Update 22.2 Brings Summer Event 2018 & Big Changes to Tactical Relics

The latest Lord of the Rings Online update (v22.2) will arrive today with some big changes, particularly with regard to the rebalancing of Tactical Relics. In addition, players will find the Summer Festival back in the game along with two new Seasonal Instances. The Lay of Rust & Rime continues "with eight new weekly episodes to conclude its story!"

The biggest change comes, however, for Tactical Runes and the massive amount of rebalancing changes that will arrive in the patch:

Tactical Relic Rebalancing

• We have rebalanced recent changes to Tactical Relics, necessitated by some issues that arose during their initial implementation for the Mordor expansion.
• The relics with the new tactical bonuses had two serious balance issues:
  • They were never intended to be equipped in class Legendary Item slots.
  • They weren't scaled correctly compared to the base bonus ratings on the weapons. They were scaled the same as Physical DPS Relics, but tactical and healing bonuses on Legendary Items should be substantially lower than the physical bonuses.
• This necessitates two corresponding changes that we need to implement:
  • Tactical DPS relics will only slot in the primary weapon, and will see their bonus reduced to ~70% of their current value.
  • Tactical HPS relics will only slot in the Class item, and will see their bonus reduced to ~45% of their current value.
  • We recognize that this will impact some players' current Legendary Item layouts. To manage this, those existing Tactical bonus relics will be removed from your Legendary Items and Relic inventories, and be replaced with barter tokens that can be exchanged at a Gorgoroth raid vendor for an equivalent relic (either DPS or HPS). You can then rebalance your Legendary Item.

You can get a look at the class-by-class changes to relics as well as the rest of the update notes, by visiting the Lord of the Rings Online site.