MMORPG.com Lord of the Rings Online Correspondent Pamela Blalock takes a look at the Champion class in Turbine's Middle-Earth based game.

Dual wielding, shields, heavy armor and area of effect damage are some of the fancy attributes of the champion in Lord of the Rings Online. The combination of good DPS abilities and tough armor make the champion a great berserker class. LotRO is full of that amazing Tolkien lore which creates a wonderful MMO environment, but the game wouldn’t be the success it is without strong basics of gameplay. One of those basics is the quality of the classes in which the players are allowed to choose. The champion is a good example of a solidly built class in a well-written MMO world.

In LotRO there are nine classes: burglar, captain, champion, guardian, hunter, lore-master, minstrel, runekeeper, and warden. Men, Dwarfs and Elves can be champions, but Hobbits cannot. At multiple different levels each class can take specific class quests and receive class specific items and abilities. These quests begin at level 15 and continue through your journeys in Middle-Earth.

Read A Look at the Champion

The problem with the lotro champion is that they completely screwed the class up. He is "supposed" to be a DPS class, but instead of making him fast and furious they made him extremely slow and boring.

DPS melee should be fun to play, not slow and boring.

Obivously the person who wrote the article has only played a champion until level 15 then moved on to a different  class or is in the prcoess of writing the rest of the article. A true champion in LoTRo doesn't equip the trait required to use heavy shields unless they are planning on tanking an instance. WIth the Moria revamp of the class the class trait slot taken up by the heavy shield trait is better used for another class trait.

I have played the Champion class since the Closed Beta of LOTRO Shadows of Angmar and the class is fun but it does take a certain mindset to play it well. The Champ is not a berserker class per se but is great at wearing down opponents and that is its strength. The champ is not built to kill everything in 2 blows but works the best in a small fellowship or even a raid where it can close with the enemy and eat them alive. I have done many of the raids in the game pre moria and post moria and that is still one of the sstrong points of the class.

As for tanking the champ is great as a tank even without the shield and you have to really learn how to manage the aggro properly to do so. The best place to practice is in some of the encounters in the Great Barrows at a low level. You need to pace your power consumption versus power output and rely on your damage and single taunt to control the aggro. Most experinced champs know how to do this just by practicing and surviving.

Once again the Champ is a great class but to keep calling them Berserkers is wrong. Berserkers are great for a short fight and die quickly from exhaustian but a good champ will jump into the fight kill the mobs and be smoking his pipe while the rest of the party is still getting back from the rez circle.

Originally posted by BigMango

The problem with the lotro champion is that they completely screwed the class up. He is "supposed" to be a DPS class, but instead of making him fast and furious they made him extremely slow and boring.

DPS melee should be fun to play, not slow and boring.

 

I will mildly agree with this post. I have a level 43 champ and I do enjoy playing him. But I was hoping that the combat would be a little faster paced. It can sometimes drag on a little bit, but it doesnt bother me THAT much.

It's a fun class to play at the low levels.

My first post here but I've been actively playing a Champ in Lotro since pre release. The champ is far more than a berserker class. We have the highest sustained dps in the game, there are classes that can out hit us in bursts, at the beginning of the fight or get big crits in single long cooldown skills, but over the course of an encounter you can't beat the dps of a champion. The story doesn't end there though.

Being a heavy armour wearing class we can take some punishment too. We have 3 stances that allow various degrees of avoidance vs power regen and damage output that can be used for all out dps or good dps with good damage mitigation. We can tank most of the content in the game. We also make great off-tanks, we have a number of aggro skills that can be used to grab aggro from a squishie class and either keep it, or transfer that aggro onto a "proper" tank. 

We also have the best interrupt skill in the game. There are mobs who use interruptable skills which, without a champ to deal with, become a problem for the group. Other classes have interrupt skills, but none as effective as the champion.

