Thread: Stance?

I've been playing with my champ for about 3 months now (casual player) and I've never really asked people about information about their champs and their preference to certain things, but now that I'm understanding the different mechanics about a champ (I love my champ btw, best class out there bar none) what stance should I be running in?

Honestly I always prefer to run in Ardour, I don't know why but the thing I dislike about Fervour is the lack to block/parry/evade. I know champs need to kill first hence the added melee damage in that stance and the faster pip gen, but I find myself usually engaging multiple mobs. Ardour provides a rather quick pip gen (I have Stalwart Blade traited) and it allows me to block/parry/evade, which is useful many times against 3+ mobs. So what stance do you guys prefer and why?

Fervour, Fervour, and Fervour. Those are our three stances, right?

Seriously though, get to know and love Fervour. The only time you'll want to run any end game content in anything except Fervour is Glory when you're asked to tank a raid.

Yes, not being able to parry and evade sucks, but if you only run Fervour now, you won't have anything to adjust to when you get to the end game. Just be glad you don't have the -30% incoming healing penalty in Fervour any more though!

Leveling a Champ is very gear dependent, more so then the other classes I've leveled in my experience. Having the best weapon/armour/jewellery for your level will make things melt like butter, but the weapon is definitely the most important.

You should be able to take on multiple mobs without much of an issue. Don't forget to use your horn early and often, when all the mobs are stunned for 3 seconds, they're not damaging you and they can't BPE your attacks either.

Good luck out there, enjoy shredding things to pieces!

Fervour is your go to stance for 6-mans and raids if that's your thing, no doubt. If you're DPS traited there's going to be a tank, and it's not you. Your job is to burn stuff down and burn it fast, the 20% damage buff and -20% attack durations are simply to good to ignore. As you're rarely taking the hits lack of P/E is a non-issue, you also get to smile at other classes actually worrying about enemy finesse as it never really mattered to us. So, if you're DPS and not the tank you want to be running fervour.

However, I'm going to go against the grain and say Ardour is a very worthwhile stance in some circumstances, that specifically being you're dealing with multiple, weaker mobs at once, such as attacking an enemy camp on the landscape or running a skirm solo. Or, in smaller groups of 2 or 3 - when you're there to both deal the damage and take it too. This is why I like to run 5y2r unless I know there's going to be a tank:

1. Stance swap/runes
I saved my 65SA and loaded it up with Ardour friendly legacies, maxxing out these legacies is a lot less work than a 75SA (my DPS rune), basically I have an Ardour specific rune for almost no effort. I can switch back to fervour and my full on DPS rune in combat with two key presses (or clicks if that's your preferred control method). Basically, if you want to appreciate Ardour you're going to need a rune for it. If you don't want to bother trait 4r3y, pop Fervour and never look back. If you're still reading this wall of text then these are my preferred legacies:

Ardour/Glory Pip Gen - Now you have a pip every 5 secs in combat.
Ardour/Glory Parry/Evade - You're partly using Ardour to deal better with incoming damage, this is a nice buff.
Swift Strike/Blade Power - this is absolutely essential to keep Swift Blade from eating all your power.
*If you get a 4th major make it blade line power saving, but given the -15% power on the stance it's not essential.

Ardour/Glory Power Gen - now your ICPR is getting up there with Fervour. Champ's DPS lives on ICPR.
Battle Acuity - You've built for AoE DPS and this will bring The Buff to 25secs. If you do let it drop you can be sure it'll be off cooldown if you need it.

2. Pip gen
AoE needs power and pips to be effective. -15% blade line power speaks for itself. In Ardour, with Stalwart blade each use of BW will deliver 2 pips, one for activating the skill, another for managing to hit something. Swift to anger will upgrade Swift Strike to swift blade, this is another AoE, with another pip, and a 2nd pip if you crit on any target. You'll also get a pip for every defeat, which if you're burning down trash mobs is significant. This, along with the Ardour/Glory pip gen legacy will actually have fervour pips coming in significantly faster than Fervour stance (even 4r traited) which means you can run a nice tight AoE rotation around Raging and Bladestorm. In full flow you should be hitting both of these around about them coming off cooldown, with pip(s) spare for rend or Bracing.

3. Flurry/attack damage.
Trait flurry. In Ardour it's 2 pips every 55secs for -20% attack speed, it's not a big deal to keep this up. Buffbars is a very nice visual aid. You now 'only' have +15% on AoE strikes rather than +20%, but I find the increased pip gen and Deathstorm more then cover the gap. This is a trash burning stance, if you use a strikes skill like Brutal it will be at 20% less damage, but you should only be using that as a finisher anyway in Ardour.

