Battle of the Immortals Champion Guide

Battle of the Immortals Champion Guide by Hiikarii

This guide is more or less my experiences with playing this fun class since the CB.

I want to stress that this guide is Not a power leveling guide, as I chose to take things slow and upgrade my character gradually along the way.

In this guide I will cover the basics of:

– Skills
– Events
– Stats
– Making $

This is not a “read to succeed”, more like an overview to get a brief understanding for the class.

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I. INTRODUCTION

In BoI the Champion fills the role of the Tank class. It’s our job to grab the enemies attention and soak up damage, allowing more damage oriented classes such as Berserkers to clean up the mess. We benefit from by far the Highest Defense and HP in the game, and also have one of the strongest AoE’s in the game. On the flip side, our attack speed and damage are mediocre and our Magic defenses are low. Therefore, if you are looking to play a character that kills fast, and you don’t care about eating food left and right, this is not the class for you. If you enjoy watching enemies attacks bounce off you and outlasting everything in sight, then good job, read on.

II. CHAMPION STATS

When leveling a Champion, a player should only really focus on two stats: Strength and Vitality. There are multiple builds for a champion and each one have their own pros and cons.

– Pure Vit build: Maximum Vitality for Maximum HP and survivability. This is perhaps the best choice for a player who enjoys doing group parties such as instances. A Champion with a Full Vit build will have the most minimal damage and will have to use Stardust, Gems, and Fortify Crystals to make solo play a bit more feasible. Nevertheless, BoI IS a group oriented game, so this is a perfectly fine build. You will reap the highest return from skills such as Zeal (lvl 70) which increases your Vitality by a %.

– Vit. / Str. Hybrid: This is a more common build and this class will sacrifice about 1-2k potential HP in favor of higher damage and greater solo potential. This route seems to have more promise for PvP as it is easier to make up for lost HP with Gems and SoulGear (+hp bonuses out the ***) than it is to improve damage.

– Vit. / Str. / Dex: I have heard of a few champions who added points into dex under the impression they were helping their character more than anything. Bad Idea!! Critical Isn’t Important as we are not a damage dealing class. We do not need to worry about Accuracy so much to hold Agro and we can rely on Rings Pendents Necklaces (I call them Accessories) to give us the Accuracy we need to keep whacking enemies. Currently with Evasion not working properly it seems, accuracy is not a problem in PvP against people around your own level. So, based on my experiences, I would say DO NOT DO THIS!! If you have followed this route, comment and explain if you find it to work, or not.

III. LEVELING A CHAMPION

The beginning of the game is very straightforward, and really nobody should begin to wonder “ok now what” until level 20. So that’s where I’ll start.

The first things I would recommend you do on your list is first get acquainted with the NPC’s in Atlantis and Atlantis Square. Since PW graciously Gimps our inventory space in the beginning, I would suggest you deposit your excess loot in your stash for the time being. Find the NPC that gives you Free Food for the day, and begin doing your quests. These will provide all the necessary exp to level up till about 45 but we will take things a bit more slow.
At level 25, we should do our first Instance run, called Knights Jail. There is a lovely tutorial on the BOI Website about this instance. The first time we do this, we will get not only stamps for getting better gear, but our first Mount. The mount buff also fortifies your Vitality, adding to your HP. You may do 5 Knights Jail runs per day and at level 20-30, these will net you a potential 25 Stamps per day. You can also buy stamps from other players, but I really don’t recommend it. If you want to start out with some quick cash, you can exchange these stamps at either the Heretic or Champion supplier for the level 45 Shields. These cost 1 stamp and you can sell them back for 473 gold a piece, which comes out to just over 2200 gold per run or 11k a day (including the 200 gold reward). This is not a large sum of money, but it’s enough to pay for our potions in the beginning.

By the end of the first day of casual playing, if you did all 5 of your Knights Jails and quests, you should be almost level 40, or higher, depending on how long you’re playing. If you want to level faster, I HIGHLY recommend you attempt the second instance, Dragon Emperor, at around level 30. At level 30, we can do Academy Quests. These SHOULD be done every day as they give some gold, decent Exp, and Deeds of Trust which we can use to acquire even more $ while solo grinding.

At level 45, We can finally wear Soul Gear from the Dragon Emp. instance, as well as the 2nd Stamp Set from Knights Jail. I personally chose to skip the level 45 SG and focus more on the level 60 set. I made do with the level 45 set and it was fine. Also at 45 we can do one of my most favorite events, Crazy Shopping (ill go into detail later). Basically this means FREE MONEY and good free money too.

At level 50, we can do Specter Island instances which are good Exp and will net you about 15k+ gold a run. More importantly however, this instance gives level 60 Soul Gear. If the party is in FFA (Free for all drops), then you have a chance to make lots of $ off selling Soul Gear. Try to join Shared Loot parties for collecting the pieces of SG you may need, then buy up the parts you lack once you start getting a collection.

