New Stats! Changed Stats!
Along with the recently discussed Combat System changes, we’ve made some changes and new additions to your character’s stats and how they are displayed. This dev diary will point out these changes and provide a first look at the newly revamped character panel!

Critical Defence (Melee, Ranged, Tactical)
Players will now have three new statistics to help offset the changes to some creatures (see the Combat Dev Diary): Melee Critical Defence, Ranged Critical Defence, and Tactical Critical Defence.

• Guardians and Wardens gain a passive trait at level 20 that increases their Critical Defence ratings sufficiently to reduce their chance to suffer a critical hit from even level monsters by 5%.
  
• Captains gain a passive trait at level 20 that increases their Critical Defence ratings sufficiently to reduce their chance to suffer a critical hit from even level monsters by 3%.
  
• The Champion’s Glory stance increases their Critical Defence ratings sufficiently to reduce their chance to suffer a critical hit from even level monsters by 3%.
  
• The Champion’s Ardor stance increases their Critical Defence ratings sufficiently to reduce their chance to suffer a critical hit from even level monsters by 1%.
  
• Heavy Shields will now increase their wielder’s Critical Defence ratings sufficiently to reduce their chance to suffer a critical hit by 5%.
  
• Warden Shields will now increase their wielder’s Critical Defence ratings sufficiently to reduce their chance to suffer a critical hit by 4%.
  
• Shields will now increase their wielder’s Critical Defence ratings sufficiently to reduce their chance to suffer a critical hit by 2%.

We want to have a clear delineation between Offensive stances and Defensive stances. Given the increased importance of shields for defensive purposes, a change to the Guardian’s Overpower skill is required. Guardians will no longer be able to use Shields while in Overpower stance. As part of this change, Overpower-based legacies will no longer appear on one handed weapons. Players will find new Legacy Exchange scrolls in the Guardian Trainer shop inventory that will exchange Overpower-based legacies on existing Legendary Items for new legacies.

Vulnerability (Melee, Ranged, Tactical) Changes
The Melee, Ranged, and Tactical Vulnerability statistics (which reduce incoming damage according to damage source) have undergone two major changes:

• We have changed the name, since gaining negative vulnerability was a bit awkward and confusing.
  
  • Melee Vulnerability => Melee Defence
    
  • Ranged Vulnerability => Ranged Defence
    
  • Tactical Vulnerability => Tactical Defence
  
  
• The statistics have been converted to ratings and the bonuses received from these ratings are capped at 15%. The Ranged Defence bonus on Large Shields and most skill bonuses will be left as a percentage bonus towards Defence, rather than a rating value. Virtue bonuses and item bonuses have been converted to rating values.
  
• These statistics will now also apply to damage-over-time (DOT) skills performed on you. The opposing statistics – Melee, Ranged, and Tactical Offense, will apply to DOT skills that you perform on targets.

Outgoing Healing
Players will now have a new rating statistic to help increase outgoing healing from skills. The bonus received from this statistic is capped at 30%.

Incoming Healing Changes
The Incoming Healing statistic has been converted to a rating. All incoming healing bonuses from items have been converted to rating values. Incoming healing bonuses and penalties from skills and traits have been left as percentages. The bonus received from this statistic is capped at 15%.

Healing Rank and Tactical Rank
Our new Healing Rank and Tactical Rank statistics will allow players with healing and tactical skills to increase their damage or healing output, by spending points into their legendary items!

Healing Rank
Minstrels, Captains, Lore-masters, and Rune-keepers will have a Healing Rank legacy added to their legendary class items. These classes will be able to spend points on this legacy to boost their Healing Rank, which will affect heals, heal over time, power heals, and power heal over time skills.

Tactical Rank
Minstrels, Lore-masters, and Rune-keepers will have a Tactical Rank legacy added to their legendary weapon items. These classes will be able to spend points on this legacy to boost their Tactical Rank, which will affect tactical damage and DOT skills. Guardians have a similar Shield Rank value that affects their shield attacks.

The Healing Rank and Tactical Rank legacies will be available on legendary items starting at level 50. Characters will also passively gain a small amount of Healing Rank and Tactical Rank as the character levels up from 1 to 50. Higher level legendary items will have a higher cap on their Healing Rank and Tactical Rank legacies, so make sure you upgrade your items as you level up!

Character Panel Update
In order to help you find your way with the new and changed character statistics, we’ve updated the Character Panel. The bottom half of the character panel features three new tabs: Defences, Combat Effectiveness, and Melee/Ranged/Tactical.



The Defences tab (shown above) will list your character’s basic stats (might, agility, etc), avoidances, resistances, and mitigations.

The Combat Effectiveness tab (below) will show your character’s basic stats again, followed by sections for your Healing and Damage related stats. Under the Healing header, the new Healing Rank rating, the new Outgoing Healing rating, and Incoming Healing will be shown. Under the Damage header, the new Tactical Rank rating will be shown (or Shield Use Rank if you are a Guardian), along with your DPS values for the weapons you have equipped.

Combat Effectiveness display for Guardians:



Combat Effectiveness display for Lore-masters, Minstrels, and Rune-keepers. Note the change from Shield Use to Tactical Rank in the damage column.



Finally, the Melee/Ranged/Tactical tab will show your Critical Rating, new Critical Defense rating, Offence rating, and Defence (which used to be called Vulnerability) rating according to its source (Melee, Ranged, Tactical).

As with the current Character Panel, you will be able to tooltip over any of the new statistics shown in each of the three tabs, to receive more information about that statistic.

That sums up the changes and additions to your stats and character panel. Be sure to read the Combat Changes Developer Diary and keep an eye out for the Skill Upgrades Developer Diary for the full view of how combat has changed in Siege of Mirkwood!