Any plans for Blue champs?

[BinaryTertiary]

title basically explains it. currently its a line with a ton of potential fun but this is just ... sad. why do we have so many half-baked lines in the game?

[Starkorm]

why do we have so many half-baked lines in the game?

You gotta keep the people wanting more.

[MimDerZwerg]

Since all trees should be useful, I support you.

Since power is almost ignorable one of the main panics is useless... you get like ~50k morale from it.
Bubble is also weak.

I would like to see champ be more tanky on groups than single target.
Was fun when you could use heavy shields back then in Moria.

Besides the non scaling panics you can tank in blue quite good.
I did AD T1, Remmo Sides T3 (no real damage here of course). It is more about aggro control.
You need to do it mostly by dealing damage and have a blue rune.

Around ~700k morale and 600k physical mastery is quite fine.
Looking at 3mans you can *tank* in red or yellow if you have a good heal.

Nevertheless Guardian needs to be fixed first before correcting champ blue line.
Elsewise it would be another slap into the face of guardian class.

[HolyDuckTape]

+1 fix blue chimps

[BinaryTertiary]

guess not eh?

[Gertes]

I Like the Changes the blue Champ got in the Last updates.
You are able to Tank 3 and 6 man content. Not extremely good but you can at least.
But i currently still See 3 Major issues.
You Ness a compensation for the Missing shield, some Armor increase Like the Beorning has for example.
Dire need ist the worst Panic Skill ingame, i would Not even try to make its usefull, Just replace it.
Chanks are somewhat dependent on damage for Holding Aggro, but you dont Deal much damage because of partial bpe.
Either give the Champ passive 20% Finesse or rework the bpe mechanic in General.

One 4th point came to my mind, every other tank offers decent group/raid utility, the champ has nearly nothing. Just Horn of Champions and Aggressive Exchange. Adding 1-2 more utility tools could also help him a lot.

[Jsmooth73]

Yes please buff blue champ. The blue line is lacking overall compared to other tank lines, but it does have lots of potential in becoming the damage tank.

Here are a few changes I'd like to see.

1. Both bracing attack and champions challenge should be on a 10 sec cooldown. (Make this blue line only.)
2. Increase the potency of the bubble from Sudden Defence and apply an armor buff to the champ when the bubble expires.
3. Dire Need needs a complete rework. It should heal the champ for at least 3/4 health and then maybe add 5 fervour and reset the cooldowns of Sudden Defence, Adamant, and Unbreakable.
4. Redo the Replaced strike trait where it increases damage to Sweeping Riposte to 25%, 50%, 75%, 100% in ranks 1-4 and then adds a taunt at rank 5.
5. Blue champ needs some utility - Make the buff from Adamant raid wide?

I think this would go a long way to increase the champ's self survivability, taunting, and utility in a raid.

[Strider5548]

I'd like to see this too. I don't understand why heavy shields were ever removed for champs, it's cool to be able to swap different weapon combos, so why take away sword/board from champs?

[Lusikkax]

I'd like to see this too. I don't understand why heavy shields were ever removed for champs, it's cool to be able to swap different weapon combos, so why take away sword/board from champs?

I don't think shields fit the lore of the class in any way really. I'd love champ tanking to be something along the lines of being hard to kill as long as there are many targets to keep hitting, being able to deal a lot of damage in the process. Going down swinging you know. They've gone for something like that clearly in the blue line, they've just forgot to update it.

[Strider5548]

I don't think shields fit the lore of the class in any way really. I'd love champ tanking to be something along the lines of being hard to kill as long as there are many targets to keep hitting, being able to deal a lot of damage in the process. Going down swinging you know. They've gone for something like that clearly in the blue line, they've just forgot to update it.

I could sign on to that, would not mind having an aoe type tank that deals damage.

At the moment champs are one of the weakest classes on Treebeard which is a bit frustrating. I feel that once they remove weapon swapping their status at 130 will also go down to "let's just bring one if we need aoe in this fight".

[gaara908776]

I could sign on to that, would not mind having an aoe type tank that deals damage.

At the moment champs are one of the weakest classes on Treebeard which is a bit frustrating. I feel that once they remove weapon swapping their status at 130 will also go down to "let's just bring one if we need aoe in this fight".

Haven’t tried Champ on Treebeard. Blue line is actually pretty tanky at endgame, nowhere near Guard or Capt obviously, but at the very least it feels a bit tankier than my fully geared Blue line build on Warden in fights with basically any burst damage. The problem I see is aggro management. All other Tank classes aggro has become so trivial that it’s barely a factor. Champ on the other hand feels left behind to me on this front unless you have some DPS gear equipped.

I too have the same concern with removal of weapon swapping nerfing champs/hunters into the ground. I only recently started raiding on my Champ again and it is 100% essential for any meaningful single Target DPS. Aoe won’t be hurt as much by it but I’m scared they’ll do what they did in Mordor and nerf champs into oblivion then leave everyone hanging for a year or more.

