Isengard Champion: Glory

[Roatrux]

Glory

Glory is the main tanking stance. The damage reduction has been removed and replaced with the dependency on more survival-based skills. We also moved a lot of the threat generation into skill plays while in Fervour and, as such, the Champion will need to focus on this as a way to hold aggro in combat. To help the Glory Champion along Glory will continue to do the following: increase critical defense and power regeneration and also keep fervour generation at a modest level. Enhancements include: a reduction in the cooldown for Adamant/Invincible, Hedge and Bracing Attack.

The baseline enhancements listed above are the new bread and butter of Glory. There are other important alterations that the skill will make as well. Rising Ire will no longer be a trained skill; instead, Ebbing Ire while in Glory stance will become Rising Ire. Several other skills have been identified as “Glory” skills and moved into the Never Falter category of the skill panel.

Sudden Defence: This skill has been revised significantly. Instead of offering a bonus to parry and evade (useless to the Fervour Champion), the skill now provides a damage absorbing bubble to the Champion. This bubble increases in strength with every Fervour pip that the Champion currently has built up. The morale bubble lasts until removed or 15 seconds expire, whichever happens first.

Hedge: Damage on hedge is still incredibly low; the skill has been improved however. While it does now allow parry it does not increase parry; instead it increases the Champion’s Armour Value. This value is increased when the Champion is in Glory stance. It will still allow the Champion to avoid disarms and remove the disarmed effect. It will simply become a more permanent part of the Glory rotation.

Glory – Traits

Traits in the Martial Champion line will focus on increasing the Champion’s ability to be an effective tank and the trait set has been altered to augment the ability of the Champion tank.

Let’s highlight the changes to traits in the Martial Champion line. Only the changes are discussed in this section.

Call of the Wild: Generates more threat and on each use reduces the cooldown of the skill Sudden Defence by 5 seconds. This should allow the Martial Champion to keep Sudden Defence up more reliably over the course of a fight. Of course, it will force them into using the Wild Attack skill in place of other skills.

At the Ready: Skill executions that deal damage to a target will reduce the cooldown of both Rising Ire and Ebbing Ire by 2 seconds. This allows the Champion to have access to a primary threat building skill more often while in Glory stance; it also allows a Champion concerned about garnering too much attention to choose this as an off-trait.

Reprisal: Formerly called Patience, Reprisal causes Exchange of Blows to execute the retaliation damage more often. When in Glory Stance, Exchange of Blows will also generate more threat, activate upon entering Glory and potentially generate a Fervour Pip each time you are hit.

Braced Against Defeat: Each execution of the skill Bracing Attack will provide additional morale and apply a 15% bonus to incoming healing for 10 seconds. Time of Need: Dire Need and Improved Dire Need now adds 5 fervour pips and has its cooldown lowered by 5 minutes.

Time of Need: Dire Need and Improved Dire Need now adds 5 fervour pips and has its cooldown lowered by 5 minutes.

Vigour of Champions: Second Wind now restores more power every 2/seconds for 10 seconds. Before you get all upset, Second Wind has undergone a transition and this is actually a nice boost to the new baseline skill.

Tight Grip: Tight Grip increases the duration of Hedge buff benefits by 5 seconds and decreases the cooldown of the Hedge skill by 50% in all stances.

Aggressive Exchange: This trait was previously called Heavy Shield Use. As the Champion no longer uses a shield, the trait now modifies Blade-wall so that it generates increased threat when used.

Glory – Trait-set

The capstone for glory is unchanged; you still get Invincible to overwrite Adamant. The two-set bonus provides the Champion with an increased amount of critical defence while in Glory Stance and increases the amount of threat generated by Champion’s Challenge. The three-set bonus reduces the amount of fervour required to use Bracing Attack by 3 pips and further increases the Critical Defence offered by the Glory Stance. The four-set bonus increases the Champion’s morale and increases their Critical Defence while in Glory stance.

Glory – Conclusion

Now, there are a host of other skills that are included in this Champion update, but these are the primary skills altered by the Glory Stance and the Martial Champion trait-line.