Thread: Champion's Walkthrough for BG

I have to preface this with saying that all the suggestions made in this post are from my personal experience, I know people have different opinions and different play styles, but the following guide is based on what has worked numerous times for myself and other champs that I have brought into BG with my raid. I have a new found interest in the forums, and would like to get information and helpful suggestions out there. It would be nice for this not to turn into a flame fest, if you have a differing opinion by all means voice it but let's try and keep it constructive and in a positive tone, no need for personal attacks. ./end dream for world peace.

So you have a 65 champ and you want to go to BG. What do you need?

1. As much radiance as you can get your heavy armoured paws on. Yes that means if you have to break up that amazing DN set bonus, do it There are 2 main roles that champs play in this instance, dps class and/or tanking class. Both of those favour max radiance, because once dread kicks in your dmg is going to be hampered and your max morale
will decrease as well as Inc heals. So everyone can get a minimum of 120, no excuse to have any less than that, if you can snag some DN pieces to get above that, even better.

2. A 2nd age is nice, a solid 3rd age is fine too.

3. A good rune that has ebbing ire and rising ire legacies - I
personally find this extremely helpful especially for tanking
purposes. I have a separate rune on my bar that I swap out for when I need to rise/ebb.

4. Traits: I usually retrait at least once in this instance, there is a bard inside once you kill Durchest. I will mention how I typically trait for each part.

Gauntlet:

This part is lots of fun for champs. Your main role here is
to embrace that aoe monster inside you. That means lots of sching schings and use your horn lots. Our group kills uruks, then wargs, then goblins in that order of priority. But regardless of what order your group is killing, just aoe off that target. Depending on group makeup you may be asked to be an off tank for when a 2nd Uruk pops up or if you have no tank, then you might be main tank. As far as stances go, I typically stay in fervour. If you are tanking an Uruk and low on health then pop into glory... again this depends on the
strength of your group, your champs survivability, and your healers. This instance is all about quick thinking and adapting to your situation, so you will need to react accordingly. Alright, you've made it through the gauntlet... sadly that's about the end of the aoe fun for champs.

Durchest

There are 2 roles you can take on for Durchest.
a. Tank: So you've been asked to tank durchest. Now there are a few different strategies for this fight as far as assistant method vs 2 tanks on either side. I do the 2 tank method where my champ is one of the tanks. Basically you will need to stand on one side of Durchest (to be determined by raid leader) and tank him when his agro turns to you. You should be in glory stance for this. Communicate with the other tank about your -perceived threat debuff.. if the other tank has
5 seconds left on his, force taunt Durchest so the other tank can clear his debuff and then allow you to clear yours. Otherwise, don't try to be a main tank and force taunt Durchest as this will mess up the agro debuff and you will both end up losing agro. If you find agro isn't going to you once Durchest turns away from the other tank, try rising ire off a healer or another dps class in your group. If you are
one of the main tanks, do not concern yourself with the adds, just stay on Durchest. Also use feral strikes if backup corruption removal is called out for.

b. single target dps role: So you don't need to tank Durchest, what now? Time to be a single target monster. This role is simple, hit durchest, when an add is up, hit the add. You can tank the add by using champs challenge but they should die so quickly it barely matters, just make sure your healers know to heal you if you plan on tanking them, I would stay in fervour personally, it should take very little time for a raid to burn through a 40k add.

Reminder: Use your defeat responses every time an add dies - after I have red haze/glorious exchange and blocking blades up I usually just pop second wind for the rest of the adds because power regen in glory is shady and I usually run out.

Traits: I stay traited the same for gauntlet and Durchest mainly because there is no bard to retrait and don't want to hold up the raid by mapping out (the bard appears once you have killed Durchest). I trait a mixture of 3 yellows, 3 reds, and 1 blue - bracing attack, the blue isn't really even necessary but if I'm tanking Durchest I usually pop bracing attack whenever it's up. I have never traited 5 blues to
tank Durchest, nor have I ever used a shield for this fight... I don't find it necessary. Granted your group has proper heals and the appropriate debuffs, the only reason a tank should die is if you get crit really hard, possibly twice in a row. Traiting martial champion gives you more oh **** skills and enhanced agro. Agro should not be a problem, apart from the perceived threat debuff which will not be helped by blue traits, and if you die from a crit it's too late to use invincible anyway... again traiting for this fight is up for debate, just saying I hate to hamper my dps when I personally do not find it necessary. Now if you have the minimal radiance (120ish) and are going to tank Durchest I would definitely recommend traiting 5 blues in hopes that the extra morale from glory will help if you get critted once dread kicks in. For legendaries, I usually use ferocious (for agro), raging (gauntlet and agro), controlled burn (use it at the end of durchest if I remember).

