Morlag of Landroval asks:
Why are champs in glory, with a shield and heavy armor, still so much squishier than guards? Is it the guard reactives or some other mechanic I’m missing?
Excellent question, Morlag! The simple answer is that champs have to be squishier than guards otherwise no one would ever need to play a guardian… However, I’m going to give you a closer look at why, from a stats and mechanics standpoint, this is so.
Stat Possibility Differences
Critical Defense
Guardians get a passive bonus of 5% (given in rating form that scales with the Guardian’s Level) to critical defense. In addition to this, Guardian’s can gain another 2% if they trait Heart of Fire (capstone to the Fighter of Shadow trait-line)
Champions get no passive to critical defense, however they do get 3% (given in scaling rating) critical defense when using their Glory stance.
Assuming that gear and relics are the same, so far as critical defense is concerned, a Guardian will have between 2 and 4% more critical defense than a champion.
Let’s take a quick look at what a 2-4% difference in critical defense can mean…
It’s worth noting that, unlike players, monsters do not have a cap on their critical chance. However, for sake of this discussion, let’s assume that the average monster has a 15% critical chance. We are also going to assume 5% critical defense from a heavy shield (generally within .2%).
A Guardian will have between 10-12% critical defense, leaving the monster at an effective critical chance of 3-5%.
A Champion in Glory will have 8% critical defense, leaving the monster with and effective critical chance of 7%.
In this scenario, a champion is 1.5 to 2 times more likely to take a critical hit than a guardian.
Max Morale
Guardians receive 5 morale per every point of vitality while champions receive only 3. Assuming both are at the cap of 650 vitality, that’s a difference of 1300 morale!
But wait… champions receive +750 morale when in glory stance if they are slotted at least 4 deep into the Martial Champion trait-line. This still leaves a difference of 550 morale (before buff multiplications), disregarding race/class base stats and build variances.
Stance and Skill Specialization
Guardian’s have stances that allow them to get either their block OR their parry as high as 20% (busting the otherwise 15% cap) champions cannot do this and so, in general will not be able to avoid as much damage as a guardian.
Guardian survival skills such as: Guardian’s Pledge, Warrior’s Heart and Deep Breath have much shorter cooldowns, less drawbacks and more potent benefits than champion survival skills such as: Adamant, Sudden Defense, and Dire Need.
Conclusion
The difference in mechanical ability of a champion to survive in a tanking role vs. that of a guardian is a sum of a lot of small pieces which in the end are noticeably significant. Do not let all of this discourage you from tanking with a champion as it is very feasible in most situations, but will require more work from healing and support classes. However if you enjoy tanking, in the long run it’ll be worth your while to play a guardian.
This article is part of the “Ask Elborigorn” series, where I encourage CSTM readers to send questions to me at: elborigorn@casualstrolltomordor.com . I then will answer the question either with an entire article or as part of a multi-question weekly article.
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April 29, 2011 at 10:50 am
Great post!
I am sort of interested in these kinds of comparisons. How would a Champ compare to, say, a sword-and-board Captain trying to fill in for a Guardian?
April 29, 2011 at 11:35 am
From my personnal experience (as a captain), Captain are even less suited as tanks then guardians. But, it might be that as the captain, I’m traited in healing (and I’m our group main healer), so when I’m tanking I don’t get healed much…
Also, Captain can’t equip a Heavy Shield.
April 29, 2011 at 11:35 am
I wanted to say “Less suited than Champions”!!.
April 29, 2011 at 1:00 pm
I can speak to this a bit. Captains have very little “extra” mitigations, even less so then a champ. Also we are not able to use a heavy shield which hurts quite a bit. We have 1 skill that increased AR but not enough to make a difference. Most of the healing skills take moral to use, and our ability to self heal is very limited. I would say that a captains ability to self heal is 1/10th of it’s ability to heal others.
Captains are fantastic for kiting though lol.
April 29, 2011 at 1:09 pm
Seems to match my experience. The lack of self-healing HURTS. But with a good main healer, is that as much of an issue?
