Champion Rebalancing

[Alcatrazz]

Hello Fellow Champs,

I read a lot of things about champs in the last few month, mainly people crying about nerfs.

Sure Champs need adjustments and in certain points they definetly need nerfs.
In general Yellow Champs Single Target DPS needs to go down, while Red Single Target DPS needs a buff to get even close to what hunters deal.

The change to bladewall on the current beta built doesn't help much to solve that problem.

A change to single skills wont change much, it either stays the same or makes the class utterly useless in single target focused fights which are most of it. So we need changes in the trait trees.

DPS Changes

Suggestion 1:

• Add +xx% Strike/Blade Skill Damage to Red/Yellow Trait Tree, to create a persistens gap between AOE and ST Trait Lines
• Then rebalance power of Skills to match the current dps requirements

Suggestion 2:

• Nerf Brutal/Ferocious Strike Skill Damage by -xx%
• Add +xx% Strike Skill Damage to Red Capstone Weapons Master

This should be a pretty fast fix to do but it might create new problems at lower level with less trait points

Utility Changes

Heals

• Remove the ability to crit for Bracing Attack
• Remove passive heals from Trait Lines

Sprint

• Increas Sprint CD by 1min to 2min
  or
• Remove Tracery for +Sprint Duration

Just a few thoughts, maybe we get some good points the dev team can work with if they decide to do something with champs.

[Strider5548]

Hello Fellow Champs,

I read a lot of things about champs in the last few month, mainly people crying about nerfs.

Sure Champs need adjustments and in certain points they definetly need nerfs.
In general Yellow Champs Single Target DPS needs to go down, while Red Single Target DPS needs a buff to get even close to what hunters deal.

The change to bladewall on the current beta built doesn't help much to solve that problem.

A change to single skills wont change much, it either stays the same or makes the class utterly useless in single target focused fights which are most of it. So we need changes in the trait trees.

DPS Changes

Suggestion 1:

• Add +xx% Strike/Blade Skill Damage to Red/Yellow Trait Tree, to create a persistens gap between AOE and ST Trait Lines
• Then rebalance power of Skills to match the current dps requirements

Suggestion 2:

• Nerf Brutal/Ferocious Strike Skill Damage by -xx%
• Add +xx% Strike Skill Damage to Red Capstone Weapons Master

This should be a pretty fast fix to do but it might create new problems at lower level with less trait points

Utility Changes

Heals

• Remove the ability to crit for Bracing Attack
• Remove passive heals from Trait Lines

Sprint

• Increas Sprint CD by 1min to 2min
  or
• Remove Tracery for +Sprint Duration

Just a few thoughts, maybe we get some good points the dev team can work with if they decide to do something with champs.

Sprint is completely fine, nothing needs to be changed here. Self heals are fine as well, if any adjustments are made to self heals then dire need could be moved up in blue so it's not accessible in red/yellow, bracing attack is perfectly fine as is.

As for DPS, I agree the blade wall nerf is pointless. It does not address the issue of red DPS being too low and yellow ST being too high. It also hurts balance for lower level champs where yellow is doing about 60% of what red can do on a dummy.

They need to fix the issue with red/yellow by buffing red and lower yellow single target damage output. I don't agree with nerfing brutal/ferocious, if anything they should push ferocious out deep in red so that yellow can't get it. Also push deep strikes in further in red out of yellow's reach as well. These two things alone will bring yellow ST back in line to where it should be, at the same time they need to undo the blade wall nerf and figure a way to improve red ST DPS.

[Sopheliaren]

Sprint is completely fine, nothing needs to be changed here. Self heals are fine as well, if any adjustments are made to self heals then dire need could be moved up in blue so it's not accessible in red/yellow, bracing attack is perfectly fine as is.

As for DPS, I agree the blade wall nerf is pointless. It does not address the issue of red DPS being too low and yellow ST being too high. It also hurts balance for lower level champs where yellow is doing about 60% of what red can do on a dummy.

They need to fix the issue with red/yellow by buffing red and lower yellow single target damage output. I don't agree with nerfing brutal/ferocious, if anything they should push ferocious out deep in red so that yellow can't get it. Also push deep strikes in further in red out of yellow's reach as well. These two things alone will bring yellow ST back in line to where it should be, at the same time they need to undo the blade wall nerf and figure a way to improve red ST DPS.