Trash from boss 1 to 2

Most of this is single target dps. Depending on how your raid pulls the room of zombies, you're best off focusing single target dps for these pulls. You might be asked to off tank some of the pulls with 2 armoured guys, pop into glory and your good to go- no need for a shield.

The twins

If I was only allowed to bring a champ to one fight in this instance, this would be the one. How many other classes can literally move threat around the way we can. I think champs are extremely beneficial for this fight. Again group makeup will determine who you rise and ebb too. But basically, you will be hitting Morgaraf. You can start off grabbing agro. Smack him around, once the dot on your bar gets to 800ish, you need to either ebb to another melée class, or if you have a guard have them challenge off you. Then you leave Morgarafs aura,
wait till your dot expires and back in you go. Having a rune with rising ire and ebbing ire CD is nice here. Once you're back in on Morgaraf rise off whoever has agro, use some ferocious strikes and he should go back to you. Then wait till your dot is at 800 and back out you go again. Use feral strikes to help out with corruptions when necessary. Make sure to use power pots liberally as Morgarafs aura effects your power cost. I stay in fervour/controlled burn for the entirety of this fight. If you are standing away from Morg and letting your dot cooldown you can always drop fervour to be a bit less of a
pain to heal, but glory should not be necessary, and shield is most definitely not necessary. Morgarafs attacks are tactical, so b/p/e will not help you out in this fight. Embrace the fervour

Traiting for twins: Single target, at least 4 reds, ferocious/
controlled burn/ raging blades, I also slot tolerance as a virtue for the added tact defense.

Trash to lieutenant

Basically all single target dps. Again there are more wight pulls at the top of the tower which are a lot of fun, make sure to keep moving and sching sching to your hearts content (your bane flaring lms will be sure to love this). You may also be called on to tank some of the two armoured pulls, again pop into glory, make sure your getting heals and you should be fine. If necessary use sprint and kite the mob while your group kills the other one - I personally love to play ring-around-the-rosie around the fountains with a flame axe.

Traits: I stay traited single target for trash pulls so no need to retrait after twins.

The Lieutenant

Again you can take on two roles in this fight, dps or tank.
1. dps- Stay single target traited in fervour.
Phase 1: make sure you have stun immunity while you are chasing the fell beast, if he stops and starts chomping on you (even if you have stun immunity) make sure to get away as he can chomp for 2k 3x in a row rather quickly. I suppose the lieutenant doesn't feed him much.

Phase 2 easy mode: if you are going to continue to dps that bird make SURE you have stun immunity before you go anywhere near it and when the bird stops just continue running and get out of melée range. If you don't have stun immunity wait till you get it, ask your lm, or just dps the lieutenant as it is far too easy for that bird to stop, stun, and chomp chomp chomp. Once bird is down, go to lieutenant. Use skills only in blue or red corruption, auto attack in yellow
corruption as this increases power costs of your skills.

Phase 2 hard mode: Go straight to the lieutenant. You are going to have a hell of a time with power. So take power pots everytime they're up, dps only in blue and red corruption as mentioned above. My favorite is a brutal strikes + clobber combo. I don't use relentless much in this fight simply because it's power hungry and if you miss (which you will do with the insane dread in this fight) you've just wasted all that power. With a brutal clobber combo you get 5 hits for
the same pip cost, and you shouldn't miss 5 hits in a row

Traiting for LT dps role: single target, stay in fervour for the pip regen... Don't waste power on building up pips much because you'll be out before you know it, let them build up with fervour and then use brutal+clobber combo.

Tanking lieutenant: I have tanked this on my champ. You need a fair amount of radiance to tank this, as dread gets to 250 for hard mode. I have 175, but I would say you'd be fine with 150+. Phase 1 is same as previously mentioned, chase the bird and dps in fervour. Once phase 2 hits, I put on a shield, get in glory, make sure I have shield brother. When lieutenant dismounts, I select him, hit raging blades as
soon as he goes red, hit battle frenzy and ferocious if he's not yet on me and then drag him to our tanking spot. At this point you are going to hold agro, not through epic dps (sadly) but through stealing everyone else's agro (rising ire). I have a 10second rising ire rune so everytime it's up, use it. I rise off everyone in my group moreso healers at first and then dps as they start to go harder. Ask for song of aid and/or call to greatness to get your red haze/blocking blades/glorious exchange off - it all helps. After I've risen a good 5-6
times... so one minute... it's usually ok for the other dps classes to let loose. If someone does happen to pull agro just use champs challenge and keep rising ire. The hardest the LT has ever hit me is 4k, so he hits weaker than Durchest. It's just a matter of making sure you aren't stuck in the -Inc heals corruption for too long.

