Recovery state - Created for Jinjaah

[unip0pcorn]

Yeah I plan on swinging through the RK and Champ forums in the neat future. Have a few threads forming with feedback that I wanted to address but hopefully tomorrow morning I can start chatting with you all. If you would like to set up a thread like this one to start shooting back and forth feel free. Otherwise I can start one tomorrow or hope into one and hit the ground running.

-Jinjaah

Speak mighty warriors of Middle-Earth!

I'm not that much of an experienced champion so i will only host this thread. I'm aware of the problems with our class but i don't believe i could give as valuable suggestions as the rest of you guys.

Please make sure to embrace your respectful self before posting

PS: I'm fully aware of already existing threads aiming at the problems. I created this one to avoid signs of anger and rage so we could have more peaceful discussions.

[Gromit1710]

There are plenty of threads already here where the OP(s) have gone through considerable lengths to detail and highlight mechanic problems relating to the champ. It would be unfair to those who have put forth so much effort to ignore their documentation.

https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...hampion-Issues

https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...ess-our-issues

Both of the above threads were started by competent people who clearly have spent a lot of time putting down what the issues are.

While I don't agree with every single bullet point (some I think are just mechanics as they relate to specific playstyles) they are a great starting point.


Personally, my biggest issue with the entire champ line is the lack of burst damage in redline. Emboldened Blades does not work as well as it should. It doesn't stack reliably or in a manner that can be counted on. There is no way to SEE what tier it's at other than hovering over the tool tip.

It's not the only issue I have, but if I had to pick one to be addressed it's that.

[Jinjaah]

Speak mighty warriors of Middle-Earth!

I'm not that much of an experienced champion so i will only host this thread. I'm aware of the problems with our class but i don't believe i could give as valuable suggestions as the rest of you guys.

Please make sure to embrace your respectful self before posting

Good work! Please feel free to start leaving comments and questions here. We can also refer back to previous posts as there is a ton of great feedback in the other threads (followed by mobs of angry champs with pitch forks chanting Jinjaah over and over).

But I will be around tomorrow morning to answer the questions built up over night.

-Jinjaah

[Gromit1710]

Good work! Please feel free to start leaving comments and questions here. We can also refer back to previous posts as there is a ton of great feedback in the other threads (followed by mobs of angry champs with pitch forks chanting Jinjaah over and over).

But I will be around tomorrow morning to answer the questions built up over night.

-Jinjaah

Welcome jinjaah! And thanks for getting to us!

[PoeticNightmare]

Red line feels like I'm swinging a wet noodle at a brick wall, underwater.

[MikeA]

Red Line needs a massive boost in damage of at least 70 to 80%, I also think that the old Rend (costs pips, no stacking bleeds) should be made a general skill, (with the enhanced version yellow only). Both Red and Blue need more AOE, and a Yellow only Rend Armor debuff would make Yellow the go to spec in groups even if Red DPS is fixed.

Yellow Line for the most part is fine, the relatively small problems are bugs like Raging Blades extra strikes still not getting the damage per pip bonus, Bladestorm being pretty much useless, and the very meh nature of the Born for Combat capstone ability. The requirement of getting hit 10 times doesn't really fit with Yellow line, and it is not as good as our better AOE's. I would make Born for Combat a FAST skill, give it the larger radius of Raging Blades and the unlimited targets of Furry of Blades, that would help make it a worthy capstone ability.

I haven't used Blue Line enough to suggest much, but as I said above it could use more AOE.

[Gromit1710]

I haven't used Blue Line enough to suggest much, but as I said above it could use more AOE.

You can get the Raging Blade skill out of yellow for a decent AOE and still cap Blue.

[Asperity]

Good work! Please feel free to start leaving comments and questions here. We can also refer back to previous posts as there is a ton of great feedback in the other threads (followed by mobs of angry champs with pitch forks chanting Jinjaah over and over).

But I will be around tomorrow morning to answer the questions built up over night.

-Jinjaah

I made my thoughts fairly well articulated over in this thread. It's a long read, but I think well worth it.

[MikeA]

You can get the Raging Blade skill out of yellow for a decent AOE and still cap Blue.

Yes I know, I don't think it is enough, I think both Red and Blue need another short cooldown AOE besides Bladewall.

[J_Howell]

The two threads already linked cover almost everything.