What’re your toon names on ark my guy.

[Spilo]

Sprint is completely fine, nothing needs to be changed here. Self heals are fine as well, if any adjustments are made to self heals then dire need could be moved up in blue so it's not accessible in red/yellow, bracing attack is perfectly fine as is.

As for DPS, I agree the blade wall nerf is pointless. It does not address the issue of red DPS being too low and yellow ST being too high. It also hurts balance for lower level champs where yellow is doing about 60% of what red can do on a dummy.

They need to fix the issue with red/yellow by buffing red and lower yellow single target damage output. I don't agree with nerfing brutal/ferocious, if anything they should push ferocious out deep in red so that yellow can't get it. Also push deep strikes in further in red out of yellow's reach as well. These two things alone will bring yellow ST back in line to where it should be, at the same time they need to undo the blade wall nerf and figure a way to improve red ST DPS.

Unreal.

[Alcatrazz]

Sprint is completely fine, nothing needs to be changed here. Self heals are fine as well, if any adjustments are made to self heals then dire need could be moved up in blue so it's not accessible in red/yellow, bracing attack is perfectly fine as is.

Well I don't think its good if you can use a skill without even think about when you should use it, because it has a uptime of 70-80%. So Sprint definetly is not fine.

I agree on the part wiht dire need. Good point. But I still think healing is to strong for solo scenarios with the passive healing.

They need to fix the issue with red/yellow by buffing red and lower yellow single target damage output. I don't agree with nerfing brutal/ferocious, if anything they should push ferocious out deep in red so that yellow can't get it. Also push deep strikes in further in red out of yellow's reach as well. These two things alone will bring yellow ST back in line to where it should be, at the same time they need to undo the blade wall nerf and figure a way to improve red ST DPS.

I hope they do not push ferocious deeper into red. Just destroys yellow single target rotation. Single Target DPS in Yellow needs to go down, but they should not take single target skills out of reach in yellow since there are situations where you need to stop aoe and that should still be possible even if you skilled yellow.
I see no problem in nerfing brutal/ferocious in yellow to scale down the ST problem in yellow as long as they buff if up in red.

[Thorandril]

Sprint is completely fine

No it isn't, and the above suggestion is not harsh enough. If we accept duration and tracery then current CD could be tripled, bare minimum. 90% uptime on a speed buff that is at best useful in PvE, and game-breaking in PvP is unrealistic.

Self heals are fine as well

Self heals were fine before the buff to bracing & dire need simultaneously. The fix to DN was fine, but it is fairly and widely agreed upon that bracing attack was over-buffed. These 2 skills would be acceptable as base-kit in their current form if and only if every other champion heal were removed. Champions are first and foremost DPS classes so the ability to access 4-5 different types of heals at the same time is putting us to where the old red guardian was, a class that had far too many heals & DPS for what they were.

if any adjustments are made to self heals then dire need could be moved up in blue so it's not accessible in red/yellow, bracing attack is perfectly fine as is.

Dire need, Flurry & Exchange of blows should IMO all be base kit, but that's another topic for another time. Most of what made this class fun was ruined with trait-lines & removal of base kit into the separate lines & replacing it with % procs that are boring & clunky.

As for DPS, I agree the blade wall nerf is pointless. It does not address the issue of red DPS being too low and yellow ST being too high. It also hurts balance for lower level champs where yellow is doing about 60% of what red can do on a dummy.

Removing flurry from yellow & making it a skill accessible across all lines could probably have fixed this, you would think nerfing DPS skills on a DPS class is a bad idea but consider that there is probably not 1:1 developer to class ratio anymore.

They need to fix the issue with red/yellow by buffing red and lower yellow single target damage output. I don't agree with nerfing brutal/ferocious, if anything they should push ferocious out deep in red so that yellow can't get it. Also push deep strikes in further in red out of yellow's reach as well. These two things alone will bring yellow ST back in line to where it should be, at the same time they need to undo the blade wall nerf and figure a way to improve red ST DPS.

