Champion Red Line: A study and Proposal

[spitzff]

This post will be about addressing the deficiencies of Red line champions, while champion was designed to be an AoE class it is critical for a class to preform more than one task in a group or raid setting. While Red line is a great tool for the solo champion due to the killing spree heal it is very lacking in a group setting with fire rk's and hunters commonly doing more than double the dps, while the simple fact of hunters and fire rk's doing more ST damage is fine, the magnitude is what needs to be addressed. The format for my discussion will be : Information, distillation, proposal.

Abbreviation Index:

RS = Remorseless Strike | FS = Ferocious Strike | BS = Brutal Strike | CB = Controlled Burn | DS = Devastating Strike | SS = Swift Strike | WA = Wild Attack | AA = Auto Attack

Information:

Let's first address the red line skills and the hard dps numbers that correspond to them. This information was gathered from 27 million damage on the galtrev dummies with a 100k mastery build, 2h weapon, rend bleed % not on weapon (reason below), no buffs were used .

Skills	Ave. Damage	% of Damage	# of Attacks	% of Attacks	max damage	min damage
RS	41156	31.9	211	10.3	65427	7614
FS	17871	20.3	309	15.1	35734	4335
BS	14767	21.9	405	19.7	28467	3792
AA	4776	9.8	559	27.2	10143	2020
SS	11498	6.8	162	7.9	19782	2937
DS	18673	5.3	77	3.8	31366	5343
Bleed	2586	2.0	208	10.1	4019	1720
Clob	7637	1.4	53	2.6	15266	2414
WA	12202	.6	13	.6	21246	4021

Distillation:

So let's talk about what these numbers mean. Remorseless, Ferocious, and BS account for 75% of our total damage so these are the skills we should focus on for tweaking damage. Right now the damage rotation is centered around cycling FS>RS>BS>RS while using SS and DS to fill in the gaps. This rotation takes advantage of the embolden blades passive to increase RS damage, without at least a few stacks of this passive, the opportunity cost of using RS is too high.

Merciful Strike cannot be analyzed from training dummy statistics so it is not considered in my arguments or proposals.

Proposal:
I believe that there is no problem with the red line rotation, it is complex and fluid with skills supporting other skills. So added mechanics to our rotation is not needed.

The disparity between champion devastate and critical damage is a problem, I.E our average critical strike hits harder than our devastates. A simple solution is to add devastate magnitude to the critical multiplier legacy on our champion weapons.

FS is the best damage skill we have, I suggest a reduction of 1 second to the cool down and a flat 10% increase in damage.

BS accounts for a large portion of our attacks and damage, I suggest a flat 10% increase on damage.

RS is a very inconsistent skill ranging in damage from 7, 614 to 65, 427. I suggest adding a 20% damage buff to the next FS after a non critical from remorseless. This will both increase damage and create fluidity between our main damage skills.

Devastating Strike is a good fervor builder with decent damage and an incoming damage buff, I suggest a 2 second reduction in cool down.

CB is a good buff with a misleading tool-tip due to damage calculation, I suggest a flat buff to physical mastery instead and a 15 second increase in duration.

Deep strikes bleed is such a low percentage of damage even with the rend bleed % increasing it. I suggest remorseless critical to cash out the bleed for extra damage or a flat 200% increase in damage.

Information:

Let's address the red line raid gear: The two set bonus's designed to increase dps are +7% CB damage and strike skills have a chance to cause your next RS to cost no fervor.

Distillation:

7% CB damage: While this may seem ok, due to the way damage is calculated it only applies about 3 % extra damage for 30 seconds every 90 seconds, which equates to a 1% damage increase.

Strike skills have a chance to cause your next RS to cost no fervor: Anyone who has played champion knows that fervor pips are easy to come by making this bonus next to useless.

Proposal:

Instead of CB damage I suggest a +15 second increase in CB duration, which combined with my above change to CB would equate to 66% CB up-time.

