Recovery state - Created for Jinjaah

[Exion_Blade]

I like Rend being where it is and giving the red line champ some more avenues of DPS.

Can you also look into the fact that red, when properly buffed with its legacy, increases overall DPS not just because of its stacking bleed but also because of its ability to reduce armor value?

[Thorandril]

I'll agree with someone elses post here that rend doesn't increase in damage enough over the tiers to really make a big difference between t1-5, I feel.

Also blade storm is pretty weak, and isn't worth using in an AoE rotation because it isn't buffed by any legacies or traits. It's rather weak and bladewall is better DPS and doesn't cost pips.

[unip0pcorn]

Pretty much everything is covered up so i will only write down one or two extra that no one has mentioned.

I believe we have so many tiers on buffs that we actually have to download buffbars or we have no clue what is going on unless we mouse over on our vitals stop fighting for a second and see what we have. Emboldened blades has 5 tiers, Champion's duel has 10 tiers, rend has 5 tiers(This one doesn't really require us to keep track). I had no idea what tier these buffs were on before i downloaded buffbars. It makes maximizing DPS really difficult as well. I have to watch my Emboldened Blades, Champion's Duel and then pop Controlled burn and hope for a devastating crit with relentless strike. Also tiering Emboldened Blades up to 5 takes way more than a fight can go on. I can only get to tier 2-3, 4 if i'm lucky in a minute. That's just too much preparation for a war machine.

I would love to see tiers totally removed.

Emboldened blades - Make it a tierless passive. The damage buff should be somewhere around current Tier 3. Can't really suggest anything about apply chance.

Champion's duel - This takes so much time to tier up, we are usually already dead before it reaches Tier 10 in a real duel. PvMP or spar. My suggestion for it is again to make it tierless. The buff should be what current Tier 5 gives us and the duration be lowered to 15-20 seconds.

Continuous Blood Rage - As most people already mentioned, it's not continuous anymore. It doesn't feel like our blood is raging either. I don't know what i want for it to become, maybe it's previous form?

That is all i have for now.

[dietlbomb]

This post from Frisco from back in March last year is what I'm getting at:

I'll make a general post since the last couple posts have been on a similar issue that I think is very important to this update.

One thing I would like to see is that the three different lines that exist be more focused on what they set out to do. Berserker to me, is the single target burst damage champion. They pick out a target and then ferociously put all their energy into defeating that opponent whereas the deadly storm creates chaos on the battlefield with his area effect capabilities. Finally the Martial champion. To me, they have a lot of potential to tank in a unique way. They don't necessarily want to mitigate/avoid their opponents damage, they want to be hit because it empowers them.

I'd rather not necessarily tie the lines strictly to weapons. There could absolutely be things throughout each tree that encourage specific types of weapons but itemization is such an important choice in LOTRO that it feels unfair in some ways to restrict a player in that regard.

Stances are also an issue that should probably be addressed. Right now it feels like the consensus is that Fervour is the go-to stance. On paper, this makes a lot of sense. To me I think this is the perfect time to take a good look at stances in general and re-evaluate if they still serve a purpose functionally for the champion or if their bonuses are things that champions should just have by default.

-Jinjaah

That's the kind of post that scares me!

There seems to be an obsessive need to make 3 trait trees/sets, and that's just not necessary. We shouldn't have to be retraiting *within* an instance to be able to do proper DPS. I'm fine with the traits as they are, but as I posted in another thread, I'm wary of continuing down the path that tries to make Ardour useful at the cost of Fervour.

Ardour was conceived as a survival/DPS hybrid. Then sometime during Moria development, someone decided 3 was the magic number and brilliant ideas such as splitting DPS into 2 roles, tanking into 2 roles, making special lines just for Burglar Gambles, LM pets, and Hunter CC were born.

The only reason we've had so *little* complaint is because Ardour is a skill that both satisfies the obsession with 3 trait lines, and can be ignored entirely. Trait whatever reds and yellows you want, and play in Fervour. If it gets to the point where we can't ignore Ardour anymore, that's when the happy Champ community you see will become foaming at the mouth like Hunters. See what splitting their DPS into 2 trees has done to them? Even their forum has padded walls.

