The virtue trait thread

[Rumblebelly]

Hello all !

I've been camping these forums for some times, and just now joined.
I have a level 18 hobbit guardian (ya ya dwarf/human/elf/pony might be "better" and all that, i just couldn't resist...).

Anyway, i couldn't find 1 coherent thread about virtue traits for guardians, one that contains all essential information and people's advices/experience.
The purpose of this thread is to discuss virtue traits for us guardians: what you have on now, what you aim for, why Virtue Trait 1 is better that the other and for what purpose, how/where to get a trait, etc.

To kick off, I'll give a link to an EXCELLENT virtue traits guide on warcry.com, i warmly suggest you look it for some very nice info: http://lotro.warcry.com/content/guid...its/compendium

As for me, i aim for this set (advice and suggestions are greatly appreciated):
1 - just
2 - valor
3 - Discipline
4 - determination
5 - loyalty
? - wisdom (undecided yet)
? - fortitude (undecided yet)

NOTE: I opened this one to make a place for us to discuss, advice and ask about virtue traits for Guardians, So please, no flames about anything - that includes looking down on other people's choices of traits/gear/class/whatever.

-RB

[Flamingsage]

That link doesn't work properly for me. Get 401 error :/

[Rumblebelly]

i think i fixed it, try again and tell me if it works for you now

[Flamingsage]

Yea it works, cool.

[MeYouFool]

My top 5 for my guardian are;
1. Valour (just nice to have that extra 100+ moral)
2. Discipline (extra might is good for +damage and block, also less melee damage)
3.Zeal (more melee mitiation)
4. Wisdom (might just be me, bt i find i run low on power alot, so the +will is nice from this)
5. Innocence (more melee resistance)

This is just what i like, +moral and melee damage reduction for a sturdy tank, along with a bit of might and wil

I also play a hobbit guardian (lvl 32 now) and we are just as good as any other tanks out there. Sure dwarves have a +2% block racial, but we can get stealth!! Invisible tank all the way !!!!

[Rumblebelly]

Originally Posted by MeYouFool

I also play a hobbit guardian (lvl 32 now) and we are just as good as any other tanks out there. Sure dwarves have a +2% block racial, but we can get stealth!! Invisible tank all the way !!!!

Sadly, i cant use stealth, its that huge fat tummy that always gives me away

Thanks for the input, I'm still undecided about wisdom. I'll give it a try if i see i run out of power too fast frequently.

[Fuglen]

I love wisdom, less downtime between pulls and alittle more fear resistence doesnt hurt anybody :P

[Ambeth]

There's two things worth mentioning to bear in mind with this decision too:

1.) Each Virtue has a weighting of stats that differs. So whereas Discipline adds 18 Might at rank 6 (because Might is its heaviest stat), other Virtues with Might only add 6 or 9 or so.

2.) You can't really make a decision until you've maxed all of them, as "undesirable" virtues might advance faster than others, so at some point it might be worth taking Rank 5 in a fairly bad Virtue simply because you don't have any other virtues higher than rank 2.

An example of this - I'm currently level 36 and I use Determination, Discipline, Loyality, Justice and Valor. All of them are at rank 4. However I have Charity and Patience at rank 6 because these were very easy to get the Deeds done for, so for quite some time I used high rank Patience and Charity. No, they werent great virtues, but they were so much higher rank than anything else that they gave a much bigger "overall" effect.

So really, I find that I have to keep checking my list of deeds and virtues every level and seeing whether I've advanced any good ones frequently. I think I'll only be deciding on my "final" virtues once all of them are Rank 5 or above. I still see players at 40+ runnign around with rank 1 and rank 2 virtues, and whilst the virtues might be pretty good ones, I do feel that those players might do better using one of their higher rank ones for a while.

That aside, I think there are three ways of rating Virtues for guardians.

1.) Go for the virtues that enhance the primary stats. This is a good all-round way of doing it, and it's what I've been doing when levelling. Take virtues that enhance Might, Vitality, Maximum Morale, Agility (though not as important as Might/Vit) and maybe Wisdom. Fate is worthless at present (see the thread on Will/Fate). I find that I like to review my virtues every time I get new gear - for example, I got a really nice helmet with Will and Vitality on... I didnt feel I was having any Power problems at the time, so I dropped Wisdom and swapped it for Justice, keeping the same kind of Will as before the new item but now with much more Vitality. I see the Stat virtues as a way to tailor your stats if you find great gear with large values of particular things (at one point I had loads of gear with Agility on, not out of choice but because the agility was so large, like 15 agility pants and 18 wrist, so I dropped Determination for a while as I felt I had enough).

2.) Go for the virtues that give you things you can't easily get on gear. This is probably what I'll do once I get to much higher level, and items start having huge amounts of stats on them. Ranged Vulnerability, Melee Vulnerability and Magic Vulnerability are the ones here. So likely Innocence and Zeal, and other such stats that are hard to get on armor and will have a big overall impact. +18 Might from Discipline is huge at mid 30s, but when I'm 50 I wonder if it will have much of a difference, whereas 2% Melee Vulnerability will always be awesome.

3.) Go for specific resistances for a specific type of fight. I imagine this might be needed later on against big raid-type bosses perhaps, or in dungeons where you know a certain foe is faced. If you're about to venture into a lair of the Dead and you know that everything in there will be dealing shadow damage, or some kind of spider lair where you can expect to be permanently poisoned, I can see it being worthwhile to go to the Bard and put on ALL the virtues that boost that set resistance type, then swap back after (changing virtues does seem quite cheap). I don't think I'd want to have High Resistance virtues at all times though, that's rather situational, and I feel simply going for pure Stats or Melee/Ranged vulnerability is going to be better if you're not sure what you're facing.

Um, yes. Rather long and rambly, but those are my thoughts. As for me, I currently use any five of the following six virtues:

Discipline
Loyalty
Valor
Determination
Wisdom
Justice

(I feel Discipline, Loyality and Valor are the most important overall, I think I'll likely always keep those and swap out the other two). Which five I use depends on my gear, and how much Will I have on that (if I get too much gear with Will, I'll swap out Wisdom for a while). At high level, once I get them to rank 4 or above I'll use:

Innocence
Zeal

for the vulnerability reductions.

I think all in all it's important to be flexible. Virtues only make a fairly small difference, and it's impossible to say which ones are the best simply because it depends on a.) the rank that someone has of it and b.) what gear that Guardian is wearing. I view Virtues as a way to supplement the stats you have on your gear and fill in the gaps to make you more well-rounded.

-Ambeth.

[Mizz]

During the early levels all morale enhancing traits are more usable compared to others. At later levels, 45+ youll want to start looking at resist enhancing traits, stats and morale can be enhanced with items, but increasing resists can be increasingly harder without proper traits.

Most resists work as x% chance to fully resist an effect, if the effect is applied and does damage then its damage is reduced as Common Resist % + Specific Resist %. So for example if you were hit by a 50 poison damage per 2 sec for 30sec dot and had 40% common resist + 20% poison resist, you would take 20 damage per tick compared to 30 if you had 0% poison resist. Youd also have a 20% chance to fully resist all damage on each tick.

You can check the Accomplishments Compendium in my signature for info on the max values of the various traits for better planning on which ones youd like to have at the higher levels. (I actually got pretty much all traits maxed out on my guardian, I switch around a lot, in beta we had 8 virtue slots, its a shame they reduced it).

[Rumblebelly]

Thanks everyone for the input, and Mizz for that Compendium (very helpful).

-RB