Champion Guide
by Kaiz
Ah, Champions. Easily the best class in the game. Anyone who disagrees is just wrong, and ugly too. Most people think we are just button mashing fools but as Spiderman said, âWith great power comes great responsibility.â As the de-facto DPS class that wonât get killed in 2 hits if we get aggro, itâs up to us to make all the bad things go away. And I do mean ALL of them, not just one at a time.
Therein lies the quandary of a Champion⦠To AOE or not AOE? When you are soloing, donât even ask that question. AOE everything. But when you are in a group, you actually need to stop mashing those buttons and use that brain of yours. In Raids, the rule of thumb should ALWAYS be NO AOE unless the Raid Leader ⢠says itâs OK to AOE. You will know this when the Raid Leader ⢠says, âGo ahead and AOE guys.â If you are ever NOT 100%, surefire, bonafide, positively certain itâs OK to AOE, just donât do it.
Look at it this way⦠if you donât AOE and it was OK to AOE, you probably will still make it through the fight, it will just take a little bit longer.
If you DO AOE and it was NOT OK to AOE, you stand a good chance of being responsible for killing your entire party.
Now that the foolish devs have added that little note on who broke mezzes, we can no longer blame the Hunters and their Rain of Arrows when we accidentally hit Blade Wall.
Now that that little bit of ugliness is out of the way, we can get on to the important stuff, like how to kill everything you see!
The Great 2-Handed Weapon vs. Dual Wielding Debate
From what I've seen, this is pretty cut and dried. Dual wielding will give you more DPS over the course of a fight, but uses a lot more power because you attack so quickly. A 2-Handed weapon will do less DPS, but with much higher crits, and will save you power if it's a very long fight. A 2-Handed weapon will also steal aggro from the Guardian because of those high crits.
I tend to dual wield 2 axes most of the time but I do occasionaly use a 2-Handed axe just to mix things up. It's really up to you.
Attacks (the red buttons)
Champs have a plethora of attacks that fall into 2 main catagories⦠single target attacks and AOE attacks. I wonât spend much of your time here because this is self-explanatory, but I will go into some detail on our special attacks for the sake of those unwashed heathens, aka non-Champions.
Clobber â our very quick attack that lets us interrupt a mobâs time delayed action that was about to ruin someoneâs day. Any champ who doesnât know what this is, is really a hunter playing an alt.
Hamstring â a nice attack that slows down a targetâs run speed for 15 seconds. A very handy tool for kiting things, able to spam it to keep something permanently slowed.
Sound the attack â AOE stun for 3 seconds. This also interrupts any mobs that it hits.
Cries (the yellow one)
Championâs Challenge - We really have only 1 cry, and that is to get agro on one mob. I only use this to get agro off a Minstrel , but if you are feeling generous you can try to save other squishy allies. Itâs on a 30 second reset timer so you can use it somewhat often. I usually save mine for when I really need it. You can boost this with 2 items in the Martial Champion class trait, which I have, because itâs nice to get agro when you really need to. With that trait slotted I can pull a mob from a Guardian if he is in trouble.
Ebbing Ire and Rising Ire â not really cries, but all about agro management. Rising Ire steals 15% of the agro from a fellowship member, Ebbing Ire gives away 25% of the threat a Champion has to another fellowship member. Very useful when off tanking or trying to save a Minstrelâs life. I guess you could use this to teach a hobbit a lesson when he is being mean to dwarves too, not that I condone that sort of thing.
Stances (aka, How Fast Do I Want to Die)
Stances are where the rubber meets the road for Champs. These are self-applied buffs that can drastically change how we play our class. We have 3 main stances that we can swap as often as we like along with another Legendary stance that is on a timer. Your play style will dictate how you use these
Fervor â IMHO, the bread and butter of a champion. Get a serious 20% boost in melee damage and +1290 in combat power regen (ICPR), highest fervor generation. Downside is you cannot evade, parry or block. I am in Fervor for 90% of the time.
Ardour â I use this maybe once a month, just to say I did. +1032 ICPR, take hits to evade and parry, moderate fervor generation, no melee damage boost.
Glory â I use this when I need to tank something using a shield. +903 ICPR, +60% threat gen, -15% melee damage, lowest fervor generation.
Controlled Burn â Legendary Trait â this is basically Fervor but you can still evade and parry. Very, very good for boss fights. Downside is you need to keep at least 20% of your health and be in combat the whole time, and itâs on a 10 minute reset timer.
Fervor
That little red wheel that determines what we are allowed to do. Most of our attacks either generate fervor or require fervor to fire. Itâs pretty simple and every Champion knows how to manage it, so I will throw in a few items for discussion here.
Battle Frenzy â adds 3 to Fervor, 1 minute reset timer. I am guilty of forgetting to use this at the start of a battle, itâs foolish not to. Itâs free Fervor man!! Try to get in the habit of using this when you start a fight. You can trait this to give you 5 fervor, a must have trait IMHO.
Red Haze â we all wish it was Purple, but itâs not. This will give you 1 free Fervor everytime something dies. I never use this, I tend to use attacks to build Fervor. My motto is Might as Well Hit Something!
D-(FENCE)!!!
Sudden Defense â if you have at least 1 Fervor, you can give yourself a 30 second defense boost with buffs to Parry and Evade. This helps if youâve bitten off more agro than you can chew. If you are in Fervor stance, get into Ardor or Glory and fire this off. Personally, I need to use this more often... but then again I like helping our Minstrels get their rez deed.
Blocking Blades â once something dies, you can put a +420 parry buff on yourself that lasts until you are out of combat. Since I am almost always in Fervor, I have hardly ever used this. But if you are off tanking or fighting a boss in Controlled Burn itâs kind of nice.
Healing (haha Hunters, we have a heal!)
Bracing Attack â low level heal that does Minstrel amounts of damage to a mob, requires 3 fervor and has a 30 second cooldown. I really only use this when soloing.
POWER!!!
Who doesnât like power? I know I sure do. No one thinks about power until itâs gone, then you realize it was pretty freaking important.
Any Champion that runs out of power has some explaining to do. Not to say that it doesnât happen, but 99.9999% of the time it was easily avoidable.
Second Wind - +240 power every time something ugly dies (not including hobbits for some reason). With a 15 second cooldown, you should spam this every single time you are able to. This is the main reason why you should never run out of power. As a Loremaster, if you ever have to give power to a Champ, first ask them if they are using Second Wind as much as they can. If they arenât, make fun of them. If they are, give the poor guy some power.
Power and stances â if you are using Second Wind and are in Fervor mode or Controlled Burn, you rarely have to worry about power. If you are in Glory and doing some main tanking because your Guardian was a hobbit , ease up a bit on the attacks to conserve power.
Fear â I keep plenty of Fear pots to counteract this dastardly enemy of power. That or a Captain.
