Champion LI Revamp - Thing's to consider.

[Fresuvi]

With the LI revamp coming fairly soon, I just wanted to bring up the seriousness of potential issues that could come with the LI revamp. With the rumored potential removal of weapon swapping(which I’m fairly impartial to because I understand the issues that it causes with Champion and multiple other classes), Champion’s will undoubtedly experience a pretty substantial DPS nerf, especially to single-target. As most Champion strike-skills are heavily tied to Weapon DPS, this could obviously be an easy fix by reducing the difference between 1H and 2H LI DPS.

What I and many other Champion’s I raid with are worried about is how massively dependent Champion’s currently are on certain legacies. Champion is arguably the most LI reliant class in the game. There are about 5 legacies per LI type that contribute to at least 50-75% of Champion DPS. Unfortunately, the removal of any of these legacies will likely result in significant DPS loss.

I’m worried that this will be Mordor 2.0 where Champion does less than 50% of the single Target DPS of any other class if this isn’t taken into account by the Dev’s. I get that there have to be significant changes in order to get to a more balanced state of play. However, if we have another 18 month period where half of the classes in the game are basically completely useless on anything other than landscape content, I don’t think it’s going to be very good for the state of the game.

I know this is going to shake up the balance of the game significantly but I really hope the Dev’s take this into account and are ready to fix the problems in a timely manner.

[Harvain]

Something to keep in mind, the Legendary Item Revamp isn't going to be a Day 1 the Current LI System is obsolete. We as of mid August 2021 don't know when the LI Revamp will be in the game, it does sound like we are closer but we might not see anything for such in September for information, Bullroarer Beta Testing for the LI Revamp, etc.

Classes won't become Day 1 of the LI Revamp far weaker as there will be just a new LI System in the game that all players Level 50 and above can use and will be transitioned into over a number of Updates to get it fully working. The current LI System will remain and be a bridge to when the new LI System takes over and the old system is fully phased out. If a Class uses the new LI System Items Day 1, yes, regardless of Level they will be weaker compared to a current LI System Items.

There is also the Battlepass (System where by playing you gain XP basically for the Battlepass to get things. The LOTRO Battlepass will be free to everyone) coming to LOTRO with the Legendary Item Revamp, it will have things tied to the LI Revamp to help players get through this initial transition period as well as test if the LOTRO Demographic would deal with having a Battlepass in LOTRO. If Players would be receptive there could be a future Battlepass with a "Free Version" that everyone gets and a VIP Version alongside where VIPs receive extra items. Usually other games use a system where every Level for the "Premium" Battlepass gives something (usually better items) and Free gives stuff sometimes every couple of levels or every level but items of varying quality.

Weapon Swapping isn't fully concrete for what is occurring although its fairly certain that either with the first LI Revamp Update it will be disabled or in a future update possibly the Gundabad Expansion itself.

[Strider5548]

Raninia said today that weapon swapping will be disabled....exactly the opposite of what Cordovan said a couple weeks ago. If true, that’s the nail in the champion coffin. Goodbye DPS and goodbye fast paced enjoyable combat. I’m really upset they listened to all the complainers, this will destroy the Champ class.

[TobiasEstForte]

Raninia said today that weapon swapping will be disabled....exactly the opposite of what Cordovan said a couple weeks ago. If true, that’s the nail in the champion coffin. Goodbye DPS and goodbye fast paced enjoyable combat. I’m really upset they listened to all the complainers, this will destroy the Champ class.

The leak said disabled too. Mixed messages and Rainina is getting major rep with their quality of communication, so I'm going what Rain says.

[Harvain]

Raninia said today that weapon swapping will be disabled....exactly the opposite of what Cordovan said a couple weeks ago. If true, that’s the nail in the champion coffin. Goodbye DPS and goodbye fast paced enjoyable combat. I’m really upset they listened to all the complainers, this will destroy the Champ class.

To be fair, Cordovan was doing Damage Control due to the leak while he was on vacation as there was the chance that SSG wouldn't go fully into how you can't swap Armour during Combat and apply that to Weapons.

It will be a change but I look at the current system like this. If you need to Weapon Swap it's like driving in Nascar and having several cars all bumper to bumper to give the lead car a little extra speed. Why have X amount of cars do the work of what 1 car could do? Yes, I know that people who are using Weapon Swapping enjoy what they deem to be a "Mechanic" that gives an extra layer to Combat which helps separate them from others of the same Classes but going off the LI Revamp leak and what has SSG and will have to say on Weapon Swapping it is more than likely that the Pro's of Weapon Swapping were far outweighed by the Con's.

Something to keep in mind, they haven't stated when Weapon Swapping is going away so there is X amount of time to play and enjoy this Era of LOTRO as we are approaching the end of yet another Era of this game.

Champion is not going to be the only class affected when the Legendary Item Revamp is released. All Classes officially if the Character takes the New LIs during the Transition Period will be starting from Square 1 (pending how they deal with rewarding or not rewarding players for dealing with X amount of years with 2 Legendary Item Systems). We'll all be learning the new system, see where it takes Classes and adjustments will be made from there to then get every Class into a state of being based on the concept of: All Classes and their 3 Class Trait Trees are playable in Landscape and at least 1 Class Tree is playable in Higher Level Content. I have no doubt there will be several Classes if not every Class at Max Level (Level 130 pending when the LI Revamp is out) that will find that how they played Pre-LI Revamp is different and adjustments will be made over a period of time to get back to the 3 Trees for Landscape, 1 Tree for Higher Level Content.

