Champion Blog #2

[Solien]

It does go against the whole methodology of the game

Problem is, that methodology is flat-out broken and has been since Guardians (and eventually Wardens) were gimped by avoidance, melee defense, and incoming healing ratings. The vast majority of mobs in this game simply do not hit hard enough to encourage people to cooperate with a) a Guardian's mediocre threat generation or b) the way in which a Warden generates threat. Why bother going through all of that trouble when all but one, maybe two of the mobs in this game can simply be locked down by spamming Raging Blades? Mob dies faster and lots of big yellow numbers!

I find it hard to believe there's no way to add challenge to this game if Guardian and Warden threat is upped to the point where DPS class can actually DPS and not pull threat, especially when said Guardian or Warden traits for survivability over threat generation.

[Devildoc]

How so? Nerfing the healing output to a single target would push dps tanks into a tanking role for survivability... while you can maintain AoE heals for everyone else... now if you want to keep healing as is, you can alter game mechanics to 'require' main tanking, something along the lines of what 'NameAlreadyTaken' or 'Delvick' suggested. I'm basing the ST healing nerf suggestion based on my previous experiences with fervour tanking with either a capt, mini, or rk. Fervour champs have limited survivability compared to actual tanks... but healers can keep us up regardless, it's not even a 'chore' for them anymore... spam 1 button till end of instance.

Healers don't use aoe heal skills to heal party members very often, it drains their power, pulls threat and accomplishes less than throwing some raise the spirits and bolsters to single targets. Healers using aoe heals to heal everyone aside from the tank = terrible healer.

[Devildoc]

I'd say non-tanks not dying when they get hit is the problem. Make targeted attacks (not AoEs or scripted "off target" attacks) by "needs a tank" mobs hit for 4x damage unless the person getting hit is in a tanking stance (GB/GP/GT, Glory, and whatever wardens have). Suddenly it'd be in everyone's best interests to keep hate on the tank.

To accomplish that they'd need to make the gap of avoidance and mitigation and health between a tank and a non tank much larger than it is currently.

Here the common mitigation cap is 50% Medium armor classes are at 25%, Heavies without a shield about 35%, Guards with a shield and buffed, 50% (around 45% unbuffed)

Guards buffed have about 2k more morale than non tanks.

So the amount of extra survivability is significant, but not enough to make it possible for mobs to go from hitting 3k-4k unmitigated (1.5-2k mitigated by a tank, 2200-3000 on a medium (no idea on light)) to 12-16k unmitigated (6-8k on a tank, 10-12k on a medium) is still going to drop the tank.

In order for survivability nerfs to work, Guardians and wardens have to go significantly higher in common and uncommon mitigation. IE Champs without a shield would need to mitigate around 50% common, Guardians with a shield would need to mitigate about 85% (on a 12-16k hit that you're suggesting.. they'd take 1800-2400 damage, still more than now, so they'd also need higher morale, up from 10k, to 12k+). Shields would need to contribute 100% of their armor value to uncommon mitigation as well, if you're expecting there not to be a huge amount of mitigation you can gain from virtues anyone can slot. Since Champs won't be using shields, you'd have to directly increase their mitigation while in glory.

This will in turn, make Guardians nearly invincible in small fellowship and solo content (with proc gear based builds some are nearly invincible in solo content already, pulling entire areas at once and aoe'ing them all down and never falling below 90% morale)

Which in turn, will translate to pvmp issues and creeps will lose their minds as Guardians will be able to hound down a creep in the middle of a raid and come out surviving just because they mitigate so much.

threat based changes will be better in the long run. Since that only applies to group pve content, which is where the issue comes up.

[Vallik]

Fervour:

+ ICPR
+ 20 % melee damage
Cannot Evade, Parry or Block

On any Damage:
30% to Receive effect:
Insignificance: -10% perceived threat, stacks up to -100%. 30s duration.

Problem solved. You can still shing-shing and die fast, but good luck tanking with it for any extended length of time.

only if guards get the same thing OP traited and wardens get the same thing Spear traited (maybe not wardens as generally they have it hard enough)

this would make champs next to useless in 3 mans as tanks as there dmg outpt is fairly bad in glory ( will be interesting to see the new dmg with extra fervour from exchange and no dmg penalty)

perhaps make this active only in raids (maybe 6 man content)

[CWood]

So the amount of extra survivability is significant, but not enough to make it possible for mobs to go from hitting 3k-4k unmitigated (1.5-2k mitigated by a tank, 2200-3000 on a medium (no idea on light)) to 12-16k unmitigated (6-8k on a tank, 10-12k on a medium) is still going to drop the tank.