We had a great dps line that used lots of Single-target and AoE skills that could be balanced at the player's discretion. The red line and the yellow line complimented each other. There was no such thing as a Berserker Champion or a Deadly Storm Champion. There was a DPS champion. And I liked it.

I'm sorry Jinjaah, but your vision of what the champion's trait lines are supposed to be doesn't include a lot of what I liked about the class. Is there any way to make the red and yellow traitlines more connected?

Also, is 3 really the magic number? Can we have an explanation why the 3-Traitline-per-class paradigm has persisted for so long?

[TKH]

A small suggestion for Born for Combat: It looks like a perfect skill for blue-line instead of yellow-line, like many people have mentioned. Keeping the same mechanic of being able to trigger after being hit too much, I think it should be an AOE forced-threat skill in blue-line.

[unip0pcorn]

A small suggestion for Born for Combat: It looks like a perfect skill for blue-line instead of yellow-line, like many people have mentioned. Keeping the same mechanic of being able to trigger after being hit too much, I think it should be an AOE forced-threat skill in blue-line.

Definitely. We ran OE last day with no tank, i went blue line and it was impossible to grab all Morelendil Guards on me. I only have 2 force attack skills. 1 is ST on 30 sec CD and the other is true heroics with 5 min CD. So my whole fellowship had to follow me all the time instead of waiting in the blue light to kill the spirits. It's not a huge bother for the fellowship but being in tank stance and not being able to keep/take aggro is disappointing.

[RingOfFire]

While I was testing out Remorseless Strike and the Emboldened Blades buff after the patch today, I noticed that Remorseless Strike itself is able to trigger the proc after removing all currently active stacks. I'm still sure clearing the whole buff is a bug, but I'm intrigued by Remorseless Strike being able to trigger the proc like all the other Strike line skills -- keeping it in might add a nice bonus every now and then by "technically" not removing a stack upon scoring a crit, if changed to only remove the current tier of Emboldened Blades like the skill description seems to state its supposed to do.

[Anreon]

Since the skill exploit has been resolved, ... , I`d really like to see our strike skills become fast skills.
This would help with the long delays between certain skills and make combat more fluid at the same time (see recent Guardian Changes with 12.2) .

Just thoughts .

[Dercin]

Since the skill exploit has been resolved, ... , I`d really like to see our strike skills become fast skills.
This would help with the long delays between certain skills and make combat more fluid at the same time (see recent Guardian Changes with 12.2) .

Just thoughts .

This, so much. If champs had the skill speed of a burg or guard I could care less about any changes to defense/heals/cc. The delay between skills is painful and the poor state of deep strike bleeds means the damage drop off is very noticeable.

[Rakanor]

The current red line t1 set bonus gives us 5% more skill damage per fervour pip we currently have. The champ is based on building and spending fervour quickly, would it not make sense to have a buff based on the amount of pips we have recently spent.

Just an idea :

A buff of 2.5% extra damage which can tier up to 10, so it still maxes out at 25%. Each point of fervour spent adds a stack e.g. brutal strikes cost 3 fervour so it will add 3 stacks when used. This buff should tier down every 2 or 3 seconds which is long enough to keep the max tier between building and spending fervour. However when you stop dpsing you fairly quickly lose tiers, buff should expire out of combat.

[Moors-Battlemaster]

The current red line t1 set bonus gives us 5% more skill damage per fervour pip we currently have. The champ is based on building and spending fervour quickly, would it not make sense to have a buff based on the amount of pips we have recently spent.

Hence you get higher damage for using high pip skills, increasing DPS fairly well.

[Rakanor]

Hence you get higher damage for using high pip skills, increasing DPS fairly well.