Instead of the current 4 set bonus I would suggest this: FS now applies a -6000 armor debuff for 10 seconds. This addresses the problem of losing rend while in red line and keeps the focus on our best skill.

Conclusion:

I believe these changes while not all encompassing would be a good place to start testing. I encourage others to do their own testing and number and draw conclusions from those numbers. As a community the awareness of these issues with champion red line should be brought to the fore and addressed.

[warriorpoetex]

Once upon a time, Devs used to say Champion's High ST was intentional due to the high amount of movement we were required to do compared to ranged DPS class ... thus to balance them out.

[MikeA]

Your proposals look good, but I also think the pip builder's need a buff, they are almost useless, especially Wild AttacK, even with its +5% crit chance buff using it will generally lower DPS. I would make the pip builder's FAST, that should make them worthwhile again.

[Schaijian]

I agree with you that champions Red line needs some love to make it viable for T2 raiding as the gap to runekeepers (don't know where hunters really are now with U19) is too wide.
Your proposal is as you already said a start, but from a first rough calculation it will not be enough to make red really a viable option

All your changes combined will be roughtly 30-35% (for a very rough calculation see below) increase in damage so instead of doing 50% of a runekeeper we are looking at 60-65% which in my opinion is still gar too low. I don't say champions must be the number one single target damage dealer, but it should be in the range of 80% of those as a champion is a melee class after all and by this takes higher risks during a fight then a runekeeper or a hunter.

Now let's see how I got to my 30-35% for your proposals:
First there is an increase of 10% from the flat damage increase for some skills (I overestimated it by it 10% for all skills). For the cooldown reductions for FS and DS I assumed 1% damage increase each and another 3% for the +20% to RS if it does not crit (20% increase for about 50% of all FS or from your numbers for 16% of the total damage). Another 4% you get from the +200% on bleeds and 3% from the doubled (with set bonus) uptime of CB (assuming that CB is an increase in damage of 10% which in reality is even less in a raid buffed situation). Finally there is an increase of about 8% if the +126% crit multiplier worked on dev hits too.
So the total increase is:
1.1×1.01×1.01×1.03×1.04×1 .03×1.08=1.337
or in other words 33.7% or even less because I overestimated the increase in most cases to get a upper limit for this calculation.

To get to 80% of runekeepers damage we will need an increase of about 60% of champions damage. The easiest solution would be to give a stronger increase (about 30%) to the base damage for red line skills.

Additionally I would propose to make rend a universal skill free from traitlines (perhaps upgraded to its AoE form in yellow) so that its buff is available even for red or blue champions. Or at least give red a comparable armour reduction skill, because if this is not the case no one would take a red champion in a singletarget fight if there is only one champion even if red line damage is much higher then yellow line damage because the loss for all other DPS is too big.

[Oelle]

i would prefer buffing the weak skills instead of buffing the already useful ones.

[siipperi]

To get to 80% of runekeepers damage we will need an increase of about 60% of champions damage. The easiest solution would be to give a stronger increase (about 30%) to the base damage for red line skills.

Additionally I would propose to make rend a universal skill free from traitlines (perhaps upgraded to its AoE form in yellow) so that its buff is available even for red or blue champions. Or at least give red a comparable armour reduction skill, because if this is not the case no one would take a red champion in a singletarget fight if there is only one champion even if red line damage is much higher then yellow line damage because the loss for all other DPS is too big.

Eh, champions already can surpass well over 40k st dps, that's enough considering their aoe.

Also putting rend on red would break champions in pvp so no thanks.

[Aedfrith]

A runekeeper under the same condition is at 70k DPS.
And giving pvp reasons for not making a change proposed to improve a pve situation? No thanks

You mean like the one that still annoys me more after all these years than any other - the nerf to LM anti-stun...?