You misunderstood me. If a tank-stanced character gets hit, damage would be normal (2-4k or so). If a non-tank-stanced character gets hit, the damage is multipled (8-16k).

The whole idea is that there should be consequences for pulling aggro. Fervour champ get aggressive? Dead. Healer overzealous? Dead. Hunter being a hunter? Dead. If people had to manage their aggro combat might actually be engaging for a change.

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Edit to add:

They could also do it with crit rates. Have tanks be crit immune and high crits rates on mobs where they want tanks tanking.

Yeah, that'd work well, too.

[Devildoc]

You misunderstood me. If a tank-stanced character gets hit, damage would be normal (2-4k or so). If a non-tank-stanced character gets hit, the damage is multipled (8-16k).

The whole idea is that there should be consequences for pulling aggro. Fervour champ get aggressive? Dead. Healer overzealous? Dead. Hunter being a hunter? Dead. If people had to manage their aggro combat might actually be engaging for a change.

===

Edit to add:



Yeah, that'd work well, too.

Champ is designed to play aggressive, that is the core of the class. If you want champs just standing there autoattacking using 1 skill every 10s, that's not playing a champ.

You shouldn't punish people for playing a class as it was designed to be played.

[Wilkens]

If the idea with Fervour continues to be that tanking should be discouraged I've been working through an idea I first tossed out in the previous thread and decided to come to it in a new way:

Make every "emergency" clicky put Insignificance on you.

Basically if you are in fervour and draw aggro and your Healer can heal through it without you doing anything then fine...but if you have to go to sudden defense, adamant, dire need, maybe even bracing attack, then you get hit with Insignificance (-100% perceived threat for oh say 30s). It would make it tough as hell to tank in Fervour but would allow you to DPS freely while still being able to get aggro. The thing I'm not sure of would be whether or not to include BA since it would really penalize Fervour tanking (though I'd imagine you could just do some stance dancing to avoid it).

[RicardoFurriel]

Champ is designed to play aggressive, that is the core of the class.

Listen folks listen. Someone knows something about champions

[Devildoc]

Speaking of ebbing ire awhile back.. can we please have it be raid wide? I'm tired of having to argue with raid leaders on why I need to be in the tank's group..

[MajUntagent]

Speaking of ebbing ire awhile back.. can we please have it be raid wide? I'm tired of having to argue with raid leaders on why I need to be in the tank's group..

this + with rising. while we're at it, is there any real reason why ebbing/rising share a cooldown?

[RicardoFurriel]

Speaking of ebbing ire awhile back.. can we please have it be raid wide? I'm tired of having to argue with raid leaders on why I need to be in the tank's group..

Minis have CtG group wide. What a cool set bonus would it be to have Ebbing

[TheWanderingGriffons]

while we're at it, is there any real reason why ebbing/rising share a cooldown?

Good question, I second it.

[CWood]

Champ is designed to play aggressive, that is the core of the class. If you want champs just standing there autoattacking using 1 skill every 10s, that's not playing a champ.

I'm not advocating standing there autoattacking any more than you're advocating that tanks automatically have aggro and nobody can pull it off them no matter what they do. Group dynamics in LotRO are boring as hell, and a large part of that is the utter lack of consequences for anyone's actions. Making tanks be accountable for setting a high hate threshold and DDs/healers be accountable for staying below it would add dynamics to combat.

As it stands right now, you might as well be turning on autoattack and going AFK for all the thought and awareness that combat takes. And no, I don't count the Simon Says/Hokey Pokey/Mother May I boss mini-games as combat.

[Shintagh]

with the increased cool down on brutal strikes players at lower levels wont be able to see the full potential of 2H rotation, coz relentless with 2H is ????...

that will lead them to go with dw till they get legacies and by that time players wont be willing to learn a totally new way of dpsing, rotations, ups and downs..

just something you might wanna consider

[The_Hall_Of_Mandos]

Healers using aoe heals to heal everyone aside from the tank = terrible healer.

Wouldn't you want to use AoE heals to heal everyone besides the tank? I guess I better not use Rallying Cry on my captain then.

I feel the change of the Flurry trait changing it from red to yellow does not suit the implied direction of the AoE trait line. Also, this trait has a very nice niche it fills in the Zerker line, and many champs will now have to juggle between 5r/2y and 4r/3y, which is not a bad thing at all, it just depends on the changes to each line and CBR.

CBR could be quite strong if the morale cost/second were lowered to something like 10-20 and the inc healing dropping to something like -50/60%. As of now, the initial health cost and huge 60 morale/second combined with the -90% healing modifier make it a poor option for group PvE and a mildly situational PvP skill. Please help CBR Orion, it has potential.

