Rift Champion Strategy Guide

Champion Soul's Skills, Specs, Macros and Builds in Rift

Champion is the DPS juggernaut of the Warrior souls. It boasts a wide array of damaging abilities, damage boosting abilities, buffs to increase damage and debuffs to make your enemy take more damage...with a few control and movement impairing effects thrown in for good measure. It's main drawback is that it has literally no abilities for increasing defense, hit points, or for reducing threat or damage taken. Don't let this put you off any: Warriors are relatively sturdy to start with and are able to wear armor that offers the best physical protection available, and this makes a Champion a serious problem for any mob, as well as Rogues, Mages and Clerics in PVP. Even defensive Warriors, who would outlast most opponents out of sheer damage mitigation, will have their hands full when faced with the Champion's devastating blows raining down upon them. A few of the Champion's talents improve 2 handed weapon damage, although most of the abilities and talents would compliment any style of combat. All damaging weapon abilities deal weapon damage in addition to the damage mentioned, unless indicated otherwise.

Notes on "Attack Points" and "Reactionary Abilities": Attack Points, as with any other Warrior soul, power special "finishing moves." Unlike some Warrior souls however, Champions do not have any special effect finishers. They all deal direct damage. With this in mind, it's easy to inflict "burst damage" (an exceptionally high amount of damage over a short period of time) without even realizing you're doing it. Since Champions have no threat reduction abilities, it can be easy to accidentally draw aggro (if you're with a tank of any real worth, you shouldn't have to worry about this). Champions also have a couple of abilities that can only be used after a certain set of conditions have been met (after a critical hit, after being dodged or parried for example). These abilities do not affect the global cooldown, so they should be placed at the very top of your main attack macro above non-conditional attack abilities. If you do this, these abilities will go off when the conditions are met without resetting the global cooldown, allowing you to instantly follow up the reactionary attack with a normal Attack Point generating attack (you will essentially get two attacks in a single cycle...more under the right conditions). You may get a warning that the conditions are not met on your screen, but it will not affect the functionality of the macro.

Champion Skills and Special Abilities

Bull Rush - Points Required: 0
Ability Info: This ability allows the Champion to charge an enemy within 17 meters, rapidly closing the gap to put the Warrior in melee range. While this ability is utterly fantastic, you can get caught up on terrain, so make sure your path is unobstructed. Cannot be used in combat, unless you also buy the 1 point ability: Blitz. Grants 1 Attack Point.

Power Strike - Points Required: 0
Ability Info: A basic melee attack that deals physical damage, depending on rank. This ability will never become obsolete, although several souls may offer a more powerful basic attack. This one will go at the very bottom of your attack macro. Grants 1 Attack Point.

Punishing Blow - Points Required: 0
Ability Info: A basic finishing move that deals physical damage depending on rank. Weapon damage and physical damage are significantly increased and Power cost is reduced with more Attack Points. This ability has no cooldown, so it should go at the bottom of your finisher macro. But as Champion has many finishers, it's possible that you'll never get this one off after you start your rotation. You'll often have the cooldowns on more powerful finishers expire before you need it.

Debilitating Strike - Points Required: 2
Ability Info: An attack that deals physical damage and reduces the target's Attack Power for 15 seconds (damage and Attack Power reduction depends on rank). The cooldown is 10 seconds, so you could put this in your attack macro to keep your opponent's attack power at a reduced rate for the entire battle. However, this will have a minor impact on your overall DPS, as the damage it inflicts isn't as high as most Attack Point generators. This is as close to damage mitigation that a Champion gets. Grants 1 Attack Point.

Soldier's Bearing - Points Required: 4
Ability Info: A buff that increases the damage of successful attacks by 5%. The talent Intense Training will increase the percentage slightly. Unless you manage to increase your critical hit probability through gear or talents, Soldier's Bearing will have a more significant impact on your DPS than the higher leveled Slayer's Bearing. Only one Bearing can be active at a time. No bearings can be purged.

Mighty Blow - Points Required: 6
Ability Info: An AOE melee attack that hits 3 enemies in your forward arc for physical damage dependent on rank. Damage is slightly less than power strike, so avoid using this attack unless you have multiple targets in front of you. Grants 1 Attack Point.

Mark of Inevitability - Points Required: 8
Ability Info: A combat debuff that reduces the target's armor rating by a significant amount, depending on rank. Lasts 1 minute. Enemies can only have one mark, and the Champion can only have one Mark active at a time (meaning that you can't cast multiple Marks on multiple enemies). You might be tempted to put this in your main attack macro to keep your Mark up on your opponent, but the cooldown time is only 15 seconds. Since it inflicts no direct damage, this will have a significant impact on your DPS. It's better to have it separate, but you could use a timed macro that informs you when your Mark is set to expire.