[Schaijian]

A runekeeper under the same condition is at 70k DPS.
And giving pvp reasons for not making a change proposed to improve a pve situation? No thanks

[siipperi]

A runekeeper under the same condition is at 70k DPS.
And giving pvp reasons for not making a change proposed to improve a pve situation? No thanks

Show me RK doing 70k ST DPS and I might believe you. It's very hard to go past 50k dps on ST (with AoE a bit more sure but that's not st) on bosses that doesn't have +incoming damage mechanics - which champs would also benefit if chosen to use.

[Schaijian]

Show me RK doing 70k ST DPS and I might believe you. It's very hard to go past 50k dps on ST (with AoE a bit more sure but that's not st) on bosses that doesn't have +incoming damage mechanics - which champs would also benefit if chosen to use.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ7gmWSWVdg&app=desktop

Read the chat at 1:11 when another runekeeper from that raid posted his DPS from the same fight: 71,399 DPS.

[siipperi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ7gmWSWVdg&app=desktop

Read the chat at 1:11 when another runekeeper from that raid posted his DPS from the same fight: 71,399 DPS.

Next post parse which is not done by using map exploit.

[Schaijian]

Next post parse which is not done by using map exploit.

In knew you would come with this argument, but does it render the point useless, that a runekeeper can do 70k+DPS that in this fight it would have been lower if he had been kicked here? No, because there are many other static fights, where there are no kicks, where these 70k are also possible.

[siipperi]

In knew you would come with this argument, but does it render the point useless, that a runekeeper can do 70k+DPS that in this fight it would have been lower if he had been kicked here? No, because theree are many other static fights, where there are no kicks, where these 70k are also possible.

I don't see much of argument to say class does X amount of damage because of one burst fight either. 30-40s with oath breakers running whole time is not really representative of class DPS capabilities, that is just burst that will tune down on every class. How much hunter or champion red would have done there? 50k+?

[Schaijian]

I don't see much of argument to say class does X amount of damage because of one burst fight either. 30-40s with oath breakers running whole time is not really representative of class DPS capabilities, that is just burst that will tune down on every class. How much hunter or champion red would have done there? 50k+?

Then please show me a parse where a champion does sustained 40k+ singletarget DPS

[Ethrildar]

To the OP:

I agree completely with your post, although I have to say I think the Controlled Burn changes are underwhelming.

I'd also like to add that for those of us like myself, who don't have months of /played time to spend doing the raid, the 4-set Orc Carvers set has the most hilariously underwhelming Set bonus I've literally ever seen, and yet it's still replicated on numerous sets, it's like the 4th time I've seen it since Moria and it STILL does NOTHING.

I'd love to see some form of Rend in Red-line, don't think it'll ever happen though.

For me the biggest changes I'd say are needed are:

Emboldened Blades:
T3 = 50% crit chance
T4 = 75% crit chance
T5 - 100% crit chance - No more total build-up & flop DPS... Nothing hurts more than when you've built T5 and are ready to release all that "rage" on a target, only for the non-crit RS to do 4k damage (or like 1.5k on a creep with any mits lol) as opposed to 50-70k (pve).

Wild Attack:
Wild-attack now a "fast" skill. Double it's damage to stop the silly Swift Strike spam.

Merciful Strike:
Merciful Strike damage applies when skill is initially played, not after the animation; as a finishing skill it being so stupidly slow makes it frustrating to use, most of the time the mob is dead before the damage even hits. This skill should also not be able to be partially avoided, doing so breaks the force-crit element in Red-line so you blow 5 full fervour for a skill that hits for 1.5k damage, 2 seconds after you click on it.

Deep Strikes:
Stop the Deep Strikes bleed proccing on every skill, it actually lowers DPS since when it overwrites itself it doesn't re-proc, so you just end up stopping it from pulsing every time. Give True Heroics a buff that makes Remorselesss Strikes apply the Deep Strikes bleed and triple it's potency, so we can have a BIG bleed when we really need it, but it's not just another spammable auto-playing skill with no thought needed.

True Heroics:
Reduce CD of True Heroics to 1min 30 and remove power cost.

FIX IMMEDIATE BUGS! I am so sick of 1/3 of my skills going on CD without playing their buffs because I clicked on them during lag, this is particularly problematic with Battle Frenzy, when it fails to go off your DPS instantly dies for 10 seconds.