It's honestly just going to come down to how long it takes to bring balance again. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

[Omen_Kaizer]

On the same page with OP as usual.

I'm glad Raninia was as explicit about combat-swapping being slated for axing as Vastin was, though I understand why Cord had to be more cagey in streams following the leak.



Two birds one stone opportunity: yall arent planning on tweaking classes until after LI revamp because the revamp is going to create a new normal that needs evaluation first--that makes sense. But champ, we know and yall know will be so strongly affected by the weaponswapping, probably going to warrant a parallel boost to base skill damage by (lowballing) 10-15% whenever LI revamp pt 1 is dropped. That's simultaneously throwing a bone to the treebeard champs.

[Fresuvi]

On the same page with OP as usual.

I'm glad Raninia was as explicit about combat-swapping being slated for axing as Vastin was, though I understand why Cord had to be more cagey in streams following the leak.



Two birds one stone opportunity: yall arent planning on tweaking classes until after LI revamp because the revamp is going to create a new normal that needs evaluation first--that makes sense. But champ, we know and yall know will be so strongly affected by the weaponswapping, probably going to warrant a parallel boost to base skill damage by (lowballing) 10-15% whenever LI revamp pt 1 is dropped. That's simultaneously throwing a bone to the treebeard champs.

Hey Argendauss!

After seeing the leaked LI revamp info from Palantir, I was pretty certain they would be disabling Weapon swapping from combat. Back at the end of level 75 cap, the same issue arose with armour swapping and I remember the community manager at that time explained that there were only a few ways they could actually go about stopping excessive armour swap macros from being necessary for certain classes. Removing the ability to swap from combat entirely ended up being the easiest way they could make this happen, so I'm not surprised weapon swapping will be stopped with the same tactic.

I definitely agree with you and hope they see this as an opportunity to boost base skill damage and/or make it scale more linearly with mastery. However, I'm hopeful that they can still see that the key issue lies in the massive disparity between weapon DPS and attack speed between 2H and 1H LI's on certain key abilities.

1. Ferocious/Brutal Strikes do about 30% increased tooltip damage at level 130 with capped mastery while wearing a 2H LI rather than a 1H LI while still offering 3 attacks for both ability regardless of weapon type. Add to this our massive critical damage multipliers that increase that 30% disparity substantially even if only 1/3 of the attacks crit.
2. Rend Bleed damage currently scales more significantly with Weapon DPS than mastery(again this naturally is another factor that pushes players towards weapon swapping)
3. On any animation that you aren't using Battle Frenzy or Clobber to cancel(basically all of them except Ferocious/Brutal) 2H is significantly slower, especially in Red line as you lose some of the attack duration buffs from yellow and the Capstone for 2H/1H buffs do not make up for this in any meaningful way.
4. Since SSG is removing weapon swapping, they need to rework the 2H animation for Fury of Blades. While it does look really cool, it doesn't make sense to have the ability have completely different animations for 2H and Dual wield. Obviously most players can ignore this by Weapon swapping but as that's going the way of the Dodo, I imagine this is going to become a problem.

This is just the stuff I can think of off the top of my head that is going to cause some very serious disparities between 2H and Dual Wield for Champion. The most significant one in my opinion is the difference in weapon dps of 2H and Dual wield. I'm extremely glad that Raninia said the team is aware of the problems that exist. How aware they are of the specific disparities that actually cause Champs to weapon swap in the first place could be another story, but who knows...

[whitering]

So, we did get a damage boost, and the new LI system is more powerful than the old one, by a lot from what I can see. So, how is this shaking out for us now? I am waiting for some new builds, but am finding out I have to patient lol

[Strider5548]

So, we did get a damage boost, and the new LI system is more powerful than the old one, by a lot from what I can see. So, how is this shaking out for us now? I am waiting for some new builds, but am finding out I have to patient lol

I admit I have not played on live yet, have been too busy with work, but from what I've seen on various discords it looks like champs are better than they were before, still light years behind hunters and wardens.

[Esgalad]

So, we did get a damage boost, and the new LI system is more powerful than the old one, by a lot from what I can see. So, how is this shaking out for us now? I am waiting for some new builds, but am finding out I have to patient lol

The fact that no one knows which classes are nerfed or buffed from this yet is confusing and stressful, and it makes it hard to view this as a perk of the expansion pack. This feels like a burden. The expansion should have more actual unique content and not an overdue, yet somehow still not ready LI revamp. It feels like it should actually lower the price of Gundabad right now, and all this week.

[egarthur]

The fact that no one knows which classes are nerfed or buffed from this yet is confusing and stressful, and it makes it hard to view this as a perk of the expansion pack. This feels like a burden. The expansion should have more actual unique content and not an overdue, yet somehow still not ready LI revamp. It feels like it should actually lower the price of Gundabad right now, and all this week.

The LI revamp was a freebie, why would it have any impact on the price of the Gundabad expac? Sure, there are things to be worked out yet with the revamp (among other things, trade-ins for LI mats), but nobody got gypped by the LI revamp, since no-one paid for it. And you don't have to stop using your old LIs if you don't want to. Granted, you can't advance them, but you had them maxed already, right?