To me, the #1 issue is Hedge, we need it back ASAP. See the above threads if one needs to have the reasons why spelled out.

Since we only get two trait specs at a time, the failure of red line is not something I can address. It clearly needs to be fixed - embarrassing for the "ST line" to do lower ST damage than the AoE line - but people who actually (try to) use red can cover that much better than I could. Though I do agree with someone in another thread that the ST/AoE separation seems very strained, artificial, and not very sensible. Champs have always been very good at both simultaneously in the past.

One thing that I think hasn't been mentioned much is Fear Nothing. I haven't played all the classes since HD, but champ is the only one I know of that still has only a single type debuff remover skill like this. Burglar's Antidote now removes any of the four flavors of debuff, and wardens got First Aid with the same functionality. I'm pretty sure Story of Courage and Muster Courage were changed in the same way, though I'm not 100% sure since I haven't done much other than crafting on my mini and captain yet. Fear Nothing should be the champion's version of this skill, rather than remaining fear-only.

[mrfigglesworth]

Mr Champ Dev Sir

I ask that when you consider changes to the champion please don't change the flavor of the ardour champ. It's such a beautiful combat flow and aside from the might and finesse traits that never ever ever get used, traits and bonuses are spot on and useful. Well, to be honest, one thing that has happened is bladestorm is now the red headed step child skill of ardour. I would suggest making bladestorm have a range of 8 meters or possibly hit as many targets as raging blades or both, since it costs more pips than raging blades but does less damage than blade wall, fury of storm, and raging blades. It needs something to make those 4 pips worth it. The only thing I can think of that makes it useful is the ardour moors bonus against wars packs to keep slows on them.

There are many wonderful suggestions to redline so I feel the need to keep quiet and let the experts speak on this matter, but I know whenever I trait redline I feel like a clunky awkward teenage boy at his first middle school dance. It needs something to make it pop. I take that back, one thing I would love to see is the sprint trait giving a significant boost to sprint. I mean good grief, it's so far down red line it should really do something nice like cut sprint cd in half or maybe increase the speed by 5% per trait point or something. The base skill is good but seeing captains with a groupwide sprint with a 1 min 30 sec cd (or something like that) makes the champ 5 min cd sprint seem a bit archaic.

[Giliodor]

Hello Jinjaah,
Right now, I think the biggest problem is red line DPS/Surviveability. I'm in the Moors most of the time, and I'm on 18 audacity (missing one piece), but I get literally slaughtered by wargs and Reavers in red. That's because they do the same DPS as I do, but they have thrice my morale. Also, combat feels really slow, because of the attack delay between skills (Ferocious - Battle Frenxy - Remorseless). The time between BF and RS is horribly long. If course I know the reason, but maybe some champ skills should be made Fast.

[LunisequiouS]

I made my thoughts fairly well articulated over in this thread. It's a long read, but I think well worth it.

[Likewise, I'd respectfully prefer if Jinjaah would address the issues listed on the other two threads, so as to keep discussion focused, not to mention the great deal of time it took to put them together. This thread would still be useful for miscellaneous questions directed at the developer.]
^ Disregard this, since several people have already used this thread for suggestions, let's try to keep it all here. I've moved my original list of solutions to another post below.

At any rate, I'll start with a question:

Do developers actually play around extensively with their creations, as in, did you roll a champ post-revamp and give it a spin yourself Jin, or did all the input regarding the changes have to come from internal alpha testing and later on the public beta?

It seems to me that the Champion class lost most of it's individuality in the process, as the go to DPS class for smacking stuff hard with melee weapons and taking the occasional beating and living to tell the tale. Just about every other class now can deal huge damage just as well, and at the moment, even better than Champions, who were supposed to be one of the few DPS oriented classes (along with hunters, burglars, and later RKs). I guess making every other class have a viable DPS role is logical in regards to the 'Solo Everything' mindset LOTRO seems to be heading towards, but it certainly dilutes the former identity of the champion, when all other classes seem to do our job better than ourselves.

Our other points of uniqueness, bubbles and breaking out of cc, well everyone else just about seems to have those now. All in all, the current champion almost feels like a watered down version of it's former self. =(

I'm sure you can sympathize with our frustrations Jin, and given all the years we've looked in admiration at this class we're hoping you can remind us again that the Champion is actually meant to be a champion.

Thanks again for dropping by and providing input!