Yes but in a dps rotation only the spenders really benefit from the buff. This was made to replace the fervour stance, which gave a constant damage buff meaning it also applied to fervour builders. Currently the builders barely benefit from the buff, as I said it's just an idea

[mrfigglesworth]

I had a couple ideas about born for combat to make it more impressive as a passive cap.
First, increase the damage done
Second, build stacks by crits instead of by taking damage

Finally, when you use born for combat it procs flurry and champion's advantage for a guaranteed 30 seconds of -20% attack duration and 8 seconds of -15% enemy mitigations.

[Peter_Pan]

Finally, when you use born for combat it procs flurry and champion's advantage for a guaranteed 30 seconds of -20% attack duration and 8 seconds of -15% enemy mitigations.

Brilliant idea.

[devilhand]

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.

Thats from another thread. (Didnt quote so jin can quote whole thing if want to answer)
That pretty much says all, why we have a legacy (Major) that affect a consumable item with 15 min CD?... Would like to see it affect Horn of Gondor since is our skill, that way it would be worthy as a major legacie.

[Musehobo]

Definitely. We ran OE last day with no tank, i went blue line and it was impossible to grab all Morelendil Guards on me. I only have 2 force attack skills. 1 is ST on 30 sec CD and the other is true heroics with 5 min CD. So my whole fellowship had to follow me all the time instead of waiting in the blue light to kill the spirits. It's not a huge bother for the fellowship but being in tank stance and not being able to keep/take aggro is disappointing.

Blue line is terrible. It's amazing to think after all the nerfing they did with our class, that they thought the best thing for Chanks would be to further limit our aggroing skills. It seems they wanted to make us a true dps tank class, but when not in yellow or red line or dps is very sub-par. The best we can hope for is to get into large mobs and pop Raging. But as soon as any skilled dps class starts lighting in we instantly lose aggro. Challenge is ST, and as you mentioned a long CD on True Heroics. I know they wanted to limit what we can tank, but we no longer have any skills that effectively build aggro. From what I've read in the past about Reprisal, I don't think Champs appreciated it as they should have. I could hold aggro very effectively with this traited and the force skills.

[Mephistophelis]

I play as a martial champion for solo/groups/anything. The damage output is decent, and we're not a DPS role either; but I think the bubble we get from sudden defence is somewhat not enough. If I recall it was higher before Helms Deep; I personally think it should be redesigned such that the bubble now covers a certain portion of a champion's health. E.g. 1 fervour adds a bubble worth 5% of the total morale of the champion; 2 fervour, 10%; ... 5 fervour, 25%. I have ~18k health at level 90, so if these changed were made I'd get a ~4.5k bubble from sudden defence. By the way, the damage output from sudden defence is pointless and really random; I'd prefer something more meaningful because in the context of when I would use sudden defence is usually when I'm overwhelmed by many mobs or am about to die and need a boost: so give that boost. We're no DPS spec, so I think instead of the damage output sudden defence should heal the champion for a constant value as a little boost when sudden defence expires or is depleted.

Now I want to know who's idea it was to design the 'Unbreakable' skill? It's useless; infact it's so useless that I'm convinced that I should not be investing a point on it. I think this skill needs a total overhaul and need to be relooked because I think it was just added out of the blue without any regard as to what situation a martial champion would be in for so little damage output given off from that skill. Instead I propose the following:

Unbreakable will now heal you overtime each time you are hit, while also increasing your morale; your attacks also generate more threat. When at max stacks you let out of a big cry that increases threat considerably and deals moderate damage.

Also, it appears blade wall no longer generates aggro since I can't see any red arrows floating on top of enemies. If that's the case then that's a step backwards imo. Blade wall should by default generate aggro. Suffice it to say that I am not completely satisfied by the changes to martial champion, and it's far from efficient really. We need more skills that generate aggro: we are a tanking spec after all.

[Thorandril]

Finally, when you use born for combat it procs flurry and champion's advantage for a guaranteed 30 seconds of -20% attack duration and 8 seconds of -15% enemy mitigations.

second this idea, but I personally think flurry should be a passive. At least in red-line.