Red is boring & honestly if it was removed tomorrow we would be better off, but the idea that we need to parse the same as hunters in red is a little silly since we're heavy armor and able to take quite a bit more beating. The kind of changes that we need are to shift skills/mechanics around a bit so that the class is still fun to play, not direct skill damage nerfs that will just have people flipping to brawler or bear for the next best thing.

[Froyo_K_Baggins]

As someone who is an altaholic, I have to disagree. The complaint from every class that they're not the top dps class gets old. As someone who has played hunters and champions for years, I've seen:
- Hunter was set up as a primarily single target dps class
- Champion was set as a primarily aoe melee class

Champs don't need to be equal to Hunters. I run mine red line in solo and yellow in groups. No biggie.

I had problems when they made RK's do more dps than hunters, even though I also have an RK, because that's not the theory I saw behind the RK. There should be differentiation between classes. It doesn't bother me at all the red line isn't that of a hunter.

[Alcatrazz]

... but the idea that we need to parse the same as hunters in red is a little silly since we're heavy armor and able to take quite a bit more beating.

Are we? I mean its could be a point if you stack mits, but since you need to deal damage you don't do that to that point it gets an advantage. Without suffer offensive stats and therefore DPS, hunters and champs tactical mits are nearly the same. The only advantage I see is a little more morale.
But actually its pointless in my eyes, since you need to keep DPS at the same level or give a huge amount of group utility to DPS classes with lower DPS. I could also argue we need more DPS than hunter cause we are melee and need to close the gap between us and the opponent, but that would be stupid either.

As someone who is an altaholic, I have to disagree. The complaint from every class that they're not the top dps class gets old. As someone who has played hunters and champions for years, I've seen:
- Hunter was set up as a primarily single target dps class
- Champion was set as a primarily aoe melee class

Champs don't need to be equal to Hunters. I run mine red line in solo and yellow in groups. No biggie.

I had problems when they made RK's do more dps than hunters, even though I also have an RK, because that's not the theory I saw behind the RK. There should be differentiation between classes. It doesn't bother me at all the red line isn't that of a hunter.

As an altaholic it might not bother you much but as someone who does not play alts it surely does. Its not a good thing if you are excluded from higher tier raiding because your class is simply underperforming and has no spot in raids.
Sure champs are not in a bad spot right know in general but looking at t3+ HoA clears hunters are clearly favoured. And since there are a lot of people crying for (yellow) champ nerfs without any buffs to red this would not get better.

[Thentix]

I just wish they would let us block while dual wielding in blue line. I mean, blue line champ is supposed to be a damaging tank. I used to practice with swords IRL before I got hurt and I can assure you, I can block better with 2 swords than I could with 1, 2H sword. So I honestly don't get it. That would go a long way also to make blue line more enticing and fun and boost the idea they had for it, damaging-ish tank.

Not sure why you want to get rid of passive heals. We are already one of the squishiest classes as it is. I sure go down fast in red fighting hard single targets and lots of harder-ish targets. Even spamming all my survivability stuff.

[Meshuggenah]

Red is boring & honestly if it was removed tomorrow we would be better off, but the idea that we need to parse the same as hunters in red is a little silly since we're heavy armor and able to take quite a bit more beating.

Seems to me you have that backwards.

Melee classes should have greater potential DPS than ranged classes because they have to stay in melee range in order to sustain their DPS. That typically means having a much tougher time avoiding damage as well as having to chase targets around as the tank moves, etc.

Ranged, on the other hand, can often simply plant themselves in one spot and have 100% uptime.

[Strider5548]

No it isn't, and the above suggestion is not harsh enough. If we accept duration and tracery then current CD could be tripled, bare minimum. 90% uptime on a speed buff that is at best useful in PvE, and game-breaking in PvP is unrealistic.

If you put all trait points into sprint deep in red and use a gold sprint tracery you are looking at 80% uptime, 25% runspeed boost, 60 second cooldown.

If you do the same thing on a Guardian you are looking at 36% uptime, 71% runspeed boost, 60 second cooldown.

Currently guards can sprint much faster for shorter duration, but if you set the base speed (hypothetically) at 100 meters per minute, a guard will run 125.4 meters over 60 seconds while a champ will run 120 meters.

There's absolutely nothing wrong or broken with champ sprint, the problem is a lot of people cry about it in PvP. The solution is not to screw with a working as intended skill in PvE, but rather come up with a PvP only solution to address any balance issues that are strictly related to the moors.