Show me RK doing 70k ST DPS and I might believe you. It's very hard to go past 50k dps on ST (with AoE a bit more sure but that's not st) on bosses that doesn't have +incoming damage mechanics - which champs would also benefit if chosen to use.

Lol absolute nonsense. It's also totally meaningless, whatever a champ will get in a given fight, an RK receiving similar amounts of buffs/mob debuffs will get FAR higher (by a factor of, at minimum, 50%) DPS than a champ. Neglecting to even mention the melee range requirement.

You've also been SHOWN a DPS parse of 70k and now change the argument.

I don't see much of argument to say class does X amount of damage because of one burst fight either. 30-40s with oath breakers running whole time is not really representative of class DPS capabilities, that is just burst that will tune down on every class. How much hunter or champion red would have done there? 50k+?

Your point was "in the same fight, champs do XX and RKs do XX" - you're now changing that argument again, with permanent Oathies, Champs will still do far less DPS than RKs, because they're both seeing the same buffs???? Is this concept particularly complex?

Then please show me a parse where a champion does sustained 40k+ singletarget DPS

Exactly ^

From my perspective I don't wanna see Fire-RK DPS Champs, I'd love to see a little utility come from Red champ, an on-demand bleed, and a damage increase on a couple of skills. As well as the aforementioned quality of life improvements.

[Araphorn]

I'd be fine with these changes, however I would like to see some fixes/other enhancements made first before these.

Currently, the main problem with champ DPS is somewhat related to RNG. Getting too many partials or bad luck with more Devs than Crits is the problem. Simple fixes would be:

-Give tactical classes some sort of partial resists or make finesse bypass partials when its raised by more than 20%.

-Somehow make the Dev hits larger, so DPS is not lost when there are more Devs than Crits. (Can't remember who, but someone made a great thread on fixing these Dev hits, with lots of good ideas, apart from nerfing Crit multipliers).

After these 2 fixes, pretty sure Red Line DPS would be closer to RKs, and depending on the difference, additional tweaks can be made.

[Rakanor]

I'd be fine with these changes, however I would like to see some fixes/other enhancements made first before these.

Currently, the main problem with champ DPS is somewhat related to RNG. Getting too many partials or bad luck with more Devs than Crits is the problem. Simple fixes would be:

-Give tactical classes some sort of partial resists or make finesse bypass partials when its raised by more than 20%.

-Somehow make the Dev hits larger, so DPS is not lost when there are more Devs than Crits. (Can't remember who, but someone made a great thread on fixing these Dev hits, with lots of good ideas, apart from nerfing Crit multipliers).

After these 2 fixes, pretty sure Red Line DPS would be closer to RKs, and depending on the difference, additional tweaks can be made.

This thread https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...n-crit-dev-gap


I'd like to see finesse at least reduce partials by up to 7.5% each, this would happen at current 22.5% finesse rating. Along with introducing partial resists.


Some other ideas for red changes:

• Brutal strikes and savage/feral strikes: remove -40% critical magnitude from 2nd and 3rd strike. (Dont see why this should still exist)
• Emboldened blades: t5 guarantees remorseless crit.
• Devastating strike: add rend armour reduction.
• Controlled burn change +15% melee damage to +15% skill damage.
• Champions duel: change to toggle stance +15% strike skill damage, +2.5% crit chance, -5% attack duration, +15% inc damage and can't parry or evade. (rename? Beserker's rage)
• Deep strikes: add back initial hit like it used to have pre-HD.

