Thread: a question...

Hi, So i have a lvl 22 champ, and it feels (champ is supposed to be a secondery tank right?) like my champ is squishy,,,
any ideas?

Originally Posted by Thaegir

Hi, So i have a lvl 22 champ, and it feels (champ is supposed to be a secondery tank right?) like my champ is squishy,,,
any ideas?

It will, for a while. Invest in some good crafted gear for your level and tough it out until you pick up some of the nice armor sets from Aughaire or Echad Candelleth. Then you should be less squishy.

I had crafted weapons up to about 40, but not other gear. So just killing faster helps. There aren't many people left that view champs as even secondary tanks anymore.

My baby champ is only 38 but I feel that way as well.
In Fervour stance, there is no block/Evade/Parry, so you always take the full force of hits.
When I'm main healer in a group, I always watch the champ closely, and keep a couple proactive Heals on them, cause if they get aggro, they drop like a rock.

Originally Posted by msbunglexx

I had crafted weapons up to about 40, but not other gear. So just killing faster helps. There aren't many people left that view champs as even secondary tanks anymore.

That's because most Champs don't know how to turn off Fervour.

A smart Champ who knows how and when to swap to Glory is a powerful player. Champs really only drop like rocks when they get multiple mobs on them anyway, which happens due to excessive AoEing and insufficient Ebbing Ires.

Rather than think.. I will just copy and paste the same answer to the same question that is in another thread made within the last few days:

Originally Posted by me

As has been mentioned, champs are not really the heavy armor class they appear to be. Originally we only had the Penalty of no Block Parry or evade. This made it a little tough, but the heavy armor made up for it. And it is kinda freeing not to have to worry about keeping mobs in front of you. You can stand anywhere and jump off cliffs.. Nothing matters cause you have no BPE anyway!

Then Turbine added a Fervour Healing penalty of -30% healing in the spring of 2009, if i recall correctly. This basically steals 30% of almost all our healing. Hurts a good bit solo, and is really painful in groups.

This basically turned us into a squishy, light armor class. We can take less damage than hunters and burgs and are about equal with RK' and Minstrels in our ability to survive damage.(Not saying our mitigations are worse, just that the No BPE and -30% healing means we will be about as difficult to keep alive as a light armor class)

I never leveled a champion in this new environment, so I can only imagine the pain.. Luckily they increased pots effectiveness in the latest update.. so it should be better now.

To counter this weakness, I feel its important to max out Melee Defence and Incomming healing. Incomming healing is hard to cap until you get to legendary items. The rune has Incomming helaing and you can put relics in them to add more. This gets you back to -15% incomming healing before you add in Cap buffs. Of course.. we already had that before the nerf so we still lost 30% healing, but it is better than not stacking it.

For Melee defence you will want to use Innocence and Discipline and maybe even Zeal to get as much as you can. You will also want to use a pocket item with it. At higher levels you can get Legendaries with relics for melee defence on them and might be able to remove zeal.

Other Virtues to focus on would be things like Fidelity for Shadow mit, and Tolerance for Tactical Defence. No virtues really add much to DPS so i tend to use them to fill the hole we have in defence.

In the end, we are weak on defence and will die fast. The solution is to kill the mobs even faster. Max out melee Crit, Melee offence, devastate magnitude, fervour pips. Do anything you can to increase your DPS and kill the mobs before you die. OPening a multi mob engagement with sound the attack can help. This will stun them all for a few seconds and will stop the incomming damage at the worst point int he fight (before any mobs have died).

Good luck.

Originally Posted by msbunglexx

I had crafted weapons up to about 40, but not other gear. So just killing faster helps. There aren't many people left that view champs as even secondary tanks anymore.

Completely untrue, in my experience. Champs need more attention from healers, but even in Fervour you can cut the healing penalty to -15% with the help of legendary items (doesn't help the OP, but...), -10% if you're Man. With high melee defense and good gear (gear-dependence is a fact of life for champs), that makes a perfect off-tank, and survivability is better still in Glory.

Originally Posted by Feybobiam

That's because most Champs don't know how to turn off Fervour.

Exactly. These are bad champs with no concept of aggro management. Fervour is great for dps, but that's all it's for. A champ that runs around shing-shinging all over the place has to either be prepared to take the aggro or be able to ebb it off. Controlling aggro and switching stances to make the most of your suvivability is what sets good champs apart from the button-mashers. Ardour still sucks.

Originally Posted by Feybobiam

That's because most Champs don't know how to turn off Fervour.

A smart Champ who knows how and when to swap to Glory is a powerful player. Champs really only drop like rocks when they get multiple mobs on them anyway, which happens due to excessive AoEing and insufficient Ebbing Ires.

Truth...

That is exactly what I've been doing lately, anytime I aggro like that I will Ebb Ire and switch into glory until I get healed up and the aggro situation is under control. Usually if you have a good tank it won't take more than 10-15 seconds for the situation to get under control and then you can pop Fervour back up and be going to town again. And really if you are getting hit bad you can switch to sword and board for a few so you can get a little extra protection.

To the OP - for a toon at your level I would go get a light shield and a 1h weapon to use for those times and just make sure to switch to Glory when you get the skill.

Originally Posted by mnenoch

Truth...

That is exactly what I've been doing lately, anytime I aggro like that I will Ebb Ire and switch into glory until I get healed up and the aggro situation is under control. Usually if you have a good tank it won't take more than 10-15 seconds for the situation to get under control and then you can pop Fervour back up and be going to town again. And really if you are getting hit bad you can switch to sword and board for a few so you can get a little extra protection.

To the OP - for a toon at your level I would go get a light shield and a 1h weapon to use for those times and just make sure to switch to Glory when you get the skill.

I always Ebb in advance. Saves you the trouble of having to turn yourself down to Glory. It takes time to find the 'perfect' time to Ebb, and I still don't always get it right, but if you Ebb too early you don't transfer enough threat, and if you Ebb too late you end up taking too much heat.

And to the OP, I would rather just be more careful with your pulls and look into getting heavy armour. YOu should've just picked up the heavy armour proficiency skill at level 20, so you don't have a lot of heavy armour yet most likely. I'd look into getting your hands on some somehow. Shields are nice and I definitely carry my Heavy Shield with me (you'll get it at level 30, don't worry) and endgame, but shielding really shouldn't be a concern when levelling up.