[MessyR]

Hello Jinjaah,
Right now, I think the biggest problem is red line DPS/Surviveability. I'm in the Moors most of the time, and I'm on 18 audacity (missing one piece), but I get literally slaughtered by wargs and Reavers in red. That's because they do the same DPS as I do, but they have thrice my morale. Also, combat feels really slow, because of the attack delay between skills (Ferocious - Battle Frenxy - Remorseless). The time between BF and RS is horribly long. If course I know the reason, but maybe some champ skills should be made Fast.

This will be a headache for the devs i would imagine, indeed redline is very clunky and slow, yet yellow line is very nice, for me anyway. The moors in a general overall view is in a very bad shape, so its probably alot better to judge the champ in a PvE enviroment. Redline, needs a great boost to attack duration and a slight DPS increase, other than that i feel its fine, MoM days champs where AoE kings, like now, its how in my own opinion they should be, dont get me wrong they should be ok at single target, which they do lack, but making them as we did in pre HD would just be silly, not saying they will, but i really hope they dont go over the top :-(

Champs - Amazing Aoe - Decent Single - Very nice Off/Tanking

Not sure but damage is pretty screwed up in this game after the class revamp, i would much more prefer they went across the board and fixed all that.

[Draithenz1971]

Hello Jinjaah,
Right now, I think the biggest problem is red line DPS/Surviveability. I'm in the Moors most of the time, and I'm on 18 audacity (missing one piece), but I get literally slaughtered by wargs and Reavers in red. That's because they do the same DPS as I do, but they have thrice my morale. Also, combat feels really slow, because of the attack delay between skills (Ferocious - Battle Frenxy - Remorseless). The time between BF and RS is horribly long. If course I know the reason, but maybe some champ skills should be made Fast.

I agree. red line is what raid leaders want from us but I can't seem to do enough to support the raid in any fashion. I am very much glass. Esther as asked to harass healers or provide cover support for our healers. I seem to go down fairly quickly it seems.

[Aniquilador]

Hello Jinjaah,

I'm agree in part, that our red line (ST dps) is lower than our ST dps in yellow (AoE dps). Or the fact that champs are among the bottom feeders in terms of dps among the classes atm like minstrel single dps for example. I would like to give my opinion about things that champs can improve .

Berseker line:

Bugs:

Champion Duels : I got noticed, that Champions duel seems is not working correctly. Aniquilador tried to use Champions Duel on Zlatka but she parried the attemp. When is supposed that the skill is tactical. And she did not recived the effect from the skill :/. Even when it lands its partially broken. You get the damage buff but the opponent doesn't get either of the debuffs.

Suggestions:

Increase the dps : What don't have too much sense in my opinion is that yellow line do more damage in single target than red line. I'm agree that yellow line has to do more damage when there are more than 1 mob arround . But what don't have any sense is that rend skill for example, hit 7k to 1 mob when brutal strikes hits 2200 per hit :/. Or also that one minstrel hit more with one piercing cry that champ with fs. My suggestion here it will be or reduce the damage from yellow line or increase the damage in single target line.

Wild Attack : This skill does not count as a Strike skill. It doesn't get affected by the strike skills damage trait that was put in to replace the base +20% damage that Fervour stance used to give. So a 20% base damage loss on auto attacks combined with the damage loss on WA (our most spammed pip builder) nets a substantial dps loss. The damage/pip component from the Fervour trait doesn't help WA either since you don't use builders at 3+ pips, most of the time it's 0 pips or 1.My suggestion here it will be to put wa like strike skill for recive that 10% aswell from strike skill.

Vicious Strikes : This trait is also partially broken. It says +10% crit chance for Additional strikes. The real problem though is that single strike skills cannot take advantage of this trait at all. Remorseless, Devastating and Merciful strikes don't get the +10% crit chance bonus from this trait. Seeing as this only affects Brutal Strikes and only the last 2 strikes this again results in a massive dps loss over all. My opinion is that this trait has to affect also to a single strike skills.

Blood Rage/Continuous Blood Rage : This skill should be made immediate. I know I've been going on about this a lot, but a CC removal skill that often doesn't go off until after the CC effect has expired is not that great, especially considering the cooldown is now 1m (up from 1s). Controlled Burn would benefit from this, too.

Renewing strikes : is still quite bad, it works out at .5% morale per strike. The application chance should be bumped up to ~20%.