At 50 and up we should start considering Dragon Island and Fallen Darkness events. These two events, combined with the Astral Feast, Hex, Specter Island and the tree of life at night, will provide the necessary exp to power level ourselves to 70 at more or less a level per day. I would aim to rush to level 65ish and then slow down for a bit, as we use this exp to focus on raising our skills. It’s totally optional on at what rate you want to progress your character, but if you want to stay in the competition for getting parties, as well as continue to be able to solo, then I highly advise you to make sure you have a few level 7 skills before 60/65 and at least 1 level 10 skill before progressing to 70.

IV. SKILLS

Here’s a run through of our skills, and I’ll include a note on how important I feel they are
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Divine Judgment – This is our XP skill. A money smart plan would be to level it once every 10 levels. So when you’re 20, its level 3. When your 30 its level 4. By 70 it should be at least 8. This isn’t too expensive to manage. And well worth it

Onrush – Basic single target attack. Cheapest skill to upgrade. At level 10 it deals a bonus 310 damage. Making it about on par with a level 6 Vital Strike. The kicker is that it reduces attack speed by 15% for 6 seconds (although the effect on mobs reads 20%). Less damage taken over time isn’t bad at all, but not mandatory.

Vital Strike – Our most powerful single target skill. This skill packs a punch considering our low base damage. I would level this the same way you would level your XP skill.

Invigorate – One of our important defense buffs. Improves hp Regen and increases resistance by a % not a +. This is more helpful when fighting bosses and in PVP. Keep in mind this does Nothing against magic damage

Shield Strike – a 5 second AoE that hits 5 targets. This is a very good skill and we’ll use it ALOT. I would prioritize maxing this skill.

Taunt – 9 second cool down and draws aggression on bosses. I’m not sure if leveling it does anything noticeably useful, mine is level 1.

Challenge – 20 target agro. Leveling this will not increase the # of targets aggro’d

Tremble – A neat skill that reduces physical Defense by a % for a few seconds. In parties this is a perfect way to soften the enemy for aoe’s and xp skills. Get this skill to at least level 5 but keep in mind there are more important skills to save for.

Justice Ward – I absolutely love this, this is what makes us even more tank-ier than we already are. Get it to at least level 7 for a +151 Defense bonus.

Sacrifice – I see no use for this skill outside pvp. Leave it at level 1

Salvation – This is one of those quirky skills that doesn’t seem to have a real use, but I’m suspect that it will show itself to be quite the effective immobilizer in PvP. Also useful for stalling enemies for a couple seconds if you over mobbed too many enemies. Level up if you have the spare change.

Shield Wall – one of our level 70 skills, this is Very nice. 50% physical resistance at level 1. The downside is the low duration and the High upgrade cost. Focus on this skill only after you’ve spent on the other 2 level 70 skills.

Holy Storm – Orgasmic. This skill hits a maximum of 8 targets with a 45 second Cool down. This is one of the best AoE skills in the game imo. Sadly, It doesn’t work on all bosses (as it shouldn’t). At level 1, it was hurting the Trial of the Brave boss for 14k damage every 5 seconds for 25 seconds. According to a level 9X champion, GrindOn, as you level it up, the 1% damage becomes 2% and at level 10 it will tick 6 times instead of 5. This is a ‘Lord’ killer. If you wanted a Gator Lord as a pet for example, now’s the time you can get one.

Zeal – Increases your Vit. stat by a %. Im pretty sure it’s 5% per level. So at level 10 you can guess for a 50% increase in your Vit. … That’s a hell of a lot of HP…

V. TIPS DURING THE JOURNEY

When you hit 65, I’d advise you create a new account and take the time to level up a character to 45. This way you can do extra crazy shopping and academy quests and earn an extra 50k per day when you’re done with all else. Not only that but having another character makes gathering materials such as Celebeam or Forging materials twice as fast. An extra character also mean more Deeds of Trust, More stamps, you could even create a heretic or berserker and level up their group party buffs to create a special solo ‘sidekick’.

An interesting things is when grinding solo, and searching for the items to fulfill those Deeds of Trust (I prefer Desert Venom Lizards or Pharaoh Squires if you’re 60-65) put your alt in the party with you and set him to follow your main char. Give him a Heaven Feather from the Salary Shop for 6hours of Auto Looting. You’ll get extra Souljades, Extra Deeds of Trust Items, extra trinkets such as Obsidian powder… All these little things add up. I have a total of 4 chars, my level 71 champion and 3 others, a 58 slayer a 59 berserker and a 57 champion. These characters net me about 150k-200k a day from just academy quests and crazy shopping. It takes almost no effort and this is free money. Not to mention you can always go back and play these characters if you ever get bored with a champion. It’s slower than simply having 1 character but I always love to have options and the extra storage space, the free Spec Elite passes, the extra $, the potential with having extra chars is really great.

VI. CONCLUSION

This really isn’t a conclusion but there’s so much I’d love to say, but really shouldn’t. You’re supposed to play the darn game yourselves! This is just my advice on how I play it. Its not the best way, its not the worst way. Its a guide for a casual player.

Have fun!

Hiikarii