COT love

[Tarkus the dog]

Lol.

[Aeralad]

Divine Champion/COT is already a great class.

I think COT is alright-ish. The only buff it needs in my opinion is instant cast on Divine Wrath similar to Rage or Blinding Speed. That would make people actually use it more often at the least.

I like Zavandar's suggestion, as for the rest.. Not really. It's in a fine spot in terms of strength right now. I've played several and never had an issue personally, though I'm sure others differ on that.

Again, remove cast point on Divine Wrath. Not much of a buff, but will make the class a hell of a lot nicer to play.

I'll try to make this as plain as I can:

Let's start with the observation that the highest damage output currently possible comes from CoT builds that take Paladin dips for Divine Might, along with some combination of Fighter, WM, or PDK, and that those builds are already very strong defensively, sacrificing only 3 AC from not being able to max out Tumble and affording huge saves.

While divine wrath is up*

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

So what you are saying is people would just go 8 charisma and live with the +5 bonuses at the cost of a few feats? I honestly hadn't thought about that angle, since I tend to default on 15 or 16 charisma starting on my divine stuff builds, but it does change my math some.

Personally-

Str 16
Dex 14
Con10
Int14
Wis8
Cha18

Pump str, divine might, shield, wrath. Your 10 con will still become 22 after gear and buffs and you have martial hp. Your fort and will get made up from cot bonuses and probably divine grace or dark blessing, and you can still pump your str to reasonable levels for good ab and +10 dodge ac/ damage before wrath.

On something with that much ac, saves, and damage, ~450 hp is plenty, imo.

[Chosen Son]

2+ round windup makes 450 hp borderline cripplingly low in a meta where 450 damage is easily a rounds damage.

[Void]

So what you are saying is people would just go 8 charisma and live with the +5 bonuses at the cost of a few feats? I honestly

I said that order doesn't matter.
That's pool of numbers you can get on human.
You grab this pool of numbers and use them in any order on any stat. You can set wisdom to 8 and everything else to 14 and then bump two stats to 16. And here you go. That 16 cha you asked for.

And, of course, you can totally use CoT with 8 charisma, because it has superior saves to fighter(fort and reflex + bonus vs just fort and no bonus) and aside from that offers pretty much the same thing. The only reason not to take it is divine RP.

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

2+ round windup makes 450 hp borderline cripplingly low in a meta where 450 damage is easily a rounds damage.

The casters that are best equipped to do this to you likely won't require divine shield, the crit builds that cam do this probably won't against your ac without some sort of similar windup.

If it's not already, perhaps make a -wrath command that works instantly like blinding speed? Would be a nice QoL- might and shield should still cost actions, though.

[Chosen Son]

I was more talking about two handed, shotgun pvp, falchion weaponmasters, then casters, though having a long windup against them is hardly desirable either.

[AstralUniverse]

As a plain human you can start with these stats
18 str
13 dex
16 con
8 wis
13 int
12 cha

12 cha is awkward for a divine build but it's a ftr/wm/cot (with weapon spec, crits and divine wrath), that also has +7 damage/ac from divine shield/might. Too much. Also not difficult to gear, since you're a CoT and you dont need to gear saves. Saves, that thing everyone invest their 5%s attempts and runic properties on, mostly.

[Adhemar Leddra]

Where else is the 14-16 starting charisma going to come from? You need 13 dex and int for a weapons master, so its not there.

You don't need the CHA for a CoT. It only changes the duration on your divine wrath. Now admittedly, it's nice to have a super long duration on it, but with 16 cot levels and 8 base CHA buffed to 12 with a casting of eagle's, that's 12 rounds of your "+7 to everything" button - which is quite a long time.

[Aeralad]

Actually, I was wrong a second time, so I wouldn't mind if you thought I was wrong a third time with these class combos haha.

Pure fighting fighter versus pure fighting champion needs to be something like this.
You can't actually go 20 CoT because you can only go 10 CoT pre epic afaik. Let me check wiki...yeah nothing in the champion of torm entry shows you can take past ten pre epic.
So what you have to do pre epic is go 10 fighter and 10 champion, or lose 1 AB and max skills by using the 3 rogue pre epic which also lowers AB making me still right hehe.
If you go 10 fighter 10 CoT, then what happens is you have to also go 7 CoT max epic levels in order to get the 3 rogue levels. That means instead of 2 epic bonus feats for the CoT, you'd only get 1.
So here's what I see.

It's true that the champion doesn't need to go Charisma, although my statement before was basically intended as a remark to maybe discuss that, since the original one's wrath duration was entirely dependent on charisma. But anyway...

Assuming the fighter and champion both don't need charisma and wisdom, they can have the same starting attributes with regards to the other attributes.
However, because of feats in epic levels, what I said still turns out to be true as far as I can see. Either that, or the fighter gets an even better bonus because great strengths wouldn't be taken over the one's people actually want.

But basically...
The actual bonus from wrath you are talking about would actually decrease from +9/9 to +7/7, whereas the fighter's bonuses to attack and damage might still be considered +3/3. That means in expertise mode to make up for the loss of AC, the champion would actually be at +2/+7, while the fighter would still be at +3/3.
This is because:
+2 from fighter chart bonus
+1 from soft strength bonus of +2

But let's talk about it more to be thorough.
You'd probably get an extra bonus epic feat by going 12 fighter, and the expertise mode champion would have 1 less attack but 1 more AC due to the shield bonus being picked up at level 10.
But you'd want to go 12 fighter, 15 CoT, and 3 rogue. The fighter goes 27 Fighter 3 rogue.
You'd want these feats I assume.
Epic weapon focus, Epic weapon spec, Epic prowess, Armor Skin, and Epic Skill Focus Discipline.
That is 5 feats.
The champion would have 4 general epic feats, and 2 bonus epic feats. That leaves 1 extra for something besides great strength.
The fighter would get 4 general epic feats, and 3 bonus epic feats. That leaves 2 extra for something else additional, or a bonus of 1 over the champion through 2 great strengths.

So in summary, based on fighting level bonuses alone, the fighter's basic +3/+3 without expertise mode would be able to exceed the champions +2/+7 in expertise mode, all things AC being relatively equal. Also, the fighter 27 gets 1 more epic bonus feat.
So I'm pretty sure now based on the restrictions and going pure fighting from each class, this is what would happen in game. 26 fighter, 3 rogue, then 1 fighter. Maybe.
But the champion would go 10 fighter, 10 CoT, 2 fighter, 4 CoT, 3 rogue, 1 CoT to finish. Doing those would result in what I'm saying.

I know everybody else wants to talk about some Champion Weapon Master, but that seems a whole other can of worms.

But actually, I'm going to stop caring really. Call me wrong all you want. 20 round divine wrath is too short. If we can't agree we can't agree. That's the end of it. I'd shrug and move on.

[CptJonas]

Just last words....some people dont get that CD on wrath and duration basicly dont afect PVP..duration maybe...but still....how many fights go for more then 10 rounds? Both those changes would be only QaL and PvM thing....just something which would make your main class feature more usable not only for PVP or before boss....

[Aeralad]

So in summary, based on fighting level bonuses alone, the fighter's basic +3/+3 without expertise mode would be able to exceed the champions +2/+7 in expertise mode, all things AC being relatively equal. Also, the fighter 27 gets 1 more epic bonus feat.

Yeah but Jonas, that wouldn't even matter due to the above statement.

The true counter might be...do people use expertise mode in PvP? If not, is the total +7/+7 then what you are talking about?

[Dr. B]

Relatedly, is there a plan in the works to make CoT levels stack with BG's Smite Good?