[Alcatrazz]

Not sure why you want to get rid of passive heals. We are already one of the squishiest classes as it is. I sure go down fast in red fighting hard single targets and lots of harder-ish targets. Even spamming all my survivability stuff.

We are definitely not one of the squishiest classes.
Self healing as a champ is just to high, especially in red Line. You can easily reach 25-30k hps (without traited dire need) if you use everything on cd, that is just too much in combination with our utility and dps.
Passive Heals don't help you much in a Raid scenario if you can not affect the way the heal procs. So I would rather remove the passive healing than nerf bracing attack more than it would need.

If you put all trait points into sprint deep in red and use a gold sprint tracery you are looking at 80% uptime, 25% runspeed boost, 60 second cooldown.

If you do the same thing on a Guardian you are looking at 36% uptime, 71% runspeed boost, 60 second cooldown.

Currently guards can sprint much faster for shorter duration, but if you set the base speed (hypothetically) at 100 meters per minute, a guard will run 125.4 meters over 60 seconds while a champ will run 120 meters.

There's absolutely nothing wrong or broken with champ sprint, the problem is a lot of people cry about it in PvP. The solution is not to screw with a working as intended skill in PvE, but rather come up with a PvP only solution to address any balance issues that are strictly related to the moors.

Its not about the distance you can reach with sprint its just about the uptime.
25% Run Speed with slow immunity on a 80% uptime makes that skill a no brainer. No need to think about when to use it, just smash the button on cd. Actually they could make it a passive, he?
That not just about PvP its also stupid in PvE.

[Hephburz-2]

I didn't like all of your suggestions, so rather than just replying individually to each one, I'll list my own suggestions;



Base
- Bracing Attack heal reduced from 25% to 15%

Blue
- Bracing Attack Heal from 15 to 25%.
- Dire Need becomes a Blue only Skill.
- Fix threat modifier on Horn of Champions force taunt.
- Replace Capstone 'Quick with a Blade' to something useful.

Red
- Ferocious Strikes should be red ONLY.
- Brutal Strikes should be in the second-to-last row, this means yellow can still access it but it must now give up more in order to reach it.
- Agree with you about adding +% strike damage, but I would remove the sprint trait in place of this. In no situation does a Champion need 48s sprint on a 1min cooldown. It's too strong.
- Controlled Burn should be red ONLY.
- Controlled Burn should buff Strike skills by 25% for 30s (Up from 15% on all for 20s).

Yellow
- Get rid of the useless Yellow traits pertaining to Horn of Gondor and replace them with +% Blade Storm damage/crit damage to actually make the skill useful.
- Scale Flurry
- Great Cleave should be acquired ONLY in Yellow.
- Great Cleave should buff ALL Champion skills by 25% not just AoE.

[KillAllFrep]

I didn't like all of your suggestions, so rather than just replying individually to each one, I'll list my own suggestions;

Agree with most of your suggestions, but, really don't understand the fascination with making Champ defenceless again. Hunter, a class that can avoid 90% of boss mechanics simply by virtue of being 40m away has better access to vastly greater self healing than Champ does, a class that has toavoid 100% of mechanics, random aggro hits (no reaction time allowed), puddles, boss AoEs etc.

Dire Need 100% should be blue only. The passive healing in Yellow is bugged as f and procs once a year, the Red line Killing Spree healing is entirely redundant in any content that matters except PvP, where a KB is few and far between. Bracing Attack is completely fine as it is, it's a fairly reasonable CD for about 35% of your morale if you use a tracery on it. In line with things like Blood Arrow, Press Onward, Self Motivation etc.

Agree with the rest except:

GC affecting ST skills, no, the whole problem at the momeent is Yellow is over-potent at ST DPS, this just makes it worse. Agree it should only be available in Yellow line though.

[Thorandril]

If you put all trait points into sprint deep in red and use a gold sprint tracery you are looking at 80% uptime, 25% runspeed boost, 60 second cooldown.

If you do the same thing on a Guardian you are looking at 36% uptime, 71% runspeed boost, 60 second cooldown.

Currently guards can sprint much faster for shorter duration, but if you set the base speed (hypothetically) at 100 meters per minute, a guard will run 125.4 meters over 60 seconds while a champ will run 120 meters.

