Lord of the Rings Online Champions - The Ins And Outs(Part One)
Champions are perhaps the best soloing class in Middle-Earth. The fact that they can wear heavy armor, as well as dishing heavy damage often causes those who have not played the class to have a bit of class envy towards them. Champions can fill in as a tank if no guardian is available, though doing so will make them forfeit most of their damage dealing capabilities. It is always preferable to have a guardian as a main tank because they have more hit points, better taunting ability and can dish more damage than a champion who is in tanking mode. However, it is the ability to serve in multiple roles if need be that make a champion desirable in group play. If your main tank should go down, the champion can switch to a shield and one handed configuration, turn off their fervour generation and fill in for them. They are best suited for their role as a DPS (Damage Per Second) class, however.
Fervour
Fervour is unique to champions. It is a reflecting of how much rage you have accumulated in any given fight. It is gained in two ways, the first is by using certain abilities such as Wild Attack and Swift Strike. These abilities will generate Fervour when used. The other way is via your offensive stance, which should be toggled on for most of your Champions career. Any time that you are not tanking this should be on. It will cause you to automatically accumulate fervour and to regenerate power more quickly, but causes you to forfeit your ability to Evade, Block or Parry. Most of your other special attacks or abilities have a fervour cost associated with them. This causes the champion to make some choices in combat, should they choose to use a triple attack at the cost of three fervour, or build their fervour to a full five points in case they need to use an area effect stun? These sort of decisions are what makes playing a champion an enjoyable experience.
The Area Effect
Champions are arguably the best class in the game when it comes to dealing Area of Effect (AOE) damage. They have a variety of differnet attacks from the level 1 Blade-Wall to damage dealing attacks such as Blade-Storm or stunning attacks such as Sound the Attack. Champions also obtain horns at level 20, which will do an area of effect stun, but have a 15 minute reuse delay. The number of monsters which can be stunned varies by the quality of the horn used.
Dual Wielding or the Big Bang?
Champions can dual wield from level one onward, but can also train themselves in the use of two handed weapons. There are pros and cons to each. The main advantage of a two hander is that your special attacks will do much greater damage. As a champion myself, I let the gear dictate which of the two I will use at any given time. A good two hander will outdamage two pretty good one handers. But generally I prefer to dual wield because you attack faster and in general it seems that you deal more damage. When tanking a spear makes a reliable weapon because they have a higher damage than most other one handers, as they cannot be dual wielded. This makes them ideal if you need to go into a shield + one handed tank role.lotro.
Another thing that deserves mention here is the use of daggers. There are many daggers that have a high DPS available in the game, but their use as a primary hand weapon has a trade off. They are very fast, but their damage is low. This means that your special attacks will do less damage, but you will attack quicker. When dual wielding daggers I have found power to be an issue. You will often run out of power before the end of a fight.