[MathKnight]

On the subject of Disease, Wound, Fear, Poison (DWFP) removal skills:

Burglars have Burglar's Antidote. Removes 1 DWPF on a 15s cooldown. Also, HIPS removes all DWFP effects, on a 240s cooldown.*

Captains have Muster Courage. Affects fellowship within 30 m to remove 1 DWFP. Adds +20% Fear Resist for 30s. 20s cooldown.

Guardians have Ignorre the Pain. Removes 1 (or more) DWPF on a 5s cooldown. Yellow tree allows up to four effects at a time.

Loremasters have Knowledge of Cures. Removes 3 DWPF on a target. Has a 2s induction and a 15s cooldown.

Minstrels have Story of Courage. Removes 1 DWPF from fellowship within 45 m, and adds a Fear Resist rating to fellows within 15 m for 10s. Has a 3s induction and a 10s cooldown.

Rune-keepers have Scribe a New Ending. Removes 1 DWFP from a target every 2 seconds for 6s. 8s cooldown.

Wardens have First Aid. Removes 1 DWFP on a 5s cooldown.

Hunters only have Purge Poison. Removes 3 Poisons with no cooldown.*

Champions only have Fear Nothing. Removes 3 Fears and adds 2 Fervour on a 180s cooldown.

I submit that Champions need a better debuff removal skill, with a cooldown in the 5 to 25s range. Champions do not need such a skill that removes debuffs from others, just a self-only skill. The comparison between cooldowns alone is rather ridiculous. All other classses have at worst 1/9th the cooldown on their removal skill compared to Champions. The 2 Fervour could be removed if the cooldown could be vastly decreased.

Hunters could probably do with a better debuff removal skill too, though it would likely need a non-zero cooldown (and this really isn't the point of the thread or post).


*I do not have a Burglar or a Hunter at this time. Other players told me about these two.

[Castorix]

Now I want to know who's idea it was to design the 'Unbreakable' skill? It's useless; infact it's so useless that I'm convinced that I should not be investing a point on it. I think this skill needs a total overhaul and need to be relooked because I think it was just added out of the blue without any regard as to what situation a martial champion would be in for so little damage output given off from that skill. Instead I propose the following:

Unbreakable will now heal you overtime each time you are hit, while also increasing your morale; your attacks also generate more threat. When at max stacks you let out of a big cry that increases threat considerably and deals moderate damage.

I agree Unbreakable is useless (it is easy to cap Tactical Mit. to 75% with the +5% bonus and the temporary max morale, hum....)
But with a heal on hit, we would be invincible like Guardians and Captains (Captains are by far the most OP class : they do 6-man T2C like SG T2C... by being afk ! (Gorothul fight, HPS largely > received DPS)
("Exemplar" skill gives 2 - 3.5K morale in a row when hit by a lot of adds, continuously...))

[Mephistophelis]

I agree Unbreakable is useless (it is easy to cap Tactical Mit. to 75% with the +5% bonus and the temporary max morale, hum....)
But with a heal on hit, we would be invincible like Guardians and Captains (Captains are by far the most OP class : they do 6-man T2C like SG T2C... by being afk ! (Gorothul fight, HPS largely > received DPS)
("Exemplary" skill gives 2 - 3.5K morale in a row when hit by a lot of adds, continuously...))

I say implement it; it's not fair guards and captains have that and champs don't. If we truly are Unbreakable, then by all means make it so!

[RingOfFire]

I've been playing around on Live with the "next attack will stun" functionality from having the Athletic trait at its maximum rank, and the results have been interesting to say the least. Apparently, not only will "any" damage skill stun any and all targets within range, but even taunt or debuff skills like Champion's Challenge and Champion's Duel can trigger the stun (I suspect this is due to any of these skills being registered as a "hit" upon successful execution on a hostile target, according to the combat log). I'm not entirely sure yet if being able to use Horn of Champions to launch an 8-meter AoE stun centered on a target up to 30 meters away, stun a specific target from up to 40 meters away with Champion's Challenge, or stun up to 20 targets in a 15 meter radius with True Heroics (and this is without any trait points invested in Broad Sweep! Good thing the skill has a natural 5 minute cooldown, considering this can theoretically stun almost an entire raid on its own, and if Broad Sweep is somehow at rank 4 or 5...), is a bug -- or a very fun feature.