Traiting; this is the only time I'll trait down martial champion line. I trait 5 deep, and put in ferocious/raging/invincible. Even though the LT doesn't actually hit as hard as for example, Durchest. There is no point traiting single target DPS as you are sadly not going to be able to take advantage of it. And having invincible is nice if your blue corruption is too high, or you need to reset sprint - which is useful for bird kiting. If you try to kite the Lt you will notice that he often puts hounding fear on you which can be problematic if you have a bird on your tail. That's why I save sprint for these occasions. You will also notice if you are kiting the Lt he may heal a bit - don't panic, once your yellow eye is gone and you are back to
your tanking spot he will stop healing. that's basically it, the LT is a long fight so keep drinking those blue pots and green pots to help out your healers and you should be fine.

And there you have it. Questions/other suggestions and ideas are helpful. It's argued that champs were really snubbed in this instance, but I think if you are willing to play some different roles a champ can be a vital class to take into this instance. Enjoy

Awesome, thanks man! All great info here!!! Havent quite gotten to the LT yet, everything up to there though. All of this is identical basically to what I do, and I have lots of fun doing it!!!

Looks pretty good, man. As you said, each group/champ may have slightly different tactics/builds/whatever, but your guide looks pretty good.

The only thing I'd add is for Champs to start Durchest in Controlled Burn, so two of your defeat responses are already up and you can save time and pips not having to hit Flurry every 30s. Of course, this all is assuming that CB works properly and AF and GE don't randomly drop off, which has been happening to Champs from time to time.

Originally Posted by Lestache

Looks pretty good, man. As you said, each group/champ may have slightly different tactics/builds/whatever, but your guide looks pretty good.

The only thing I'd add is for Champs to start Durchest in Controlled Burn, so two of your defeat responses are already up and you can save time and pips not having to hit Flurry every 30s. Of course, this all is assuming that CB works properly and AF and GE don't randomly drop off, which has been happening to Champs from time to time.

This reminds me of an important warning:
Be careful popping CB if you are Martial Champ traited and tanking. You will LOSE the 750 Morale. Which personally I think is worse than just staying in Glory and using the add deaths to get up your kill responses. You'll usually get the chance to use two with the Martial bonus anyway. I usually have all 3 (Blade, Exchange, Haze) up after two adds, which coincidentally is when Durchest starts hitting noticeably harder.

However, like you say, using it at the start when 750 morale isn't important is also a good idea. Just don't instinctively pop CB near the end of the fight when you're getting hit hard and want your cap higher.

Granted I've only done up to Durchest, I do everything up to him rather differently. In the gauntlet, I go ardour, that way I dont have to pop flurry every 30 seconds and dont get everyone mad at me for taking an uruk, as my kin doesnt like killing the uruks till there's nothing left. We run with 2 guards, so one takes each uruk. We kill wargs, than goblins, than uruks.

When we get to Durchest, we use a 4 person tanking technique. A guard, me, and a captain jump in front of him and get his full -220% threat debuff, then the second guard comes in and keeps the now secure aggro. additionally, the cleave is spread through all four targets in front of him, so you get less spike damage. But thats just how my kin does it. It works rather well, we're not super experienced, but on our first official all kin run, we only had one death on Durchest. I cant complain about that.

Fair enough, I suppose I should put out the disclaimer that my play style and general style of my raid is quite aggressive. I tried to give a few different options as far as popping into glory for uruks and such if you're taking it a bit slower, or have less heals etc. I never ever use ardour, but I'll save that debate for another thread lol.

And thanks for adding in about assistant tank method, I've always done tank swap. Do you go glory when you're standing in front of him?

Ardour isn't the devil most people make it out to be, but like you said, its not the topic of this discussion.

In the assist target method, I will pop into glory for the crit defence, and a heavy shield is nice also if you're as squishy as I am (I still dont have an anvil or fully ranked innocence, not because I havent been trying though). I can handle him without a shield if I dont get aggro, but sometimes we dont align ourselves properly in a corner and so when he punts, aggro debuff gets mixed around. This hasnt happened in a few weeks as we got placement right, but a shield still helps heals and crit defence and such. I honestly just spam feral strikes and relentless while feral is on cooldown. Allows other classes to stay on dps, as I wont be doing as much while in glory anyways.

<3

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Originally Posted by instarnost

Ardour isn't the devil most people make it out to be, but like you said, its not the topic of this discussion.

if he is not the devil, he is the devil's assistant