General fixes and changes:

• Bracing attack: bring back improved bracing attack. Always applies heal even if attack is B/P/E'd or misses. https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Imp...Bracing_Attack
• Sprint: base cooldown reduced to 2mins, duration legacy reduced to +15sec max imbued version gives +duration and +evade. Trait gives -10/-20/-30 sec cd.
• Hamstring: give back its +0.5m extra range and 4.2sec cd, increase base duration to 10sec, imbued legacy gives +duration and +damage. Max rank trait gives extra 5% slow potency.
• Battle frenzy legacy: physical mastery buff will refresh if BF is used before the buff expires.
• Wild attack: increase damage, speed up animation and reduce post-animation delay or just make it fast.
• Fear nothing: removes up to 4 fervour, removes 1 effect for each 2 fervour consumed.

[Geventh]

This thread https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...n-crit-dev-gap


I'd like to see finesse at least reduce partials by up to 7.5% each, this would happen at current 22.5% finesse rating. Along with introducing partial resists.


Some other ideas for red changes:

• Brutal strikes and savage/feral strikes: remove -40% critical magnitude from 2nd and 3rd strike. (Dont see why this should still exist)
• Emboldened blades: t5 guarantees remorseless crit.
• Devastating strike: add rend armour reduction.
• Controlled burn change +15% melee damage to +15% skill damage.
• Champions duel: change to toggle stance +15% strike skill damage, +2.5% crit chance, -5% attack duration, +15% inc damage and can't parry or evade. (rename? Beserker's rage)
• Deep strikes: add back initial hit like it used to have pre-HD.

General fixes and changes:

• Bracing attack: bring back improved bracing attack. Always applies heal even if attack is B/P/E'd or misses. https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Imp...Bracing_Attack
• Sprint: base cooldown reduced to 2mins, duration legacy reduced to +15sec max imbued version gives +duration and +evade. Trait gives -10/-20/-30 sec cd.
• Hamstring: give back its +0.5m extra range and 4.2sec cd, increase base duration to 10sec, imbued legacy gives +duration and +damage. Max rank trait gives extra 5% slow potency.
• Battle frenzy legacy: physical mastery buff will refresh if BF is used before the buff expires.
• Wild attack: increase damage, speed up animation and reduce post-animation delay or just make it fast.
• Fear nothing: removes up to 4 fervour, removes 1 effect for each 2 fervour consumed.

Some good ideas!

Is that +15% inc. damage & can not parry / evade on the target or on yourself? If it's on the target there needs to be some kind of a sacrifice for a toggle skill.
Im all for some armour penetration/debuffs in redline but rend armour reduction value is out of hand and needs to be addressed first.

Reintroduction of Improved Bracing Attack would be nice to have like many improved version of skills which Turbine sadly removed with HD.
The only issue I have with this skill is how poorly it scales with current moral pools but on the other hand we have many % based passive heals...

What I would also like to see is fevour management / intentional building instead of this overwhelming amount of passive / RNG based fervour generation.
This would mean some traits need to be reworked/nerfed & battle frenzy brought back to it's former genetration.
Additionally builders need to be buffed slightly in fervour genetration & consumers lowered in fevour cost where it is needed.
Hopfully this could lead to more interesting skill rotation instead of a priorty order from strong to weak.

[Rakanor]

Some good ideas!

Is that +15% inc. damage & can not parry / evade on the target or on yourself? If it's on the target there needs to be some kind of a sacrifice for a toggle skill.
Im all for some armour penetration/debuffs in redline but rend armour reduction value is out of hand and needs to be addressed first.

Reintroduction of Improved Bracing Attack would be nice to have like many improved version of skills which Turbine sadly removed with HD.
The only issue I have with this skill is how poorly it scales with current moral pools but on the other hand we have many % based passive heals...

What I would also like to see is fevour management / intentional building instead of this overwhelming amount of passive / RNG based fervour generation.
This would mean some traits need to be reworked/nerfed & battle frenzy brought back to it's former genetration.
Additionally builders need to be buffed slightly in fervour genetration & consumers lowered in fevour cost where it is needed.
Hopfully this could lead to more interesting skill rotation instead of a priorty order from strong to weak.

It's all on yourself, it would just be like activating a stance. You become focused on attacking so much that you don't defend yourself properly.
I agree, could probably half the legacy but it shouldn't be limited to just aoe. As for the pvp side creeps need reworking, they should lower armour contribution and replace with raw mitigation ratings.