/sigh at least my Warden should be okay. His legacies are all essentially useless so anything will be an improvement.

[Kaeneth]

I don't think shields fit the lore of the class in any way really. I'd love champ tanking to be something along the lines of being hard to kill as long as there are many targets to keep hitting, being able to deal a lot of damage in the process. Going down swinging you know. They've gone for something like that clearly in the blue line, they've just forgot to update it.

Gimli is noted to take a shield from the armory of Theoden, and seeing as how he is the inspiration for the champion I think it would fit in nicely if champs were allowed to use shields again, at least as an option.

[gaara908776]

Gimli is noted to take a shield from the armory of Theoden, and seeing as how he is the inspiration for the champion I think it would fit in nicely if champs were allowed to use shields again, at least as an option.

Yeah, I don’t think there is anything in lore that would say they shouldn’t use shield for some reason. I think they most likely removed shield use to differentiate Champ tanks from Guard. Champs could barely hold initial aggro with a shield anyway. I think they could just add a Blue Line trait deep in the line that either allows heavy shield use or gives some of the benefits of a heavy shield.

[Thorandril]

Yes please buff blue champ. The blue line is lacking overall compared to other tank lines, but it does have lots of potential in becoming the damage tank.

Here are a few changes I'd like to see.

1. Both bracing attack and champions challenge should be on a 10 sec cooldown. (Make this blue line only.)
2. Increase the potency of the bubble from Sudden Defence and apply an armor buff to the champ when the bubble expires.
3. Dire Need needs a complete rework. It should heal the champ for at least 3/4 health and then maybe add 5 fervour and reset the cooldowns of Sudden Defence, Adamant, and Unbreakable.
4. Redo the Replaced strike trait where it increases damage to Sweeping Riposte to 25%, 50%, 75%, 100% in ranks 1-4 and then adds a taunt at rank 5.
5. Blue champ needs some utility - Make the buff from Adamant raid wide?

I think this would go a long way to increase the champ's self survivability, taunting, and utility in a raid.

Basically agree with all of these. Either DN or SD should be baseline skillset IMO. The class needs more abilities between all the traitlines, we don't really have as many useful skills as we should and we have to waste points to get them while others that should be available (blade storm, second wind, lookin at you) aren't.

[Gorikon]

Yes please buff blue champ. The blue line is lacking overall compared to other tank lines, but it does have lots of potential in becoming the damage tank.

Here are a few changes I'd like to see.

1. Both bracing attack and champions challenge should be on a 10 sec cooldown. (Make this blue line only.)
2. Increase the potency of the bubble from Sudden Defence and apply an armor buff to the champ when the bubble expires.
3. Dire Need needs a complete rework. It should heal the champ for at least 3/4 health and then maybe add 5 fervour and reset the cooldowns of Sudden Defence, Adamant, and Unbreakable.
4. Redo the Replaced strike trait where it increases damage to Sweeping Riposte to 25%, 50%, 75%, 100% in ranks 1-4 and then adds a taunt at rank 5.
5. Blue champ needs some utility - Make the buff from Adamant raid wide?

I think this would go a long way to increase the champ's self survivability, taunting, and utility in a raid.

Some grains of salt:

1. Both bracing attack and champions challenge should be on a 10 sec cooldown. (Make this blue line only.)
--> Reduce CD of Champion's Challenge: Yes please, maybe as a blue passive. Bracing Attack needs to be reworked first to do a meaningfull heal (made percent based). 10 seconds CD would be OP then.

3. Dire Need needs a complete rework. It should heal the champ for at least 3/4 health and then maybe add 5 fervour and reset the cooldowns of Sudden Defence, Adamant, and Unbreakable.
--> Yep, make it a flat heal. 75% might be a bit too much though for a skill with a 1 minute CD (with legacy / tracery). 50% - 60% sounds about right (with blue passives and legacy / tracery). Reset all other defensive skills might be a bit much, too, though I agree DN could have one or two additional effects.

4. Redo the Replaced strike trait where it increases damage to Sweeping Riposte to 25%, 50%, 75%, 100% in ranks 1-4 and then adds a taunt at rank 5.
--> Would mean we would have a force taunt that is available every 2 seconds (CD of SR) when a lot of mobs are whacking at you, or not at all when e.g. you tank a single boss who only does tactical attacks. Not good. Another melee taunt would be nice, though (similar to Guard's enagage or Cappy's Grave Wound).


Also, please fix the force taunt of Horn of Champions to do a threat copy.

[Strider5548]

Sadly I think we are going from 'fix blue champs' to 'fix all champs'...

Don't get me wrong, I really want blue champs to be revamped and become viable tanks, lots of good suggestions here, but at this point they've done so much damage to yellow/red champs that I doubt we'll see any work on blue champs for years.

[Thentix]

And please oh please let us block while dual wielding in blue line. We are a damaging tank after all. Yes blocking is more feasible dual wielding than a 2h. Try it out yourself in real life.