style="width: 640px; height: 200px;" alt="LotRO Champion Guide"
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href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/champ/overview">OVERVIEW
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/champ/solo">SOLO
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/champ/group">GROUP
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/champ/pvmp">PvMP
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/champion/endgame">LEGENDARY
ITEMS | href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/90510/page/2">TRAITS
| VIRTUES
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/champ/skills">SKILLS

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SOLO
PLAY AS A CHAMPION


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Champions
deal damage in bulk. Here are a couple of savvy Ghash-hai shoppers
lining up for a real bargain.

The Champion is a one-man goon squad when it comes to soloing.
The strategy, from character creation to endgame, remains unwaveringly
simple: charge in, engage, hit everything until it dies. Champions pay
about as much attention to frivolous buffs and meticulously-planned
crowd-control as a cannonball fired into a brick wall. You want
subtlety? Roll a Lore-master.

Champions play in a style similar to soloing Guardians, only
faster. Mobs get coralled into an easily-managed group and then
hammered down en masse until the Champion is the last man standing. The
Champion is a blunt instrument of destruction, and his strategies are
straight-forward.

Soloing with a Champion tends to be a bit quicker than with
other classes who must fight mobs one at a time or in small clusters.
The Champion can round up a number of mobs and handily
dispatch them as a group. This is fairly easy for mobs within the
character's level range, and a modestly-equipped Champion should be
able to handle 3 - 4 non-elite on-level mobs without much worry.
Against lower-level mobs, a modestly-equipped Champion can handle even
larger numbers. Over-level and more powerful elite mobs will take a bit
more finesse, and should usually be handled either singularly or in
very small groups. The Champion shares an inherent weakness with the
Guardian: because of the tough nature of the class, it is quite easy to
overestimate the character's abilities and pull too large of groups at
once. While the Champion has a small handful of self-preservation
skills, these are not as powerful as the "panic button" skills of some
other classes, and if the situation gets complicated further (for
example, patrolling mobs join the fray), the Champion may find himself
overwhelmed.

At
low levels, rounding up a group of mobs involves simply running up to
them and getting aggro, then kiting them until they are grouped up
tightly and unleashing a flurry of area-effect attacks. At mid-levels,
the game changes a bit and the Champion has more options for pulling
with the use of bows and some ranged attacks. At level 20, the Champion
gets one of his most useful skills for group pulls:Horns of Valour, a
passive skill allowing the use of crafted horns. Horns can be sounded
when the Champion is surrounded by a horde of mobs, stunning a number
of them for a brief period. Higher level horns incapacitate the enemies
for longer periods of time and can affect more targets. These horns can
be crafted by a woodworker.

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alt="A Champion soloing"
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No
no no... AXE breaks HAMMER, PARCHMENT covers axe....

Fervour
stance is most useful for soloing, as it adds fervour pips more often
than the other stances and increases outgoing damage, and the
high-fervour-cost skills are the ones that do the most damage. On the
other hand, they also cost significantly more power, and power
consumption can be an issue in long, protracted fights.
Increasing in-combat power regeneration will help, and the Champion has
a number of defeat-event skills and a couple of handy legendary skills
that will restore power, but the smart Champion will want to carry lots
of potions and power-restoring food.

Healing is another area
where Champions may encounter some difficulty. The class has little in
the way of self-heals - Dire Need and Bracing Attack - and the most
useful soloing stance decreases the amount of incoming heals by 30%.
Carrying an ample supply of healing pots is absolutely crucial for
soloing, and morale-restoring food is highly recommended.

Up
until around level 20, Champions can get away with running everything
in Fervour, but eventually the player will start encountering tougher
mobs. This is where "stance-dancing" comes in. When facing off against
tougher mobs, the Champion will want to have some kind of defense, and
Fervour stance is not conducive to defensive playing. While Ardour
stance does detract a bit from parry and evade ratings, it does not
altogether cancel them out like Fervour does, and block rating is
unchanged. Sword-and-board and Ardour stanceare fine tools to use
against tough mobs. And for the really hard fights, Glory-tanking
is the stuff of myth and legend - used in conjunction with
instant-fervour skills, self-heals and in-combat power regeneration,
Glory stance with a shield and 1-hander allows the Champion to solo
mobs that would otherwise take teams of players to beat. The nature of
the fight calls the steps of the stance-dance.

Working
out a skill rotation is fairly easy, due to the fervour-gating of the
more powerful attacks. At later levels, when some of the skills apply
bleeds regularly, it pays to work them into the rotation as early as
possible. For instance, Rend has an excellent damage-over-time bleed
that can be improved with legacies on legendary weapons, and costs very
few pips of fervour to activate. Starting with 2 basic attacks - Swift
Strike and Wild Strike - will generate enough fervour to unlock
Cleave/Rend, and the bleed-out begins.

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href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/champ/overview">OVERVIEW
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/champ/solo">SOLO
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/champ/group">GROUP
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/champ/pvmp">PvMP
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/champion/endgame">LEGENDARY
ITEMS | href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/90510/page/2">TRAITS
| VIRTUES
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/champ/skills">SKILLS

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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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