Legacies : The legacy that increase 10% damage from merciful is pretty good but instead to increase the damage 10% i think it will be more useful to decrease the cd from the skill from 10s up to 5s for example. The damage from merciful in my opinion is quite bad aswell even with the 10% more damage from the legacy

Heroics : This skill at this moment definitly has to change. At least or put the bubble back or the crtical rating that we had before the hd expansion. The currently effect is really bad and the cd pretty long for this effect (12s).

Brancing attack : Don't have too much sense that you still reciving the same amount of healing that when you had 10 levels less, that healing needs to be improved imo. I also really miss the hot, due that if you have 22k morale (more or less) and you just recover arroun 2k from the skill and you need to spent 3 points of fervour for use it , without the hot the skill feels quite low in terms of healing. Also the description of the skill does not say that if you miss the hit you still reciving the heal on you.

Devastating Strike : Would be nice if this skill even if you miss the hit you still reciving the 2 points of fervour.

Red line in ettemoors:

Well the main problem that i see apart from the lack of dps compared to other classes and the difference of dps between yellow and red line is the mitigations and the cd of the skills from some creep classes:

Orc-Craft and Fell-Wrought : If you just mitigate a 30% of this damage is like all we are light armours against certain creep classes like reavers, wargs, or ba. I don't see the point to have the tact mit really hight f you just mitigate 30%. Just is useful in case to mitigate some dots becasue there are common (phy mit) but tactical mit against this classes seems obsolet. Also i was checking this link that i put below and looking in the previous expansion, we had more or less 60% tact mit, that is = 0.72 Tdr, now is 0.3= 0.51, so our Tdr is 21% less. Or what is the same, we will recive 21% more damage than before :/.

Link of the table: https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...mage-Reduction

Wrath/upper hand/blinding dust : Those 3 skills are practically permanent on you: If you include that impale is orc craft damage and the skills says that negate the 30% of mitigation , don't know if it will be like you have 0 mit against this skill or is that it would be 30% over the 30% ,that in this case you can mitgate just 9% of the damage :/. Apart from impale the main problem for champ here is that you can't compete against 2.5% morale back with wrath practically permanent, when champion recover 3% morale back during 40s every 2m 20s + against the odds that give you 15% morale back if you have the trait.

Warleaders Healings. At this moment for red champ is impossible to kill a war leader on healing mode with red line. Our lack of dps in this line makes that war leader can heal more than the dps that we can do on them..

I think this is all for the moment. I think that in the other links that we have about champion problems they summarized our main issues really well.

[Blastoyz]

I also implore you to read the two threads linked in the first reply to this thread. They cover all problems and are clean and concise along with some possible solutions.

Whether the authors want to copy and paste them here.
Thanks Jinjaah.

[Rainothon]

General:
I find my post-HD champion a lot of fun to play, and I thoroughly enjoyed your interaction with us during Beta, Jinjaah. Thank you for returning to us at this time, looking forward to read more of you!

I predominantly play in yellow line on all my champions (erm .. yes, about half of my alts are actually champions. I just love champions). I have dabbled with blue and found it consistently more survivable.

What's really holding me back from doing anything else than yellow line is the way all my buttons get mixed up when I change trait. That to me is the single most showstopper that will keep me in yellow just about forever. Could you please fix this?

Feedback about the champion that has nothing to do with the lines is the absurdly low difficulty on landscape. I strongly feel this is because landscape mobs hit like wet noodles and my gear has more +vit than I like. Please take this feedback to the landscape mob and itemization dev:
1) Landscape mobs (in particular signature and elite) need to do a lot more damage
2) DPS classes need gear that allows for 'glass cannon' builds. Right now the best DPS gear also has heaps of +VIT, making it impossible to play the 'glass cannon' style.

All the above really isn't about the class traits. So let's go there now, here's my specific input for each of the lines:

Blue line:
1) Needs hedge to get out of disarm situations. This line should have a form of hedge with lowest cooldown.
2) Needs replacement of the filler +vit with something a lot more meaningful. How about +% evade?

Red line:
1) Needs a hell of a lot more single target damage. How about adding that in the shape of +% devastate damage? I would like huge single target burst damage from red line. That's not totally reliable but when it happens it's KABAAAAM.
2) Needs hedge to get out of disarm situations. Default cooldown, but with a chance to disarm the opponent.

