A new developers diary was posted up today on the Lord of the Rings Online forums discussing itemization in the upcoming Rise of Isengard expansion.
Gear stat and rating limits will be completely removed to allow for more diverse and unique items.
Early in the development of Shadows of Angmar, we decided to restrict certain stats to certain pieces of equipment. This decision made it difficult to create items that felt different from one another. In the end, our light, medium and heavy helmets had very similar stats. We want you to make more decisions and to feel empowered by those decisions, so we’ve gone ahead and opened up the floodgates on which stats and ratings could appear on gear.
Gear level increments have also been increased to allow for bigger changes in gear stats between levels.
We want upgrades to feel like upgrades and we want you to be excited when you get a piece of gear. To correct this, we’ve created larger steps between the items.
Yellow gear items are also getting a boost to their stats in an attempt to make the relevant to LotRO players past the early stages of gamplay. Turbine stated they have “added significantly to their power starting at level 66“, but they will not be more powerful then the next level of purple items.
Rise of Isengard will make it easier for solo players to acquire four out of their six piece class sets through solo quests. And for the group player or raider, there will be better drops for classic instances, scaling raids and skirmish raids.
To end things, the devs discussed more about what the new Finesse stat is and why its isn’t a replacement for Radiance. It was quite confusing even for a ex-lotro veteran, so I’ll leave it up to you to figure it out.