Pretty sure the current bracing attack heals less than the improved version did pre-HD including the HoT. Think the improved version increased the initial heal also. I really don't like %morale heals especially those that are in dps lines, if anything we should be healed for doing more damage rather than how much morale we have stacked.

Going back to actually managing/building fervour would be awesome, currently we're almost drowning in it. Remove the 10sec improved version of battle frenzy, maybe change it to a fast skill as well to avoid immediate skill bug. Increase builder damage and make devastating strike 4.2sec cd like rend basically becoming st/aoe versions of each other. Perhaps also limit fervour from crits to max once per skill. Fervour spender damage may also need a small bump as we won't be firing them quite as often. Make blade wall generate 1 fervour again.

[Geventh]

It's all on yourself, it would just be like activating a stance. You become focused on attacking so much that you don't defend yourself properly.
I agree, could probably half the legacy but it shouldn't be limited to just aoe. As for the pvp side creeps need reworking, they should lower armour contribution and replace with raw mitigation ratings.

Pretty sure the current bracing attack heals less than the improved version did pre-HD including the HoT. Think the improved version increased the initial heal also. I really don't like %morale heals especially those that are in dps lines, if anything we should be healed for doing more damage rather than how much morale we have stacked.

Going back to actually managing/building fervour would be awesome, currently we're almost drowning in it. Remove the 10sec improved version of battle frenzy, maybe change it to a fast skill as well to avoid immediate skill bug. Increase builder damage and make devastating strike 4.2sec cd like rend basically becoming st/aoe versions of each other. Perhaps also limit fervour from crits to max once per skill. Fervour spender damage may also need a small bump as we won't be firing them quite as often. Make blade wall generate 1 fervour again.

Yeah that would be really cool. Hopefully a dev reads some of those ideas.

[Araphorn]

This thread https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...n-crit-dev-gap


I'd like to see finesse at least reduce partials by up to 7.5% each, this would happen at current 22.5% finesse rating. Along with introducing partial resists.


Some other ideas for red changes:

• Brutal strikes and savage/feral strikes: remove -40% critical magnitude from 2nd and 3rd strike. (Dont see why this should still exist)
• Emboldened blades: t5 guarantees remorseless crit.
• Devastating strike: add rend armour reduction.
• Controlled burn change +15% melee damage to +15% skill damage.
• Champions duel: change to toggle stance +15% strike skill damage, +2.5% crit chance, -5% attack duration, +15% inc damage and can't parry or evade. (rename? Beserker's rage)
• Deep strikes: add back initial hit like it used to have pre-HD.

General fixes and changes:

• Bracing attack: bring back improved bracing attack. Always applies heal even if attack is B/P/E'd or misses. https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Imp...Bracing_Attack
• Sprint: base cooldown reduced to 2mins, duration legacy reduced to +15sec max imbued version gives +duration and +evade. Trait gives -10/-20/-30 sec cd.
• Hamstring: give back its +0.5m extra range and 4.2sec cd, increase base duration to 10sec, imbued legacy gives +duration and +damage. Max rank trait gives extra 5% slow potency.
• Battle frenzy legacy: physical mastery buff will refresh if BF is used before the buff expires.
• Wild attack: increase damage, speed up animation and reduce post-animation delay or just make it fast.
• Fear nothing: removes up to 4 fervour, removes 1 effect for each 2 fervour consumed.

Yep, that was the thread, thanks Rak. Great suggestions, as usual. Would really like to see something changing to the partials system and the gap between Devs and Crits.

[Tech6425]

I have an idea for red line. How about a stackable mitigation bypass for each critical hit landed? For each crit with a strike skill you would get a 5% mit. Bypass buff for all skills. Make it stackable up to 40 or 50%. Duration of let's say 12 seconds before it resets back to zero and you start building again.

To clarify, that would a reset after 12 seconds if no crit was landed or you were at the cap for the stacking effect