Yellow line:
1) Needs hedge to get out of disarm situations. Default hedge suffices.
2) Born of combat is a fun concept. It takes a good AoE situation to get hit 10 times, which means the capstone is usable in AoE heavy fights. I think that's great. The damage may be upped, as it's a lot less than raging blades and raging blades is spammable. Born of Combat is not spammable, so when it's available it should be KABAAM.

[Moors-Battlemaster]

Red line:
1) Needs a hell of a lot more single target damage. How about adding that in the shape of +% devastate damage? I would like huge single target burst damage from red line. That's not totally reliable but when it happens it's KABAAAAM.

Please god no. Sustained damage>random chance burst.

[LunisequiouS]

A lot of good suggestions in this thread that weren't included in my list of solutions. With that in mind, I thought it would be easier to paste my original list here as well in order to make it easier for Jinjaah and consolidate his answers to a single thread. I recommend Asperity, who also provided a detailed analysis of current shortcomings to do the same.

Jin, we'd all appreciate if you'd be so kind as to provide your opinion on the numerous suggestions on this thread =)

--- ALL LINES ---

Here are solutions to issues which affect all lines regardless of specialization:

• Revert Bracing Attack to it's previous Riders of Rohan version with the Heal over Time component. Fight On has too long a cooldown to make up for it. Should heal even if the skill misses.

• Give us back Hedge. Seriously. It's horrible to feel completely powerless when disarmed, specially since before we could shrug it off completely. Reintroduce Hedge as a specialization independent skill and have it remove disarms and actually prevent them for at least 15 seconds.

• Bonuses for unconsumed fervour pips make zero sense whatsoever, given that as a Champion you want to spend your fervour pips as fast as possible to maximize damage. There is no incentive for not spending those if you're losing out on damage. A possible solution would be introducing a buff that tiers up the longer you go without spending any fervor that increases skill damage and critical chance, so you can either spend your fervor for some fast damage or wait a bit longer for a "charged attack" with more damage. The buff could go on a low cooldown, so you could only perform charged attacks, say, every 20s.

• All three initial traits from all lines should be included by default (Second Wind, Brutal Strikes and Battle Frenzy). Replace those traits respectively by something along the lines of:
- Improved Second Wind: Includes a small power over time component like the old second wind.
- Improved Brutal Strikes: Gain one extra point of fervor on first strike crit.
- Improved Battle Frenzy: Gain one extra point of fervor every time an enemy is defeated like the old Red Haze.

• Fear Nothing is a legacy skill that has stuck around with us since the old days when removing Fear effects actually mattered, but on a 3 minute cooldown it doesn't get much use at all, even if it adds the occasional couple of fervor pips. Consider reducing the skill's cooldown to 40s and have it add a fervor point for each fear effect removed, up to 3, giving Champions additional fervor in instances that are riddled with Fear debuffs.

--- BERSERKER (RED) LINE ---

The main problem with this line is your damage output is fairly low, and the current traits are very unpredictable. Here are some solutions that could potentially make the Red line viable for DPS again:

• Make bleeds do considerably more damage and tier up in the same fashion as Rend bleeds, so the trait is actually worth taking.

• Make the extra strikes damage trait affect all strikes rather than just the last ones (otherwise it benefits heavily dual wield vs two handed builds, not to mention not synergizing well with Remorseless Strikes)

• Revert sprint bonus cooldown reduction to 120s, 30s is not worth investing in.

• Reintroduce Seeking Blades, add a trait that allows brutal strikes to reduce the cooldown of seeking blades by 5 seconds, like on old Hytbold Armour.

• Attack speed buffs should never expire. If they've tiered up, they should stay up.

• Emboldened Blades buff should tier down upon a crit rather than be consumed.

• Maximizing Hedge root duration is useless given subsequent damage often breaks the root. Have it disarm your opponent for 5 seconds in addition to the rooting when maxed instead, that would actually be useful.


--- DEADLY STORM (YELLOW) LINE ---

Surprisingly, this line is mostly fine, although a few smaller issues remain:

• Remove the finesse trait. It's downright useless. Consider replacing it with a flat +% chance of Blade Wall adding a fervor pip, in increments of 10% to 50%.

• Born of Combat should activate when YOU hit 10 times, not when you're hit 10 times. Also should do more damage than it does for a skill with a long cooldown/usage restriction.