There's absolutely nothing wrong or broken with champ sprint, the problem is a lot of people cry about it in PvP. The solution is not to screw with a working as intended skill in PvE, but rather come up with a PvP only solution to address any balance issues that are strictly related to the moors.

If you are stretching this hard to defend it and still somehow aren't getting the point, w/e. I'm sure by now it has been explained well enough that you're either ignoring it or struggling with the reasoning. Either way good luck.

But since you said something, guardian sprint could come down a bit too. None of these skills are necessary in PvE in these magnitudes.

I didn't like all of your suggestions, so rather than just replying individually to each one, I'll list my own suggestions;

Base
- Bracing Attack heal reduced from 25% to 15%

Blue
- Bracing Attack Heal from 15 to 25%.
- Dire Need becomes a Blue only Skill.
- Fix threat modifier on Horn of Champions force taunt.
- Replace Capstone 'Quick with a Blade' to something useful.

Red
- Ferocious Strikes should be red ONLY.
- Brutal Strikes should be in the second-to-last row, this means yellow can still access it but it must now give up more in order to reach it.
- Agree with you about adding +% strike damage, but I would remove the sprint trait in place of this. In no situation does a Champion need 48s sprint on a 1min cooldown. It's too strong.
- Controlled Burn should be red ONLY.
- Controlled Burn should buff Strike skills by 25% for 30s (Up from 15% on all for 20s).

Yellow
- Get rid of the useless Yellow traits pertaining to Horn of Gondor and replace them with +% Blade Storm damage/crit damage to actually make the skill useful.
- Scale Flurry
- Great Cleave should be acquired ONLY in Yellow.
- Great Cleave should buff ALL Champion skills by 25% not just AoE.

How is everyone only capable of suggesting botched fixes that remove things from that class instead of add things to it?
-Making ferocious, CB and Brutal essentially red only is going to defeat the entire purpose of traiting red from any other line and will gut interesting builds.
- People should still be able to get dire need, but it should be more punishing. It should be up another 1-2 lines into blue so you sacrifice for it in your build because right now you lose almost nothing to get it.
- I do agree on your magnitude changes for Bracing, 10% is how much it should swing by.


Dire need, controlled burn and Flurry should all still be base kit with this class and it is amazing to me that they aren't. They can be affected and changed dramatically by traits in their respective lines to operate differently and still fulfill their purpose in increasing the potency of whatever line they are attached to.



Bottom line: Proc skills are not fun. They suck. Active skills are fun, and engaging. Who wants to tell other people "sorry my dps is low, it just starts off bad because I have to wait for my attack duration buff to pop up when it feels like"

[Gunhard]

[*]Remove the ability to crit for Bracing Attack[*]Remove passive heals from Trait Lines

I see you hate healing on dps classes, but i have way more better experience in mmos where every class has healing skills and playing without them feels like lackluster one trick pony.

[xXToquinhoXx]

I'm really very very very sad about what they did to the class... champion game since 2015 and this is the worst scenario in the class. I never needed to comment on the forum .... just follow the points....


. but today I feel like I should do something about it so I'll put my improvement points here...


. 1... set raid HH bonus useless (only blue line has some use)
2... very low dps compared to other classes like : red Ministrel. Hunter. Brawler ...
. 3... pointless and pointless nerfs
4... they are focusing where there is no problem .( st in yellow . sprint . damage reduction where it is already low and other things )
5... champion's devastat chance is too low in 18 consecutive parses of champion has an average of 1.8 to 3.1 % chance
6... a hunter gets 520 to 550 damage a champion is around 390 to 430 this is not a main dps


I beg you please : Don't destroy my favorite class .... save it to .... we are all a family of champions. and remember: The sword will always be stronger than the bow

[HerrDave]

Let Blue Champions use Light Shields again, please :>

/thread

[Khluzainn]

Let Blue Champions use Light Shields again, please :>

/thread

*Heavy* shields is what you mean... They had a blue trait point that let them use heavy shields.

[HerrDave]

*Heavy* shields is what you mean... They had a blue trait point that let them use heavy shields.

Oh shoot, I remembered it wrong D:

Thanks for the correction, Khluzainn!