The Lord of the Rings Online™: Siege of Mirkwood™ expansion introduces exciting changes for the player combat system, and this developer diary will cover everything you need to know in the new world of combat!

Weapon Speed and Damage Changes
One change that you may notice immediately is that weapon speeds have disappeared from weapon tooltips. Weapons still have speeds, but the speeds and damage have been standardized for different classes of weaponry (one-handed, two-handed, bow/crossbow, javelin, staves and rune-stones) per weapon level.

The way our weapon speed variations interacted with various combat mechanics resulted in a clear, optimal choice of weapon type for most classes. In most cases it was clearly advantageous to go with the slowest weapon possible in order to maximize your damage output. For example, most Burglars would choose to use slower one-handed maces instead of faster one-handed clubs or daggers. Because damage output could be affected significantly by weapon speed this became the single most important factor in choosing a weapon; stats, or other weapon effects, were secondary and in some cases completely ignored in favour of a slower weapon choice. Those players who were not aware of this mechanic would sometimes find themselves passed over or ridiculed for making the “wrong” choice for their class, something which definitely detracted from their enjoyment of the game. How many Burglars out there are using one-handed clubs in their main hand?

In addition, because weapon speed was such a significant factor in overall effectiveness, this single stat would reduce the desirability of a large amount of weapon loot in the game. This in turn made it difficult and sometimes frustrating to find the “optimal” choice for your class, especially in later levels when you start searching for a Legendary weapon to match your character build and play style. Captains, you know what we’re talking about! How excited were you when the Watcher loot included a Captain’s Dagger of the First Age?

We also wanted to improve the pacing of combat in general. Your weapon speed directly affects how frequently you can execute skills. By standardizing the speeds in this way it was easier to give the majority of weapons faster speeds and in doing so improve the pacing of combat overall for the majority of our players.

By standardising our weapon speeds and damage across various categories we were able to improve access to visual customisation and also improve the variety of useful weapons in our loot system in general for all players. When combined with the changes to how your stats affect your abilities in Siege of Mirkwood, you will be very happy to have more choices in what you wield in battle!
Here’s a more detailed list of how weapon speeds and damage have been changed for Siege of Mirkwood:

• All weapon speeds have been normalised around the following categories of weapon, i.e. all weapons in each of these categories use the same speed rating:
  
  • One-handed weapons (sword, axe, mace, hammer, dagger, club, spear and implements)
    
  • Two-handed weapons (sword, axe, hammer, staff, club, halberd, rune-stone, and implements)
    
  • Bows and Crossbows
    
  • Javelins
  
  
• The “weapon speed” rating has been removed from item examination.
  
• Damage variance, or the range of damage per weapon, has also been standardised so that the high end of the damage range is consistent for a given category of weapon at a given weapon level. This reduced the high end of the damage range for some weapons and increased it for others. Almost all weapons will show a damage range change with this update.

The majority of weapons were given faster speeds than they had previously in order to improve the overall pacing of combat for players. As a result the damage range for most weapons has been reduced to compensate for the increase number of strikes that the faster speeds enable.

Combat Effectiveness, Pacing, and Responsiveness Improvements
Originally, the LOTRO combat system was designed with a slower rate of decision and pacing than you usually see in other MMORPG games. While this allowed us to have improved animation quality and provided more room for tactical decisions during battle, the overall feel of combat was described as “laggy” by many players.

One reason combat felt slower and/or unresponsive to some was the fact that we only allow one skill to execute at a time. This improved overall animation quality but at the cost of speed and responsiveness; for example, Guardians would have to wait to finish executing their current skill before Stamp could execute and interrupt a monster preparing a stronger attack. Since you can only have one skill executing at a time, we support queuing a skill to be executed as soon as the previous skill is finished.

Another reason that combat may have seemed “laggy” at times is that it does not always rely on the animations themselves to limit the pacing of skill executions. There is an underlying factor called the “action duration” which determines how long a skill execution lasts, which is independent of and longer than any animation for a given skill. This provided us with a consistency to enforce game balance while allowing the animators to provide some variations in pacing where it was appropriate without breaking the game. For example, Hunters may have noticed that the crossbow animation for Swift Bow seems to deliver damage faster than the animation for a regular bow. While the crossbow animation delivered the damage earlier in the attack than the bow animation, the skill duration is the same, regardless of the weapon, and you can’t execute your next skill until that duration expires. Since the crossbow animation finished sooner, however, it seems as though your character pauses for no reason before the next skill executes. That extra delay is the amount of the skill duration that was remaining after the animation completed; the skill queue UI illustrates this timing (see “Show Skill Queue” in the Panels section of the UI Settings tab of the Options UI). The bow and crossbow animations have been adjusted for Siege of Mirkwood, and this is no longer an issue thanks to the new combat system.

Here is a more detailed list of the changes made to the combat system in order to provide better overall effectiveness, pacing, and responsiveness.:

• We have updated skill queue processing to ensure that the execution of auto-attack skills is much more consistent. Previously, it was possible to starve out the auto-attacks or have auto-attacks delay the execution of your chosen skills, depending on your play style. Further prioritisation and more aggressive management of combat animations makes it a lot more difficult to do either of these things so, overall, players should be a lot closer in terms of effectiveness.
  
• We introduced a new skill timing which we’re calling “immediate.” These skills execute almost instantly when chosen, causing any prior skill to complete and make way for the “immediate” skill to proceed. These skills ignore the remaining “action duration” of the previously executed skill. We have added the “Immediate” key word to skill tooltips to make it easier for you to identify which skills use this new timing.
  
• We also updated the existing “fast” skill timing which we have used since the game launched. The “fast” skills will not accelerate the execution of any prior skill, but they will execute “as soon as possible” whenever a previous skill animation completes. These skills also ignore the remaining “action duration” of the previously executed skill. We have added the “Fast” keyword to these skills’ tooltips.
  
• The update to skill queuing and combat animation management has fundamentally changed how animations overlap and blend on the client. We have added two new combat options (see “Combat Options” on the Options panel) which allow you to tailor some aspects of our new animation management scheme so you can choose the appearance you prefer. NOTE: These options do not have any impact on your combat effectiveness; they are cosmetic and only affect your visual play experience during combat.
  
  • “Play Optional Combat Animations” – This option is off by default. With the new animation management scheme we sometimes bypass auto-attack skill animations in order to get to your chosen skills more quickly. By enabling this option your client will still play these optional animations. You will see more animations and appear to be attacking more frequently; however, you will also see more animation blending or interruptions as your chosen skills execute over your auto-attack skills.
    
  • “Allow combat animation blending” – This option is off by default. When disabled, you will only see one combat animation executing at a time on any attacker; we do not attempt to blend animations, rather we interrupt any running animation prior to starting a new one. When enabled we will allow all prior animations to continue and will attempt to blend your next skill animation in.

Powerful Creatures
Players aren’t the only ones to receive enhanced combat effectiveness. As the power of Sauron increases, the most evil creatures throughout Middle-earth grow in might. Care should be taken when fighting powerful creatures; they are now much more dangerous than you may remember.

What does this mean for me?
The change above will affect Elite, Elite Master, Nemesis, and Arch-nemesis creature types from level 30 and above. These powerful creatures will do more damage and have bonuses to their critical ratings. Take Care!