--- MARTIAL CHAMPION (BLUE) LINE ---

This line is heavily changed from pre-Helm's Deep experience, and not necessarily for the best. Here are some solutions to making it viable once again:

• Remove the fervor cost of Bracing Attack when in blue line and lower the cooldown to 20s as it used to be. At the current 30s of cooldown, you can only use it twice before Dire Need is back (with legacy), leaving you with no other reliable means to heal yourself. Also consider making the skill immediate, I'm sure many Champions have died because Bracing Attack didn't proc the heal in time to save their lives.

• Martial Champion is painfully slow without Flurry. The only time it feels good is when True Heroics is up, but that lasts not even 10s on a 5min cooldown. Consider having riposte proc a +15% attack speed buff on crits that lasts for 15s, so you if you have enough parry responses it could potentially persist throughout the fight.

• Switch the location of the Vitality trait with the extra Second Wind power restore so that you're not forced to take any (useless) Vitality, and other lines can benefit from extra power from Second Wind (which, if you've been paying attention should be a general skill available to all lines by default), since the removal of stances has severely gimped our In-Combat Power Regeneration.


--- MISCELLANEOUS ISSUES ---

• Fix the fervor generation buff from the Helm's Deep Stalwart set removing Battle Frenzy. It actually makes your fervor generation worse. Consider having it sideline Battle Frenzy for the duration of the proc.

• Crafted horns are now inexplicably consumable, supposedly to allow for one more Champion consumable item. However, with 15 minutes of cooldown, it's simply not worth using them anymore and most players skip these completely now. Consider lowering the cooldown of Crafted Horns considerably to make them actually useful. Three minutes, like our other consumable, the Fervour Potion, seems like a nice middle ground, and might make it worth it investing the time and resources to acquire them. Additionally the Extra Stun Duration Legacy only affects crafted horns at the moment, and with 15 minute cooldown on those, it's simply not worth taking. If the legacy also affected our general stun, Horn of Gondor, that would be a very good legacy in turn.

[Mestari]

Red line: Deals pretty 'meh' damage because yellow is so strong on everything (Single and Multi-target)

-Devastating strike, needs to apply buff to champion that allows champion to bypass 40 % (?) of enemy mitigations, instead that only it (Devastating Strike) bypasses enemy mitigations.

-Every critical strike with Strike skill should grant champion stack of remorless buff (I don't remember the name, I am at work)

-Red line could also use swift blade without using 1005 trait points (aka lower the tier on swift blade trait).

This should be a start for red line.


Yellow line: It's too good when compared to red line as it stands currently.

-Instead of nerfing yellow line to the ground, buff red line(s) single target damage so much that we can choose will we play single target spec or AoE spec.


Blue line: I have not personally played it yet so I am writing these changes based on other user's opnions.

-We need hedge back, because we cannot do any threat while we are disarmed, and there is more usage to wound pots instead if removing disarm with them.

-AoE is also blue line's problem

[bytes]

I don't care much for champion tanking, but what is the idea behind the 'Increase Critical Defence/Unstable/Fight Through The Pain' triangle in the blue line? The entry trait reduces your chance of being critically hit, yet the two other traits give out buffs based on the champ being critcially hit; a bit strange I would think.

Exchange of Blows should not consume a global cooldown, while I do like the yellow line, it takes quite a bit of time to set everything up before you can actually get the first aoe out (Battle Frenzy/Great Cleave/Exchange).

The Broad Sweep talent changes Swift Strike into Swift Blade. If you're in yellow, you can't finish the Swift Strike Deed because the skill now has a different name. Yet Swift BLADE does not seem to benefit from any of the other blade skill buffs in yellow.

I also agree on what people said about champ horns, there are enough consumables as it is, does a 15 minute cooldown item really have to be consumable?

[dietlbomb]

In this post I stated what I don't like about the current champion class. Here are some suggestions as to how to improve the situation:

1. Revamp the trait system. This is the real cause of the problems. The champion worked well in the old system. We don't need to return to the old system, but the current system is too restrictive to allow the great champion gestalt to emerge. We need a more open traiting system that allows the player more versatility in combat.