Actually, about the kiting, I ran an ill-fated skirmish at Gondamon where we had four people in a full fellowship skirmish. And then one of them dropped. O_O So, I found myself tanking one of those enormous ogre guys, who was dropping me in like two hits, even with full-on healing from the Minstrel, and my Last Stand didn’t go long enough for us to drop him.
So, instead, I just started kiting him with Noble Mark, running in circles firing off Battle-Shout at him. It actually worked! I kept aggro the whole time, until we finally dropped him.
Of course, the next wave of encounters slaughtered us all and failed the skirmish… but, hey! The kiting worked!
April 29, 2011 at 11:08 am
Hi…
Can u also try to comprae this with the warden???
It would be great to have all 3 classes compared…
April 29, 2011 at 12:31 pm
Agreed.
April 29, 2011 at 3:02 pm
I could do a comparison on warden as well sure… although I can tell you that will need to be alot more in-depth since the self-heal capabilities of a warden are a large portion of their advantage. I’ll add it to my to-do list though.
April 29, 2011 at 12:18 pm
Also the guardians ward skill should be mentioned. (Especially when traited the Fighter of Shadow)
Furthermore a legacies can improve its stats and duration
April 29, 2011 at 12:22 pm
Not to forget the class trait “Stoic”
April 29, 2011 at 12:57 pm
Sounds like the question of a butthurt Guardian that could not hold the aggro of a Champion that simply tanked the instance in Fervour without shield.
April 29, 2011 at 1:05 pm
Not to mention, champs don’t really have a lot of aggro building capabilities. Champ’s challenge is single target, with some trait bonuses adding more threat from Wild Attack and Champ’s Challenge. I believe Ferocious Strikes also generates threat. In general, Champs just aren’t meant to tank! The +60% threat generation from Glory helps, but if you have a moderately decent DPSer in your group, you’ll have some trouble holding aggro for groups. Not to mention, Glory has a significant reduction to in-combat power regen. Legacies do help here, a little bit at least.
I’d like to see some more threat abilities for Champs in the future. In addition, it wouldn’t hurt to have a few shield abilities when a shield is equipped, not as effective as a guardian, but something for those that do want to tank smaller groups / off-tank, a little better.
April 29, 2011 at 3:01 pm
*Shing-Shing* I needn’t say more. Also, champs can LITERALLY STEAL THREAT from other players.
April 29, 2011 at 3:52 pm
Raging Blades in Glory isn’t that great with the damage reduction and the slow pips. Fervour tanking for sure
April 30, 2011 at 1:45 am
It would be interesting to allow champions to use their shields as off-hand weapons, like-but-not-quite Shield-Swipe. This could be a method to balance threat generation while tanking without over-affecting Fervour aggro issues.
April 30, 2011 at 3:11 am
RB does generate aggro, so for tanking in Glory it’s useful. But yes, generally fervour champs can generate enough aggro from their DPS alone
Shing Shing!
May 1, 2011 at 5:59 am
While fervor tanking is popular with many champs, once you go that route you lose any right to complain about champ tanking and survival ability. It wasn’t and isn’t designed for it. We cobble together the most supportive legacies and stats (namely maxing incoming healing) in order to make it happen, but glory is the stance the devs designed champs to tank in. And in a champs vs guards survivability discussion, which is what this thread is, it isn’t even on the table. Fervor tanks sacrifice what little non-squishiness they already had in order to ramp up that DPS.(which is fine if they and their healer can handle it, everyone likes fast runs, but lets not kid ourselves about its intended use.)
April 29, 2011 at 3:32 pm
Great comparison! As cool as this all was though, my mind actually got stuck on the weapon that guy in the pic has…what is that thing!? It looks ginormous!
April 29, 2011 at 3:56 pm
That’s a bow that drops from the second boss in HoC
May 1, 2011 at 4:54 pm
It is also true that a glory tanking champ (or any champ i guess) can hold aggro over any player of any class by using rising ire every 10 seconds (assuming they have a rising ire legacy on their rune (which most do on their tanking rune.)