Choosing Your Virtues

Virtues are a type of Trait that add stats to your character sheet. There are great resources (listed below) for learning how to trait a virtue, which stats a particular virtue confers or which deeds you need to complete to earn them. But all shy away from the electric third-rail question of LOTRO: Which virtues should I trait and why?

The short answer is: it depends on many factors. While this is true, it amounts to a non-answer. So we're going to pull on our rubber boots and try not to touch anything metal.

Virtues for Leveling to 50

While leveling to 50, you'll want to be a strong soloer -- able to progress efficiently and cope with challenging content alone or in small fellowships. Survivability should be your primary objective when choosing virtues to equip. You can't fight when you are taking a dirt nap.

Most of the pre-50 content was released in the Shadows of Angmar era, when the max level was 50. The game mechanics you experience in SoA are simpler in some ways than you see in Mines of Moria and Siege of Mirkwood content. Class roles are less defined and grouping opportunities are less common than post-50. We recommend the following virtue sets for the best survivability and class stats for pre-50 content:

1. Every class can benefit from survivability stats: Morale, Vitality, Armour, and Morale Regen. Use four of your five virtue slots for survivability traits. Choose the ones you have the highest ranks of from among Innocence, Valour, Empathy, Loyalty, Justice, Zeal and Compassion (Hunters only).

2. Use the fifth slot for a virtue that gives a key stat to boost your DPS.

• Captains, Champions, Guardians and Wardens need Might to improve melee damage. Slot Discipline as your class virtue.
• Burglars need Agility to improve their crit rate and enable the use of class skills. Hunters need Agility to improve ranged damage, hit chance and crits. Slot Determination as your class virtue.
• Minstrels, Lore-masters and Rune-keepers need Will to improve tactical damage (and heals). Slot Wisdom as your class virtue.

This approach is intended to make leveling easier while giving you a good start on the traits you are likely to use at max level as well. Look to gain easy ranks of these virtues while leveling.

Free and Premium Tactics

If you are a Free or Premium player you will only be able to slot two virtues until you unlock more slots. Equip as many virtues as you can from those listed above, starting with the ones you have ranked highest. In general, it's a higher priority to unlock class trait slots than virtue trait slots, but all are helpful.

Also, if you plan to continue playing past 50, consider subscribing for a month to unlock a bunch of per-character features that would otherwise cost you TP. See Choosing an Account Type for more info.

Virtues for Leveling Post-50

As you continue leveling post-50, things change. First, the damage you take in Moria hurts! If you haven't unlocked all of your trait slots yet, consider doing so now: the bonuses from a full set of virtues and class traits will be very helpful for your journey into Moria. Make sure you have Innocence for Melee Defence (or Compassion for Ranged Defence, if you are a Hunter) slotted as one of your survivability traits.

Next, as you group more, you need to be aware of how virtues support your group role.

• Damage dealers will want to hang onto their class stat virtue, as these are the biggest contribution your can make to damage through virtues.
• Healers will want to slot Wisdom for the boost Will gives to heal size.
• Tanks will want to trait resists and mitigations as needed for the content. For example, traiting Fidelity for Shadow Defence or Charity for Wound Resist.

Continue to look for opportunities to earn more ranks of the virtues you use. Rank 8 Valour gives a much bigger boost to stats than rank 4 Valour.

Virtues for the Level Cap

As you approach level 65 and your gear improves, you should start considering stats from all sources when choosing your virtues. Besides virtues, you are getting stats from your level, stat tomes, gear (including relics on your legendary items), buffs, class and racial traits, food and more. When you add up stats from all sources, you could be in danger of exceeding the "cap" for one or more of your key stats, especially with group buffs.


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