2. Consolidate the trait trees and make more skills available to players in all trait lines. Combine the ST and AoE trait trees into a single trait line. There is no reason to separate these two trait lines. An alternative traiting topology might be needed to balance between ST and AoE ability. Also, if you need to have 3 separate trait trees, just come up with something else for the third line. It doesn't really matter if nobody uses it. Just please find a way to restore the dps trait line to make the champion fun to play again.

3. The champion feels like a car with a missing wheel. Some skills, Hedge, Remorseless Strike, Sudden Defense, Rend, Second Wind, Rising Ire, Ebbing Ire, and Raging Blade, should be available in every situation.

4. Decrease attack duration as a default for dps champs. Remove it from the trait trees. Get rid of the stacking buff. Just reduce players' attack duration. Making a player wait 20 seconds into a fight for the fight to be fun isn't fun. If you played through Western Rohan, you will have noticed that most fights don't last 20 seconds, so the champion is stuck in sluggish mode for nearly the entire leveling process. Making the attack speed its maximum at the beginning of the fight won't unbalance the game.

5. Good luck!

[Perelik]

Correct me if im wrong.

I always tought the champion was a weapon master, so if im right, Hedge shouldnt just remove disarm, it should also disarm the enemy and work just like the Riposte skill in martial line (Parry response)
ex : You fight a mob, it disarm you, hedge pop, you click hedge, it remove the disarm effect and disarm the enemy One does not simply disarm a weapon master. (I personally think this skill should be given back to champions)

I really dont understand why the champion sprint actually got nerfed, it was actually pretty weak already. the trait in red line should reduce the CD by 2 min instead of 30 seconds, just like before HD,or the trait should maybe increase our sprint speed or both? because in its current form its a useless trait.

Have you considered giving back the bubble to true heroic? right now the champion survivalability in yellow and red line is way too low, or maybe lower fight on CD or something.

Blue and Red line need some kinda help in the attack speed department, both line feel very slow and sluggish.

We need to find a way to make blue line a little bit more fun to play, cause right now its a wild attack/riposte rotation and it gets old fast :/

Red line dps is meh at best, thats why most champs goes for yellow line aoe dps atm, cause its better on single target than red line O.o
I tought our main role was melee dps, why then every single other class have better burst dps than we do? I demand to be deadly when i go red line! (i might be a little bit exaggerating here but i sure feel that way :P)
Its prolly just a impression but why do i have the feeling there's a tactical class bias in this game?

One last thing, i do not understand why Orc craft and fell-rought damage made it into the moors, i do not understand why heavies should have the same mit as light armor and medium armor classes. this need to be fixed because melees get the shaft again.(tactical classes bias? :P) 30% fell-rought and orc craft mit wont cut it, its a 40% mit nerf and melees need it to get in close combat range.

[Musehobo]

Can anyone explain the thought process behind removing a skill like Hedge without replacing it with something equally effective or better (CBR is inferior)? I mean, the tree system forces you to divide up skills Champions have used for a long time (with joy) to where you can no longer have access to them at one time. So basically, you took a battle monster equipped with the skills to do high ST DPS, massive AOE's, and have high survivability (even outside Glory), and determined we would no longer have the ability to use these skills depending on our selected traits. We all realized it was probably too good to last, but what followed was very surprising.

Pre-HD I was under the impression that we would be able to use our trees in a hybrid fashion that would allow us to branch into other trees receiving some of the skills/bonuses. What we find is that points are used 2 (or 3) times as fast in other lines, and we are overloaded with tiny buffs that add no flavor to the game at all. Honestly, I would kill for at least one bubble effect on my red line, instead I am granted weak Fight On and Bracing Attack. Even buffing these with LI's doesn't help enough. So I'm not crazy. I don't expect LOTRO to revamp the tree (though it would be nice), I would just like someone to acknowledge that we have been massively nerfed just because of the tree system, meaning there is no need to take away other valuable skills just for the heck of it.

And also let's be clear that what this also did, was make what was already considered to be a "dumbed down" class even dumber. I don't have to worry about a a skill rotation anymore since I only have skills that are "necessary" for my line. Gameplay, IMO, has suffered as mastery of what was a cornucopia of skills, is now a bare bones strategy that keeps it way too simple.

I just read my post above and it may have came across a bit more aggressive than I wanted it to, but I just needed to vent a bit. My ultimate outlook an all this is that I will just have to adjust and move on. But I would like to be able to say that playing a Champ is just not as fun as it used to be, which I think is ultimately a bad thing.