4. Parry/Evade.
On top of being able to pop Bracing more often in Ardour on my Champ I run at c. 12% parry, 10% evade which out of Fervour stance actually means something. Presuming I can keep mobs in my frontal arc (which I'm doing anyway for BW) that's 22% of physical hits negated before they even hit my physmit (60%ish). The damage reduction is significant, and if there's no tank, trust me, the healer will notice. If you're running with no healer, well, everyone will notice.

5. Deathstorm (or, sigh, Improved Great Cleave)
15 secs of all AoE skills costing 0 fervour every 90 secs. Sure you need 5 pips to pop it, but you already have Frenzy traited right? 60 second cooldown and we're in a power saving stance - sooo that's a guaranteed: all AoE skills having their cooldowns reset and costing 0 fervour for 15 secs every minute and a half. That kinda puts Seeking Blades in perspective as buffs go; all of a sudden you've acquired the AoE burst damage of a red-traited LM but with a quarter of the wait between bursts.*

*That, with help from Challenge, is plenty enough aggro to keep stuff off the squishies too, remember I'm thinking they designed Ardour as a 'no tank' stance for 3-mans or smaller.

6. Big Stuff
Elite or better, no adds? Switch back to fervour, it's ST time - +20% on strikes is now worth trading P/E for, use bubbles instead. Heroics and Dire Need will more likely be off cooldown because you didn't need them thanks to P/E and the extra pips to use Bracing when it's up. You've got Flurry, so you're set on attack speed. You'll loose some DPS for slightly reduced passive pip gen (amounting to a missing pip every 20secs, hardly an insurmountable loss), and the missing buffs on Wild Attack (3r trait bonus) and strikes line (viscous, deadly strikes). That's why I like Controlled Fury for my second red trait as Controlled Burn will help you toward the difference in ST damage.

If there is adds then stance dance between Ardour and Fervour to get the best of both worlds - ardour to burn everything down, fervour when it's just you and the big bad.

Fervour is my default. It is the best stance for dps in groups and for general mob killing. I will switch to Glory for tanking or for fighting a more difficult solo challenge (not that I'm much of a solo challenge guy, but it's nice for soloing Stoneheight, for instance).

I can't say I have really used Ardour much. To get its best benefits, you need to slot 5 yellow traits, but I usually have 4 red for the big dps boost in Fervour or 5 blue for tanking.

Without the right traits, Ardour doesn't offer much that Glory already does better, while Glory gives you better defenses.

Maybe Ardour is good while leveling, but for me that ship has passed.

Originally Posted by dietlbomb

I can't say I have really used Ardour much. To get its best benefits, you need to slot 5 yellow traits, but I usually have 4 red for the big dps boost in Fervour or 5 blue for tanking.

Without the right traits, Ardour doesn't offer much that Glory already does better, while Glory gives you better defenses.

That's really the issue: Ardour is inferior to Fervour for damage and Glory for tanking and is pretty lackluster for AoE if not traited heavy into yellow. It does have its place, but it is a small and narrow place without much of a view.

Traited 5 for Ardour and i can take on mobs of 5-6 at level 75 without dying on landscape its easy, even in raids and instances against trash mobs it works better than fervour. Traited properly with the right LIs and ardour will never run out of power or pips.

Originally Posted by BrynleyDK

Traited 5 for Ardour and i can take on mobs of 5-6 at level 75 without dying on landscape its easy, even in raids and instances against trash mobs it works better than fervour. Traited properly with the right LIs and ardour will never run out of power or pips.

Thing is though, I can take on that many mobs in fervour without dying easily...

only difference is instead of mostly single target on a mob so one dies faster you'll be AoEing more so they're all be more closer around the same health.

Stick with Fervour and learn how to fight in that stance. To make Fervour the complete awesome sauce that it is, slotting Flurry of Blows is a must. If you haven't traited flurry yet, keep hitting it every chance you get to finish off that class deed.

The first thing I do when I log on my champ is to hit the fervor button - there are only 2 reasons I would ever hit ardour or glory if I am tanking or if I am grinding loot boxes.

Glory is all powerful for soloing if you tank spec, there is really very little in the game that can kill you when you trait glory and have the right legendary items.

I only use ardour for grinding loot boxes when I plan on fighting 10+ mobs at all times, the extra aoe and pip gen from always having red haze is pretty solid and you have evade and parry to negate some damage - combining CB with traited flurry is essential.

I think there's something to be said for a Glory build with a yellow trait or two for leveling up. I rolled my Champ for the AoE, and I've found that Glory allows me to pull more mobs than Fervour does, while also giving a nice cushion of survivability to any landscape questing. It does require traiting to be really effective though, and the play style won't be for everyone.