Personally, I'm thinking that this is something definitely worth keeping in, as well as increasing the cooldown reduction Athletic grants to Sprint from 15s/30s/45s to 40s/1m 20s/2m or 1m/2m/3m. In situations where the movement speed debuff immunity granted by Sprint is not necessary -- or the movement speed buff, for that matter -- being able to choose precisely when to apply a stun on our next skill of choice may grant some interesting tactical functionality to the Berserker line, and also allow us to stun a target (or targets, depending on the skill in question) without breaking our rotation by using Horn of Gondor. For even more fun, I'm thinking raising the stun duration from 3 seconds to at least 5 seconds (more than this may be overpowered though, IMHO) would help offset Sprint's cooldown and give an alternative use to the skill. Given some of the potential ways it can already be used on Live which I listed above, this may also give a legitimate reason for it to be kept as a tier 6 trait in the Berserker tree, to give an additional benefit for investing heavily.

EDIT: Amusingly, this even works with Ebbing Ire of all skills! A stun with theoretically no maximum target limitations, along with actually reducing our threat in the process, is way too good to pass up. It even has the same range as Horn of Gondor and costs one less Fervour pip.

[Anreon]

Guardians have the same thing, ... , only with shorter cd, longer duration (5 sec) and it`s even a knockdown.
So ... , not that great in comparison.

[mrfigglesworth]

I've been playing around on Live with the "next attack will stun" functionality from having the Athletic trait at its maximum rank, and the results have been interesting to say the least. Apparently, not only will "any" damage skill stun any and all targets within range, but even taunt or debuff skills like Champion's Challenge and Champion's Duel can trigger the stun (I suspect this is due to any of these skills being registered as a "hit" upon successful execution on a hostile target, according to the combat log). I'm not entirely sure yet if being able to use Horn of Champions to launch an 8-meter AoE stun centered on a target up to 30 meters away, stun a specific target from up to 40 meters away with Champion's Challenge, or stun up to 20 targets in a 15 meter radius with True Heroics (and this is without any trait points invested in Broad Sweep! Good thing the skill has a natural 5 minute cooldown, considering this can theoretically stun almost an entire raid on its own, and if Broad Sweep is somehow at rank 4 or 5...), is a bug -- or a very fun feature.

Personally, I'm thinking that this is something definitely worth keeping in, as well as increasing the cooldown reduction Athletic grants to Sprint from 15s/30s/45s to 40s/1m 20s/2m or 1m/2m/3m. In situations where the movement speed debuff immunity granted by Sprint is not necessary -- or the movement speed buff, for that matter -- being able to choose precisely when to apply a stun on our next skill of choice may grant some interesting tactical functionality to the Berserker line, and also allow us to stun a target (or targets, depending on the skill in question) without breaking our rotation by using Horn of Gondor. For even more fun, I'm thinking raising the stun duration from 3 seconds to at least 5 seconds (more than this may be overpowered though, IMHO) would help offset Sprint's cooldown and give an alternative use to the skill. Given some of the potential ways it can already be used on Live which I listed above, this may also give a legitimate reason for it to be kept as a tier 6 trait in the Berserker tree, to give an additional benefit for investing heavily.

EDIT: Amusingly, this even works with Ebbing Ire of all skills! A stun with theoretically no maximum target limitations, along with actually reducing our threat in the process, is way too good to pass up. It even has the same range as Horn of Gondor and costs one less Fervour pip.

lol. so you've tried true heroics in a craid after sprint and it stuns everyone? That's......insane.

[Tullkas]

I know U13 is SUPPOSE to contain some champ fixes but seeing how nerfed our red line is (we are a dps class first and foremost Healing class's shouldnt be out DPSing us at all never mind 2-3X our single target) and soso Blue line it would of been nice to see a couple fix's for us in 12.3. And yes our yellow line is in a good place.