Inescapable Fury - Points Required: 10
Ability Info: A reactionary ability that inflicts 120% of weapon damage plus physical damage depending on rank. Can only be used after your opponent successfully parries or dodges one of your attacks, and it cannot be parried or dodged (although it can miss). You'll want this one in your main attack macro, above all of your non-conditional abilities.

Bash - Points Required: 12
Ability Info: A melee attack that inflicts a small amount of damage and interrupts casting. This ability is not affected by the global cooldown. Keep this one in close proximity to your main damage macro.

Deathblow - Points Required: 14
Ability Info: A conditional finishing move that deals significant physical damage (depending on rank) to an opponent who is under 30% Health. Weapon damage and the extra physical damage are increased and Power cost is reduced with more Attack Points. You'll want this one at the top of your finishing macro, above the non-conditional finishers. It's powerful, and the sooner and more often it goes off, the better. Note: This is a conditional ability, not a reactionary ability. It is affected by and affects the global cooldown.

Slayer's Bearing - Points Required: 16
Ability Info: This combat buff increases the damage of critical hits by 15%. This is a buff that you build a DPS role around: unless you have paid special attention to acquiring gear and purchasing talents that increase your odds of critical hits, Soldier's Bearing will have a bigger impact on your DPS.

Leg Sweep - Points Required: 18
Ability Info: A melee ability that inflicts a small amount physical damage (depending on rank) and reduces the enemy's movement speed for 15 seconds. Great for mobs that are trying to close the distance on a party member attacking at range, or those pesky players who have decided that they don't want to be in hand to hand combat with you after all. Grants 1 Attack Point.

Frenzied Strike - Points Required: 20
Ability Info: A reactionary ability that inflicts 120% weapon damage and physical damage (depending on rank) after a critical hit. Like Inescapable Fury, you'll want this one at the top of your main attack macro so it goes off as soon as it's ready.

Bladefury - Points Required: 26
Ability Info: A finishing move that hits up to 6 enemies within 3 meters for significant physical damage, depending on rank. Weapon damage and extra physical damage are increased and Power cost is reduced with more Attack Points. This finisher does slightly more than Punishing Blow, so it would be a decent idea to put this one in your finishing macro, even when fighting solo enemies. However, you can opt to keep it separate to use in a swarm of enemies as it won't significantly increase your DPS on solo monsters. However you choose to do it, the cooldown is only 8 seconds so you're likely to use it often.

Mark of Extermination - Points Required: 32
Ability Info: A combat debuff that increases the odds that attacks on the enemy will result in a critical hit by 5%. Lasts 1 minute. Enemies can only have one mark, and the Champion can only have one Mark active at a time (meaning that you can't cast multiple Marks on multiple enemies). If your gear contains at least some critical hit bonus, using this mark might make using Slayer's Bearing worth using. Again, if you're going to use this one, don't put it in any of your attack macros as it will significantly impact your DPS.

Disruptive Strike - Points Required: 38
Ability Info: A melee attack designed for rapid Attack Point building that deals significant physical damage. Due to it's 15 second cooldown, you'll want this one just below your reactionary abilities in your main attack macro. Grants 2 Attack Points.

Cornered Beast - Points Required: 44
Ability Info: This finisher is truly a sight to behold. A channeled ability that allows you to rain up to blows on enemies as you move past them over the course of 6 seconds. It inflicts an obscene amount of physical damage to up to 8 enemies with each hit, or multiple blows on fewer enemies if you can run past them more than once during that time frame. To make matters even worse (for your enemies, at least), during the 6 second duration the Champion is immune to all control and movement impairing effects. Weapon damage and physical damage is increased with more attack points. Just to give you an idea of how brutal this ability is, at rank 2 (it's maximum rank) after acquiring all 3 Attack points, it does 140% weapon damage plus 1570 physical damage. And that's just a normal hit before all of your stat bonuses are added!

Destroyer's Bearing - Points Required: 51
Ability Info: This is not just a catchy title...Destroyer's Bearing is the buff to end all buffs. It increases all damage by 20% (which, in reality, is actually 35% since if you spend 51 points in this soul to get this buff, you'll have Intense Training by default) and gives any abilities that consume Attack Points a 50% chance to grant an Attack Point. Lasts 1 hour. Only 1 Bearing can be active at a time. But is this buff worth spending 51 points to get? Yes, if you're doing raids/dungeons with a decent tank and a healer at your back or in PVP where burst damage can increase your survivability (they can't kill you if they're dead). For a general DPS build where tanks and healers are not guaranteed, I would say that you'd be better off without it and investing some points in a soul that provides some defense and/or some self-healing abilities.

