Isengard Champion: Fervour

[Roatrux]

Fervour

The biggest change in the Fervour stance is our removal of the healing penalty during our testing. Whether or not that makes it to the live ship of Isengard remains to be seen, mostly because I missed the real penalty on three separate occasions. “For the love of…!” cry the Guardians and Wardens. There is a change, subtle and true, that should make the Fervour Champion incapable of being a viable tank -- threat generation.

Many skills that once had bonus threat applied when used have been moved to only generate that bonus threat while in the Glory stance. This should make it more difficult for the Fervour Champion to hold enough threat when grouped with other Champions and high DPS classes.

Baseline Fervour now looks like this: You cannot parry or evade, your power regeneration is increased, your fervour generation is increased, melee damage is increased and, lastly, Merciful Strike undergoes a massive transformation.

Fervour – Skills

Some of the skills belonging to the Toe to Toe section of the character panel have been altered. These are the changes.

Merciful Strike: While in Fervour stance, Merciful Strike will now consume all fervour the Champion has, dealing an increased amount of damage for each pip of fervour consumed. After 1 second, 3 fervour will be restored to the Champion. This turns Merciful strike into an effective finishing skill. The damage is not so high that it outweighs other marquee skills and the power consumption is still pretty high, but this feels more like a real finisher than it has in the past.

Blood Rage: The non-legendary version of the skill now only costs 10% of your morale to activate.

Red Haze: This is no longer a combat permanent skill. Instead the skill has been altered to add a fervour pip every 15 seconds for 45 seconds and provides you with the initial fervour pip on use. The cooldown is 5 seconds.

Fervour – Traits

As with the previous two outlines stances have been altered and the alterations are listed here.

Controlled Fury: This trait was moved from Martial Champion and now increases the duration of Controlled Burn by 30 seconds.

Flurry of Blows: This will now increase the duration of Flurry when not in Fervour stance. When in the Fervour stance Flurry becomes permanent and activated when entering the stance. This effect is not removed until you leave the Fervour stance.

Athletic: The cooldown of your sprint skill is lowered by 120 seconds and your Wild Attack will now enable you to stun your enemy on a successful hit for the 10 seconds after activating Sprint. The ability to stun is removed upon a successful strike, but the increased movement speed remains.

Fervour – Trait-set

There is a major change here and that change is to the capstone. Continuous Blood Rage now costs 10% of your Morale to enable. You will no longer suffer a 90% penalty to incoming healing. Instead, the taxing nature of the ability places a DoT on the caster that becomes more potent as the damage increases. This damage starts out low and increases by 20% for every 2% of bonus damage earned through the skill. Being low on morale will not disable the effect. Use at your own risk.

The two-set bonus adds a 40% critical multiplier to the second and third attacks from Brutal Strikes and to the second attack on Savage Strikes. The three-set bonus increases the critical rating of Wild Attack and also increases the critical multiplier of Wild Attack. The four-set bonus increases the amount of Fervour generated in Fervour stance, increases the damage output of Merciful Strike and reduces the cooldown of Merciful Strike by 10 seconds.

Fervour – Conclusion

In testing, it appears that the Fervour stance has reclaimed the title of top dog for sustained DPS. Of course, being in the mix is a dangerous endeavour.