noldor, the Regiment of Gondor, and Bel’s Club. Good to see the Angels are in good company!

Gratuitous Steed shot:  At day break, I got a new horse called the “Steed of the Horse-lords”, which came with the Mithril edition download from Gamestop. (http://www.gamestop.com/). It is neither fast nor robust with high morale, but it is pretty! I got the download for the steed and the turbine points.

Another enormous housing item is the “Memorial of the Gaunt-Lords” that my friends Carradine and Audred were kind enough to show me. It is obtained as a reward from beating Ost Dunhoth T2 deed (which I am nowhere near completing). The statue is best viewed at night to give it a more ominous look. Mebbe someday I will have such a statue, but for now, I am happy to have a nice home for the statue of Draigoch.

Update 7 Changes, RK changes

When I was younger, Updates would happen and I would be none the wiser. The update would be like a foreign language because I had no reference to understand. I have gotten a bit better at sorting through and figuring out what matters to me.

Now when Update 6 was released, it changed virtues and traits (Update-6-relics-and-virtues) and changed RKs significantly. I totally intend to explain those changes because it was really important and lots of people discuss (complain) about upcoming changes without revisiting the subject with actual data evaluation after they play it. Rest assured, I have data to show the RK changes of U6. J  However, I won’t post-mortem dissect U6 today.

Today, I want to look at Update 7 that is coming down the pike next. The way I read these Updates, I mentally classify changes as words (typos and such), minor fixes that to have things work like intended, and real changes that matter.

The entire release is an interesting read. I picked through it to note some of the most interesting things. If you want to read the entire thing (or are interested in classes other than RKs), CasualstrolltoMordor has a nice PFD right here (Update-7-bullroarer-release-notes).

Because there are too many words on this page and not enough pictures, here is a shot of the Stangard steed. For the low low price of 20 gold Anduin tokens, it can be yours also (Less-math-more-ponies). My next targeted steed is probably the Isengard Warhorse... we shall see how much longer that takes to save up the 99 Orthanc sigil fragments.

Summary of interesting things:

• "Fields of Fornost in North Downs gets a revamp, instance panel, group play level 30 – 75."     *Haven’t been there in ages.

• "Moria gets a revision."     *No new quests or consequence of interest at level 75.

• "Storm on Methedras New Skirmish."     *Will need to add it to skirmish table. (Fastest-skirmishes-marks-per-minute). Hopefully, it will be super and give reasonable marks for its length.

• "Star-lit Crystals for Legendary Items - available as loot from monsters. Up to 3 can be used on LI... displayed as star icons… will upgrade the DPS, tactical healing rating, tactical damage rating or shield use rank of your LIs & will upgrade any ratings based legacies as well as secondary ratings and stats."        *Well jolly that. Without new quests, there is less reason to go wandering looking for mobs and I am not known for “luck loot”; so hopefully, they will show up on AH. We shall see, and I'm sure it will be great. J

• "6th inventory bag will be made available as part of the Riders of Rohan pre-purchase."       * Want it. Must have it. Give it to me, my preciousss…

• "Relic change: Tactical Mastery was added to the Westfold Rune of Power and the Great River Rune of Power."    *See Update-6-relics-and-virtues - previously, it boosted Fate, Physical Mitigation (defense), and Physical Mastery (useful for non-tactical classes) and was inappropriate for a tactical class. I still probably won’t give up the “True Rune of the Two Trees” though.

• "The Jester horse jingle, jangle sound is now playing on the sound effects channel and not all channels."    * <06/01 EDIT: That horse has been located at Spring Festival; see him here @  Danania's Steed of the Jester >.

Photo break... It was a great Anniversary party. Danaszar, in party hat, bids you all Auf  Wiedersehen until the next festival... which might not be that far away since Spring is here and we aren't yet spring festing.

U7 Rune-keeper changes:

The released doc lists 17 changes to RK.

11 of them are just words, typos, and tooltips. They have no bearing on how a RK feels.

5 of them are fixes, mostly minor:

• The effects of Glorious Foreshadowing and Wondrous Foreshadowing will no longer stack

• Essence of Storm no longer increments Winter-storm on a critical hit.

• Winter-storm is no longer expended by an attack that is resisted or misses.

• Adjusted the trait set bonus for Calming Verse to boost movement speed +20% to match the tip.

• Fixed a bug where the Rune-Keeper skill “Ceaseless Argument” was not receiving the appropriate damage increase from the Legacy.

The lack of Calming Verse speed buff was annoying when first spotted with Update 6, but it looks like it is fixed currently even before Update 7 (at least most of the time). These five are not a big deal since they are revising to work “as intended”. Ceaseless Argument legacy is the only other one that is easy to spot as the Legacy will now be able to add +15% damage at maximum.

The last one, about the Riffler?:

• All Riffler of Writs class items should now grant increased Tactical Mastery, a reduction to Writ power cost, and the ability to nullify attunement shift while the Rune-keeper is attuned.

I had to go look up Riffler of Writs at the metalsmith since I don't use that one. So to recap, the new version has Tactical Mastery (all rifflers and chisels do), reduction of Writ power cost (if you are running out of power, we need to figure out why… this riffler probably isn’t the solution), and it has the ability to nullify attunement shift when casting writs. Yep, that is what it is supposed to do. It must also be a fix and not a real change. 

Danadelion sends a copy of all of the level 75 rifflers and chisels available for us to review, with the mention that any decent metalsmith can make these and are relatively inexpensive. So, don't get suckered into overpaying for something so easy to craft and so necessary for your RK-ness.

I will stick with the "Exceptional Superior Calenard Chisel of Lightning". It's simple, effective, and super. There is never a reason to change from it.