Champion Soul Talents - Where to Spend Your Points

0-Point Soul Talents

Take No Prisoners
Soul Talent Description:: (Passive) Increases the damage that Attack Point generating abilities do by 2% per point invested in this talent. This is a really good talent to invest in for any build. It will have a significant impact on your DPS, and threat generating Attack Point generators will generate even more threat, which is useful for tanks as well.

Titan's Strength
Soul Talent Description:: (Passive) Increases the Warrior's Strength by 10%. More Strength means more damage, and more damage means a higher DPS and more threat generated. Since this applies to all abilities, this might have a more significant impact on your build than Take No Prisoners does (which only increases the damage of Attack Point generators). If I had to choose one, 0-point soul talent to invest in, this one would be it.

5-Point Soul Talents

Thunderous Kick
Soul Talent Description:: An attack ability that deals a small amount of physical damage (no weapon damage) and knocks the enemy back. It's great to move a stray mob out of melee range from casters in your party (provided you can engage it before it runs back), but it's not so useful for tanks or for DPS Warriors who needs mobs to remain in melee with them. It's use is extremely limited, so I usually skip this one.

Grim Satisfaction
Soul Talent Description:: (Passive) Critical hits will restore a small amount of power (2, 6 or 10 points, depending on how many points you invest). Power regenerates rather quickly to begin with, so this ability isn't exceptionally useful. However, if you have a high critical hit rating, this could easily increase your overall DPS by allowing you to continuously use attack abilities without running out of power (meaning you wouldn't have to wait a couple seconds to recharge your power if you regularly inflict critical hits).

Deadly Strikes
Soul Talent Description:: (Passive) Increases the physical damage (not the weapon damage) of all attack abilities while wielding a 2 handed weapon by 6% per point invested. This talent also increases this percentage for every point spent in the Champion soul above 30, based on how many points you spend in this talent (0.3%, 0.65% or 1.15%). This ability is incredibly desirable for any 2 handed weapon build, and is an absolute must-have for a build with Champion as the main soul. If Champion is a secondary or tertiary role for a dual wield or 1 handed weapon/shield build, this talent is useless.

Cruel Efficiency
Soul Talent Description:: (Passive) This talent increases your hit rating by 5 per point invested. As an increased ability to actually hit your opponent means more DPS or threat generated, this is a talent that is a must-have for any type of build that includes this soul.

10-Point Soul Talents

Battlefield Intimidation
Soul Talent Description:: A control ability that roots your target and applies a fear effect to up to all other nearby enemies for 6 seconds. Truly a great ability when you're facing a group of mobs or a group of PVPers. Your target stays where it is so you can beat on it while all the others run away and can't beat on you. It's not exceptionally helpful except when you're fighting near a tank, who needs to keep those mobs close to him so they don't engage someone else after the fear effect expires.

Weapon Specialization
Soul Talent Description:: (Passive) Depending on how many points you spend in this talent, it increases the damage of all melee abilities by up to 1.7% (to a maximum of 50%) and the damage of all ranged abilities by up to 0.85% (to a maximum of 25%) per point spent in the Champion soul tree. Spending less than 5 points in this talent will decrease the damage percentage bonus and the maximum bonus. This talent is relatively helpful if bought to full, since if you spend the minimum points in the Champion soul to get this ability (15 points), it will boost the damage of melee abilities by 25.5% and ranged abilities by 12.75% by default. It's especially helpful to any build that contains a significant amount of Paragon soul abilities. This ability has no effect on the extra attacks gained by way of the Paragon abilities Way of the Wind and Shifting Blades, or the passive talent: Deadly Grace (although it does affect the damage of the initial attacks that give these bonus strikes).

Brutal Punishment
Soul Talent Description:: (Passive) Increases the chances of landing a critical hit with Inescapable Fury by 15% per point invested in this talent. A very useful talent, but as Inescapable Fury is a reactionary ability it's not a game changer. If you're not creating a Champion heavy 2 handed build, then you could easily live without this one.

Blitz
Soul Talent Description:: (Passive) This one point talent allows the Bull Rush charge ability to be used in combat, and roots the target. While it might not seem all that useful, it's a massive help in a fast paced combat that's spread out, if only for the ability to use Bull Rush in combat. Quickly engaging the next target will make combats go faster, and will improve your overall DPS if you care about such things.

