Stats for Damage

Want to deal massive damage? Don't we all! Damage dealing is a key aspect of questing, skirmishing and grouping in LOTRO. Doing more damage usually makes things easier, faster and more fun. In this article we discuss how to boost your damage in Mirkwood.

Better Damage without Math

Damage calculations in LOTRO are complicated, and let's face it: math is not that much fun for most folks. So let's skip ahead to my general recommendations for stats that increase damage:

• Buff base damage first. Base damage affects every attack, even crits. That's because crit size is a multiple of base damage in LOTRO.
  • For melee and ranged attacks, get better weapon DPS
  • For tactical attacks by Minstrels, Lore-masters and Rune-keepers over level 50, get a higher rank of Tactical Damage Rating on your legendary weapon
  • For shield attacks by Guardians over level 50, get a higher rank of Shield Use Rank on your legendary belt
• Offence stats for Melee, Ranged and Tactical are multiplied with base damage
  • Captains, Champions, Guardians, and Wardens need Might to improve melee damage. Burglars use Might as a secondary stat, after Agility. +Melee Critical rating is good stat for melee damage too.
  • Burglars need Agility to improve hit chance and melee crits. The other melee classes use Agility as a secondary stat, after Might.
  • Hunters need Agility to improve ranged damage, hit chance and crits. +Ranged Critical rating is another good stat for hunters.
  • Minstrels, Lore-masters and Rune-keepers need Will to improve tactical damage (and heals). Fate is a good secondary stat to improve crits, as is +Tactical Critical rating.
• Criticals are a significance source of additional damage
  • The best source of critical chance for most classes is Passives - don't forget to buy them from the class trainer!
  • Direct +critical rating bonuses are often easier to stack than raw stats
  • Agility adds Hit chance, Evade rating, Melee Critical rating and Ranged Critical rating, making it a great stat for melee and ranged classes
  • Fate adds to Tactical Critical rating and magnitude

There's More To It Than Stats

For damage, stats are only the beginning of the story; there are several other factors that affect the damage you deal. These aren't the focus of this article, however I'll offer some general recommendations here as well:

• The damage you do with class skills is only partially affected by your stats. Often there's something unique to the skills: a fixed amount of damage added in, a better-than-average critical chance or magnitude, something added when a particular class trait is slotted, a bonus when skills are used in a particular order, etc.
  • Read the tooltips of your class skills and traits carefully to understand what makes each skill unique
  • Visit the forums for your class and ask which traits and skill order folks prefer for best damage
• Legacies on legendary weapons (level 50+) can provide an enormous increase to your damage
  • Some legacies increase the damage or crits of your skills
  • Some legacies allow you to better penetrate your target's defenses
  • Visit the class forums and ask which legacies folks prefer for best damage
• Buffs & debuffs from group members can provide an enormous increase to your damage
  • Examples: Telling Mark, To Arms, Reveal Weakness, Ballad of War
• Mob defenses can have a big impact on your ability to damage them
  • See the Understanding Mob Strength article for more info

In the rest of this article, I'll dig into the stats part in more detail. A lot of these use those big ratings numbers I explained in the previous article.


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