Champion combat is far from pedestrian. We can use almost all weapons in the game, with a few exceptions that don't matter. Weapons have various speeds, if you yearn for a faster pace you choose your weapons appropriately. It's generally accepted that slower, harder hitting weapons do a little more damage over time than slower ones, but the difference isn't huge (unless you want to dual wield daggers!). We also have a flurry skill which increases our attack speed by 20%.

Overall, I've played 5 classes now and the champion is the one I keep going back to. If you want to be in the thick of the action dealing bloody retribution on multiple enemies, keeping your healers safe and generally making the encounters go faster and smoother then the champion is the class for you. 

The point of the article was to review the Champion up to level 15 with an emphasis on the first class quest the Champion receives.  So I felt up to that point it was a berserking class.  What the Champion evolves into is not pertinent since this was more of a quest guide.

I'm playing all classes and, although the Champion does shift gears past that level, I didn't want to complicate things by explaining that when it didn't affect the class at level 15.  Of course, they become less of a berserker and can last longer; they get heavy armor XD!  Future guides and articles on the class would focus on the Champion's new roles as an "older" character.

I actually liked the article, it was very informative, but it left the impression that the champion class  was very limited in its scope. My main reason for posting was to give the broader picture on the class and flesh out what a champion can become. Playing a class to L15 is really only scratching the surface of what they have to offer. Maybe if this was made more apparent in the article, I found myself looking for page 2... 

If you're doing this with the other classes (I've played 5) make sure with the Loremaster you go to at least L20, they only become enjoyable after that apparently, I stopped mine at L17 due to sheer boredom, must get him going again sometime.

Originally posted by pamkhat

The point of the article was to review the Champion up to level 15 with an emphasis on the first class quest the Champion receives.  So I felt up to that point it was a berserking class.  What the Champion evolves into is not pertinent since this was more of a quest guide.

I'm playing all classes and, although the Champion does shift gears past that level, I didn't want to complicate things by explaining that when it didn't affect the class at level 15.  Of course, they become less of a berserker and can last longer; they get heavy armor XD!  Future guides and articles on the class would focus on the Champion's new roles as an "older" character.

What I got out of this article was how to complete the first class quest.  The rest was just...filler.  If completing the class quest was the point of the article, well done, otherwise, I learned nothing about the class from your article.

What kinds of weapons can a champion use?  What about types of equipment one should shoot for?  What are the stances? When do you get them?  When are they appropriate to use?  Drawbacks/advantages in the stances?   How does the champion fit in with the fellowship?  How does the champion handle singular mobs?  Multiples?  How do the traits affect the gameplay of a champion?  How do we overcome the debuffs when using certain standes?  What neat things can a champion do when a mob dies and you are still engaged in combat with another mob...?  Etc.

I am not an expert on the class, my champion is only level 54...I am still learning how to play the class.

Hasta.

Nieves

Originally posted by SNieves

Originally posted by pamkhat

The point of the article was to review the Champion up to level 15 with an emphasis on the first class quest the Champion receives.  So I felt up to that point it was a berserking class.  What the Champion evolves into is not pertinent since this was more of a quest guide.

I'm playing all classes and, although the Champion does shift gears past that level, I didn't want to complicate things by explaining that when it didn't affect the class at level 15.  Of course, they become less of a berserker and can last longer; they get heavy armor XD!  Future guides and articles on the class would focus on the Champion's new roles as an "older" character.

 

What I got out of this article was how to complete the first class quest.  The rest was just...filler.  If completing the class quest was the point of the article, well done, otherwise, I learned nothing about the class from your article.

What kinds of weapons can a champion use?  What about types of equipment one should shoot for?  What are the stances? When do you get them?  When are they appropriate to use?  Drawbacks/advantages in the stances?   How does the champion fit in with the fellowship?  How does the champion handle singular mobs?  Multiples?  How do the traits affect the gameplay of a champion?  How do we overcome the debuffs when using certain standes?  What neat things can a champion do when a mob dies and you are still engaged in combat with another mob...?  Etc.

I am not an expert on the class, my champion is only level 54...I am still learning how to play the class.

Hasta.

Nieves

Most of that stuff barely applies at level 15.