15-Point Soul Talents

Follow Through
Soul Talent Description:: (Passive) This talent increases the number of targets that can be hit by Mighty Blow, Bladefury and Cornered Beast by 1 per point invested. If you're spending less than 26 points in the Champion soul, skip this one. If you're spending at least 26 points in Champion, this one is great at 1 or 2 points, although not a necessity. If you're spending 44 points in Champion, this talent is a must-have at it's maximum 2 points.

Don't Make Me Angry
Soul Talent Description:: (Passive) Critical hits will increase your Attack Power by 15% per point invested in this talent. If you're spending this high in Champion and have a decent Critical Hit rating and/or some talents that increase your odds of critical hits, this one is well worth the 2 points.

Ruthless Pursuit
Soul Talent Description:: This ability removes all movement impairing effects. It doesn't really need to be said but as a melee based character, if you can't get to something, you can't kill it. This is not usually so useful in PVE, but in PVP it's absolutely essential to have abilities like this.

Lingering Wounds
Soul Talent Description:: (Passive) Critical hits inflicted on a target will reduce the healing it receives by 25% per point invested in this talent for 15 seconds. While this is not something you typically encounter in PVE, this is an exceptionally useful talent in PVP where healers can make those around them virtually immortal. Cutting their healing in half can allow you to overwhelm the healing done. This is particularly useful when used on the healer himself.

20-Point Soul Talents

Bloodthirst
Soul Talent Description:: A conditional attack ability that inflicts significant physical damage dependent on rank on an enemy within 3 meters after the Champion strikes a killing blow. While I wouldn't call this ability essential, it's extremely helpful for a solo PVE build where you're likely to be killing all the mobs you face. It's less helpful in a raid or PVP situation where others could feasibly land the killing blow on opponents you're fighting. Grants 1 Attack Point.

Intense Training
Soul Talent Description:: (Passive) This talent makes the Bearing buffs more effective by increasing the damage bonus they grant. For every point spent in this talent, Soldier's Bearing gains an additional 1% overall physical damage, Slayer's Bearing grants an additional 3% critical hit damage (a full 10% at 3 points) and Destroyer's Bearing grants an additional 5% to overall damage. Again, if you have Destroyer's Bearing, you will already have this talent bought at maximum by default. But even if you don't have Destroyer's Bearing, you'll want to spend as many points in this talent as you can afford if you're creating a Champion heavy build.

Overrun
Soul Talent Description:: (Passive) This talent grants the ability for Bull Rush to stun the target for 1.5 seconds per point spent in this talent. This talent is only useful if you're concerned about damage mitigation. You can easily live without this one, but if bought at max it will give you 3 seconds without damage after charging an enemy. It is much more helpful in PVP, however where a stun could force another player to blow their extensive cooldown to remove this effect (meaning they won't have it later if they suffer another control effect), or to incapacitate them if they've already done so. In PVP, 3 seconds is a deadly amount time to be down.

25-Point Soul Talents

Blood Frenzy
Soul Talent Description:: (Passive) Required: Bloodthirst. This talent increases the chance of landing a critical hit with Bloodthirst by 50% per point invested. If you're planning on making use of the Bloodthirst ability, you'll want to spend 2 points here too. It's a guaranteed critical hit for an already powerful ability.

Proper Timing
Soul Talent Description:: Using this ability will make the next physical attack ability you use within 30 seconds a critical hit. As the name suggests, proper timing is required to make effective use of this ability. It is best activated before using a powerful finisher to guarantee it delivers as much damage as it possibly can. Do NOT stick this in any of your macros, as you may end up using it on an ability that doesn't deal a lot of damage. If you're spending this high in the Champion soul tree, you won't be sorry you've bought this one.

Perfect Timing
Soul Talent Description:: (Passive) Required: Proper Timing. Decreases the cooldown of Proper Timing by 10 seconds per point spent in this talent. If you're planning on using Proper Timing, this talent will make it much more useful. Because the only thing better than inflicting a guaranteed critical hit is having the opportunity to inflict one twice as often!

30-Point Soul Talents

Titan's Strike
Soul Talent Description:: As would be expected, Titan's Strike is the "cream of the crop" of the Champion abilities, but possibly not for the reason's you'd think. This finishing move's physical damage isn't much better than any other Champion finisher (in fact, it's slightly less than most). What makes this ability desirable as that it stuns the enemy for one second per Attack Point consumed. As with all finishers, the physical damage inflicted is increased and the Power cost is reduced with more Attack Points. While 3 seconds may not seem like a long time, keep in mind that this will be enough time to rack up at least 2 more Attack Points and your stunned opponent will be almost ready to receive another finishing move by the time he recovers. With a Champion heavy build, that's a lot of damage without any retaliation.