Branick, Teriadwyn, Pineleaf, Sanswinda, and Mortumbra discuss the Champion class in The Lord of the Rings Online™ and are joined by a recording of noteworthy Champion, Andang. Thanks for listening.
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Episodes of LOTRO Academy are recorded on Friday and posted when I can get to it. Leave a comment below or via email (podcast at lotroacademy dot com) prior to 8 PM EST on the Friday following the episode’s release for your comment to be featured in the Listener Feedback section.
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Great round table. I have plans to make one if not more champs. This is super helpful information. Kill all the things with your shiny new Champion Blender.
While it is true that a champion can’t heal other people they can restore a small amount of power. You seem to have forgotten about True Heroics.. True Heroics gives your fellowship, if they are close enough, a slight bump in power. It also does some other stuff depending of your trait line.
I have to thank you for talking about /played. I never even thought about it. I’ve been playing my Champ for 2 months 2 weeks 4 days 1 minute and 36 sec. 37 secon, 38 seco, 39. seconds.
Champs use sprint ALL THE TIME in the moors…..ALL THE TIME.
While it’s true that champions can’t heal they can give a small boost to power with True Heroics
Great info on this class! I have a 105 Champ but still don’t feel comfortable playing him in a group, of course that may be due to having a Cappy and Mini at cap, and I am usually asked to play them when ever I do group…. Thanks again for some great info!
Oh, and BTW, I agree…Champs are a well balanced class.
Thanks for the guide, nice intro for people looking into champs.
Dual wielding vs 2h weapons has been debated since the beginning of lotro. Certain skills hit for more total damage dw and others hit better 2h. In general, most champs dw yellow and 2h red.
Second Wind from blue and Ardent Rage (maxed battle frenzy) from yellow are very useful in any trait line. The only places I would not use Second Wind are landscape questing and a few tier 1 instances.
Andang mentioned attack duration, which has changed a bit over the years. Active skills have a global cooldown or delay between skills. This time period is attack duration. Lowering attack duration decreases the delay between skills but not the actual skill animations. Skill animations can be cut off by immediate skills like Clobber. Cutting a skill with a long animation such as Brutal Strikes or Ferocious Strikes plays the affects of the skill while skipping some of its animation and all of its global cooldown. Animation cutting allows you to hit more skills faster in the same amount of time.
Generally, fervor builders with fast animations are better than those with long animations. Faster fervor generation=big skills sooner. Because of this, Swift Strike/Blade is far superior to Wild Attack in terms of speed and a smooth rotation. If all Wild Attack legacies and traits are maxed, it improves a lot but still has a horrible animation time.
Flurry is still here, but is not an active skill anymore. Flurry is a proc given by the Deadly Storm trait line. Blade skills have a 30% chance to grant -20% Attack Duration for 20s. The Flurry Increase trait adds +1293 Critical Rating while Flurry is active and +10 seconds to Flurry’s duration.
On critical defence, my capslock
https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Critical_Defence
The resulting percentage from Critical Defence rating NO LONGER reduces the CHANCE for an opponent’s attack to be a critical hit or devastating critical hit. Since U9, this Critical Defence percentage REDUCES THE EXTRA DAMAGE PERCENTAGE (so called magnitude or multiplier) inflicted by critical hits or devastating critical hits.
For example, 50% critical defence will cause a critical attack to hit for roughly normal damage and a devastating attack to hit for normal critical damage, depending on mitigations and critical multipliers. No crit def is needed in Pelennor instances because bosses do not crit. However, crit def is useful in other scaling instances. At least ~10k or 50% is recommended for tanks, not including passive class traits.
Tactical mitigation is extremely situational. Some instances or certain bosses require capped tact mit and others require 0. The physical and tactical mitigation caps for landscape/questing and tier 1 instances are light armor 40% (rating=13125), medium armor 50% (15321), and heavy armor 60% (17491). Tier 2 mobs have a resistance/defence penetration buff. This means that they bypass ~7k of your mitigations and you need to overcap your mits. The tier 2 mitigation caps are light armor 20790, medium armor 23049, and heavy armor 25281. PVP requires even higher mitigations to account for different damage types and debuffs.
For the legendary mainhand weapon, Rend bleed damage is worth getting in both red and yellow lines. The legacy affects red bleeds as well as rend. Battle Frenzy cooldown and Critical Damage Multiplier are pretty much must-have legacies regardless of trait tree.
As for diminishing returns on multiple sets of legendary items, this is only the case if you do not PVP or do tier 2 instances. Landscape and tier 1 content can be done with no essence gear or legendary items. However, there is a large gap between t1 and t2 and it is absolutely worth the time to invest in a second trait line and legendary item or two. As a champ you may be asked to change between single target and aoe damage in the same instance. This is especially true for tanking, as your relics and legacies should be avoidance based instead of damage based and the tanking rotations are very different.
All numbers from lotrowiki
Thanks again for everyone’s input. Looking forward to the warden guide 8)
Fervour potions are super useful at times especially at endgame for the extra damage for 30 seconds. 30percent dev magnitude for 30 seconds? Yes please
Hamstring is available in yellow