Monday, October 29, 2012

Rohan: Warsteed Traiting, part 1




This week, I am going to do a special multi-part post on Warsteed Traits.

For sure, my best hope to optimize a system is when I understand the variables involved. For my first week on a warsteed, when I wasn’t playing with cosmetic options (rohan-warsteed-cosmetic-looks) or flying (flying-warsteed), I was zipping around button-mashing and randomly picking a horse type and traits that felt good at the time. Now it is time to actually read the trait information and start trying to make some reasonable choices.

Starting out with Traits:

There are several factors that are going to work together to make a very potent warsteed. Those are Horse type, Warsteed traits, Bridle legacies, Bridle Relics, and Warsteed skills. For this set of posts, I will focus on Horse type and Warsteed traits.

As a Runekeeper, I will write what I see. Occasionally, there will be a distinct RK flavor, but I will try to make it useful for non-RKs.

The first obvious thing to see is there are three horse types: Light, Medium, and Heavy. Here is the first screen you see when you get a Warsteed. You have to decide which type you prefer. You can always go back and change it at any time without losing any “work” you put into it. You just reassign points and it costs a little gold.


Those three horse types have available “traits”. The trait sets include (1) Stats buffs, (2) a Red trait tree line called Red Dawn, (3) a Blue trait tree line called Rohirrim, and (4) a Yellow trait tree line called Riddermark.

Do not confuse the fact that there are 3 Trait Discipline trees and 3 Horse Types. These Disciplines are not tied to the horse type directly. Each discipline is just a set of traits that is available for each horse type.

There are some similarities between the three horse type’s trait sets.

Part 1: Trait line Overview (you are here)
Part 2: Light Traits (Part 2)
Part 3: Medium Traits (Part 3)
Part 4: Heavy Traits (Part 4)
Part 5: Comparisons (Part 5)

I will start with an overview comparing similar Traits by Warsteed type. The next parts will go deeper into what all the Traits do.

Red Trait line – Red Dawn:
Red Dawn is set up to do damage to the Enemy. It has mastery, critical, and finesse bonuses, and focuses on ways to make attacking easier. With whatever horse type you use, the effect is the same: DPS. For Runekeepers, this trait line is the Fire traits.



Table 1A: Red Trait lines for Light, Medium, Heavy

RED trait line (Red Dawn)

LIGHT WARSTEED
MEDIUM WARSTEED
HEAVY WARSTEED

24 points
25 points
25 points
1
Long reach
Long Reach
Long Reach
2
Forceful Blows
Heavy Hand
Well Rounded
3
Combat Advantage
Physical Specimen
Precision
4
Exceptional Tactics
Tactical Genius
Overwhelming Offense
5
Deceptive Appearance
Savagery
Mounted Advantage
6
Vicious Attacks
Rapport
Opportunist
7
Feign Injury
Deadly Pursuit
Ride for Ruin
8
Adrenaline Rush
Arise
Instigate
9
Wrath
Shields will be Splintered
Spears will be Shaken

Blue Trait line – Rohirrim:
Rohirrim is all about protection. The traits do different things, but the focus is on better mitigations, resistances, block/evade/parry, warsteed morale and power return. For Runekeepers, this trait line is Healing and the class specific traits focus on heals.



Table 1B: Blue Trait lines for Light, Medium, Heavy

BLUE trait line (Rohirrim)

LIGHT WARSTEED
MEDIUM WARSTEED
HEAVY WARSTEED

28 points
26 points
28 points
1
Tough Exterior
Hard to Hurt
Determination
2
Fast Maneuvering
Hard to Hit
Flexibility
3
Defensive Riding
Determination
Fearless
4
Invigorating Presence
Keen Instincts
Strategist
5
Band of Power
Deep Reserves
Rehabilitation
6
Invigorating
Sacrifice
Cunning
7
Bond of Morale
Rapid Recovery
Battle tested
8
Bolstering Cry
Patience
Steel Skin
9
Quickness
Understanding
Positive Thinking
10
Motivation through Aggression
Survivability
Benevolence

Yellow line – Riddermark:
Riddermark traits focus on Speed for the first half. The deeper traits work on enemy positioning, pick up a Fellowship trait, and focus on the “pound it” damage. “Pound it” means that the trait line picks up things like “Trample” (which we will get to) and bonus criticals. For Runekeepers, this trait line is the Lightning trait set.



Table 1C: Yellow Trait lines for Light, Medium, Heavy

YELLOW trait line (Rohirrim)

LIGHT WARSTEED
MEDIUM WARSTEED
HEAVY WARSTEED

17 points
17 points
17 points
1
Fleet of Hoof
Fleet of Hoof
Fleet of Hoof
2
Born Sprinter
Born Sprinter
Born Sprinter
3
Agile Movement
Agile Movement
Agile Movement
4
Dash
Dash
Dash
5
Hard to Tire
Intensive Training
Coax
6
Caution
Intimidate
Resilience of the Herd
7
Speed of the Herd
Strength of the Herd
Trample
8
Disengaging Strikes
String Willed
Conservative Combatant

There are a lot of potential combinations!
In Parts 2 – 5, I will break the traits down by Warsteed and discuss each trait. Tune in tomorrow-ish for the next installment.

Update 11/05/12: Made a couple of tweaks to the numbers that didn't add up correctly.
Update 05/22/13: Yellow line traits have been completely revamped and are more Class Specific now as of Update 11: Wildemore! Revamped table is forthcoming.

8 comments:

Sig said...

Amazing work! Nice job on this post, can't wait to see the follow up posts.

Joshua said...

I'm fairly certain that the traits -- the names, at least -- are identical for each class. The major difference is in the final tier. The "capstone" usually applies a class-related effect to specific mounted class skills.

Unknown said...

Thanks Sig! I hope to make it "warsteeds.com" mention-worthy. :D

Unknown said...

Thanks Joshua! I do believe you are correct. :)

Thanks for the segue into Parts 2, 3, and 4 which discusses the traits in more detail!

(We will see that there are 5 light traits that are class modified, 4 medium, and only the 3 heavy caps are class modified. For interest, not that it is Directly trait related, the RK and other tactical classes do "tactical" warsteed damage, and the expected characters do "physical" damage.)

Anonymous said...

Interesting that the heavy steed takes more points. Not much, but still.

It's worth it for Trample. :D

Ely

Unknown said...

That is interesting isn't it? :) I would have thought each of the horses would have had the same number of points necessary in the trait lines.

I had a friend double check the Heavy set to make sure that I can add, and the Heavy does have 1 more point worth of traiting. Go figure.

Asciel said...

Oh Dana. Thank you so much for this. War steeds confuse me still (although that may be due to my lack of time to play for a little while longer).
<3 <3 <3

Unknown said...

It's ok Asciel. Warsteeds confuse me too. :D
Hopefully, with all the digits in front of us, some ideas will gel. hehe

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