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Lord of the Rings Online: A Look at the Champion
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.
Champions are no exception and at level 15 they are sent on quite a journey. First, you must visit Oggur, the class trainer, who is located in the jail interior found in south Bree. When you e looking at the Bree map, the jail is basically the last building you can enter on the west side of the road that leads to Chetwood South. By 15 you’ve probably visited Oggur a few times. Oggur offers the quest called A Blade of Renown. The first objective of this quest is to meet with Ultan Foebane. Ultan is a dwarf standing stoutly in a cart at the Bree/Combe gate on the east side of Bree.
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Ultan will give you a letter detailing the vile people he wants you to hunt and kill to prove your worth as a champion. The letter describes the foes, their situations and where you might find them. All of these enemies are found in Bree-land and they are all level 15 elites. Unlike some of the other class quests at this level, A Blade of Renown can be done while in a Fellowship. All the mobs are found in the world and there is no instancing required.
Going down the list, Zhurpukh of the Deeps, a goblin, is the first to kill. Zhurpukh runs north and south along the eastern edge of the Midgewater Marshes. He doesn’t pass beyond the waterfall, but he is literally running through the marshes. You can get to his location by running through the marshes and killing everything on the way. Most of the mobs in the marshes are 10s and 11s and are easily disposed of, especially in a fellowship. You could take the road that leads southeast out of Bree and cut sharply north off the path and into the marshes right before you end up in Lone-lands, but you would travel through Chetwood South on this route. Either way, there are other goblins and creatures around where the elite runs, so it good to clear a few of those mobs out before attacking Zhurpukh.
Secondly, there’s Fair Sherman, a half-orc. His location is a little trickier than Zhurpukh. There’s a road that leads south out of Bree toward Andrath that dead ends in ruins surrounded with brigands. If you’re running along the road you need to get on the grass to the left of the path when you see the ruins. The ground gently becomes a ridge on this side and you can avoid a lot the brigands by running along where the ridge meets level ground. You’ll see a wall of the ruins that is actually connected to this ridge and a small tower built into the wall. This tower is only a few feet from where the ridge and ruin wall connect. Fair Sherman is located in this tower and you can access him by stepping onto the edge of the tower from the ridge on which you’ve been running. You don’t even have to enter the camp to fight and kill Fair Sherman.
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Finally, you must find Morley the Fierce, a man. He is hanging out with a bunch of wild animals in the Old Greenway Fort. This fort is located south of the Northern Bree-Fields. The fields, as the name suggests, are north of Bree. They are found by running north on the path right outside of Bree on the town’s west side. Eventually your map will have a crest with the name Northern Bree-Fields on it. Right before your character is over the name on the map you l be able to see a group of ruins to east of the path. Morley is in there, but there are also a lot of boars or bears among the ruins. Usually you can find Morley in the southeast corner of the ruins along one of the walls. Again it advisable to kill the mobs before getting to Morley. You can usually take him on without any adds if you e cleared the creatures out beforehand.
With three evil beings slain, you’ve now completed your first champion class quest! It’s time to return to Ultan and reap your rewards. There are three rewards that are, of course, very epic. You will receive three Athelas Essences which are healing potions that restore 220-240 morale. You will receive a one-handed weapon called the Champion’s Axe. This axe has 18-34 common damage at 8.8 DPS with a speed of 2.4. The axe comes with a +5 to Might and Vitality and, as with all axes, there’s a small chance at lowering a target’s armor. The last reward is a class trait which you can equip at a bard. This trait is called Vicious Strikes and it will give your champion +240 strike skills critical rating making abilities in the strike line a great chance to crit.
There are a lot of MMOs trying to get your subscription fee every month. The only way you’ll know which one is right for you is by trying them and giving them an honest chance. Some gamers are put off by LotRO enveloping lore, but there are great mechanics, too. Of course, the intellectual property is probably paramount to most players. Seeing characters you’ve read about come to live in a virtual world is actually pretty exciting. Still, LotRO also offers soundly built classes mixed with the normal grinding and creative questing experience.
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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.
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.
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
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.