[Devildoc]

Wouldn't you want to use AoE heals to heal everyone besides the tank? I guess I better not use Rallying Cry on my captain then.

I feel the change of the Flurry trait changing it from red to yellow does not suit the implied direction of the AoE trait line. Also, this trait has a very nice niche it fills in the Zerker line, and many champs will now have to juggle between 5r/2y and 4r/3y, which is not a bad thing at all, it just depends on the changes to each line and CBR.

CBR could be quite strong if the morale cost/second were lowered to something like 10-20 and the inc healing dropping to something like -50/60%. As of now, the initial health cost and huge 60 morale/second combined with the -90% healing modifier make it a poor option for group PvE and a mildly situational PvP skill. Please help CBR Orion, it has potential.

By healer I meant Minstrel. Minstrels who use inspire fellows to heal everyone aside from the tank are awful. Always out of power, always pick up threat.

Inspire fellows should only be used if more than 3 people in your group need healed at once and all of them are still taking damage.. Otherwise it's far better to throw raise the spirits on people like hunters without aggro who aren't taking much damage, and bolster on people more likely to take more damage like champs and tanks.

[abcd]

I find this a bit furstrating, because he already did clarify the direction Champs are going in: Making each stance wanted when executing roles that those stances are designed for while maintaining the overall Champ style of play (high rotations) and making sure one stance doesn't step on another stance's toes.

In his first blog, read the "Reasoning" section, which goes on to explain how he wants to execute everything in "Reasoning".

I find this a bit frustrating, because he never did clarify the direction for the classes.
Are the roles of a group going to be fillable by anyone? The champion change appears to be pointing that direction.

Are they saying they feel no one should have to try to find a "tank" so we will make all heavy armour wearers able to tank just as well as guards or wardens?
Or no one should have to wait for an RK or mins so they will make all classes have more self heals, and loremasters have a lot more healing..

None of this was addressed.

There are going to be complaints from players when another class fitting the same role is getting improvements until the full plan is laid out and people accept it. If people were told of the planned changes to the classes overall, the individual class changes won't be as resisted or complained about.

[olagaton3434]

Champ is designed to play aggressive, that is the core of the class.

Disagree, unless you can find a post by a dev stating that this was their design intention.

[Feybobiam]

I find this a bit frustrating, because he never did clarify the direction for the classes.
Are the roles of a group going to be fillable by anyone? The champion change appears to be pointing that direction.

Are they saying they feel no one should have to try to find a "tank" so we will make all heavy armour wearers able to tank just as well as guards or wardens?
Or no one should have to wait for an RK or mins so they will make all classes have more self heals, and loremasters have a lot more healing..

None of this was addressed.

There are going to be complaints from players when another class fitting the same role is getting improvements until the full plan is laid out and people accept it. If people were told of the planned changes to the classes overall, the individual class changes won't be as resisted or complained about.

I will wholly agree with this, but stating the direction for a single class is not nearly the same as stating the direction for classes.

I do agree that having a third Primary Tank is a mistake. Champs are extremely flexible from tank and DPS, and one of them has to suffer for it, and it darn well better not be DPS. If neither suffer, then Guards and Wardens have no real role, since even in full tankspec Champs can still do very good DPS, whereas Guards and Wardens... can't. Factor in that the Glory stance plus the traits really marry survivability and threat well, while Guards and Wardens have whole stances and whole trait lines dedicated to just survivability and just threat. This is a very dangerous line to tread if you aim to make Champs Primary Tanks.

I think Champs should be lesser tanks the Guards and Wardens, by a recognizable margin, but if a Champ throws down they can become a very capable tank. The definition there is Secondary Tank as opposed to Primary Tank, and it kinda sounds like Orion intends for a third Primary Tank. Right now on Live that margin is very well done, and I kinda have some worries it could get worse.

Of course, on top of all of this, we have no idea what Warden or Guardian changes are coming, and it may eradicate a lot of this worry. But regardless, making Guards and Wards do equivelant or comparable DPS to Champs (similar to how Champs may be able to do equivelant or comparable tanking to Guards/Wards) sounds really stupid.

Part of me kinda wonders how the Champion community looks at Fervour tanking. Does he see us as doing it because we want to, or doing it because it's simply convenient? Because it is very much the latter. We don't WANT to tank. We just do because we're too lazy to hit Ebbing Ire and there aren't enough penalties to. On top of that, it's just so darn easy to Fervour tank. We don't want to be Primary Tanks! Neither do Guards and Wards want us to be, on top of that. Make us the clear backup choice ahead of Captains by a large margin, but no more!

Heavy should not automatically equal Primary Tank.