Champion Build Guide - Titan Quest
Skill Trees: Warfare and Nature
Primary Skills: Call of the Wild (Wolves), War Horn, Ancestral Horn, Battle Standard, Refresh, Heart of Oak, Plague, Sylvan Nymph
Important Stats: -Recharge Gear (very important), +Skills (very important), Elemental - Vitality - Pierce - Poison Resistances and Physical Damage Reduction
Attributes: Strength and Intelligence to wear gear that has -Recharge on it. Dump the rest into Dexterity and try to get up to 425 for Stonebinder's Cuffs
Champion is a unique class and will require a bit of gear to pull off well. You'll need some -Recharge as well as enough +Skills for three wolves; ontop of that you'll need enough of every resist to not die. While leveling up you should invest most of your Attribute Points into Strength to wear the best gear you can find as well as Intelligence so that you can use a few pieces of -Recharge gear.
You'll need about 520 Strength to use some of the best Strength gear and 450+ Intelligence to use the Intellect gear. There is an alternate method for you, if you do not want to be dependent on -Recharge gear to invest your points into Strength and Dexterity (425 Dexterity lets you use Stonebinder's Cuffs). However, you'll need at least some -Recharge. Talisman of the Jade Emperor is an Artifact you can get if you're willing to use Third Party Programs like TQ Vault which allow you to instantly make an Artifact from the Recipe.
I recommend you take a look at a list I compiled containing a lot of the gear -Recharge % gear in the game. While it doesn't contain every piece of gear in the game with -Recharge % on it, you'll find many items on there. Since I couldn't find a list of this information while I was making my Champion, I decided to make my own list! If you can get your hands on enough Strength/Dexterity -Recharge gear then you won't have to worry about putting Attribute Points into Intellect at all.
As for how the character actually plays, you'll keep your 3 Wolves up and your Sylvan Nymph full time as well as Heart of the Oak. Typically to pull enemies I use Plague and then when the pack gets to me I will War Horn, Battle Standard and then Ancestral Horn.
You'll be using Refresh during longer fights to spam Ancestral Horn and to drop additional Battle Standards if you need to cover a wider area. You'll also want to Refresh inbetween fights to make sure Ancestral Horn stays off of cooldown. This build is pretty powerful on its own but if you have enough -Recharge gear to keep Ancestral Horn up for every second you'll be extremely OP.
Plague, War Horn and Battle Standard will debuff enemies around you and make them take insane amounts of damage from your pets. Battle Standard will buff you and your allies up. Refresh allows you to use all of the abilities for every single fight. That's the essence of this build.
Below I have a list of every ability that this build will use with a little bit of additional information about when you'll be using that ability and how it works with the spec.
(Nature) Call of the Wild: This is one of your most important skills for the build and for leveling. Max it out as early as possible and get +3 Skills as early as possible too as it'll allow you to summon 3 wolves. Survival Instinct and Strength of the Pack passives need to be maxed as well.
(Nature) Heart of the Oak: At max rank gives you and your pets +85% Health, additionally the Permanence of Stone passive will give you and your pets 31% Elemental Resistances too.
(Nature) Plague: Spread the Plague everywhere you go. It's a fairly weak DoT but the debuff on it is extremely powerful and will increase the amount of damage you deal as well as the damage your pets deal. It also reduces the amount of damage enemies deal when attacking you.
(Nature) Sylvan Nymph: I dump my extra Skill Points into the Sylvan Nymph as well as the 3 passive abilities tied to it once I am done all of the other important skills for this build.
(Nature) Refresh: You'll be using Refresh constantly inbetween battles and sometimes during battles to drop a second Battle Standard or to use a second War Horn. What Refresh does is lower the cooldown of any abilities that are currently on cooldown. It helps most for Ancestral Horn, since it allows us to keep 100% up time on that ability but it'll also refresh War Horn, Battle Standard and other abilities you have too.
(Warfare) War Horn: This ability is extremely powerful not only for the stun but the debuff that it puts on all enemies that you stun. With the War Horn, Battle Standard and Plague debuffs enemies will take a lot more damage from your pets.
(Warfare) Battle Standard: One of your bread and better Warfare abilities. You'll want to drop a Battle Standard everywhere you go and make sure that your pets are always fighting inside of the aura. If you need to, use Refresh and drop multiple Battle Standards to cover a large enough area. You can drop as many as you want at a time.
(Warfare) Ancestral Horn: This ability is what makes the build so insanely powerful. With Refresh and -Recharge gear you'll be able to keep a 100% up time on Ancestral Horn which means you'll not only have your 3 wolves and Sylvan Nymph at all times as pets but also 4 ghost warriors.
Other Tips:
- Champion Build Guide Youtube Video
- Max out your wolves (Call of the Wild) ASAP, this will be your strongest ability for awhile
- If you need Vitality Resistance I recommend you carry an Apples of Idun Artifact on you to swap out to for bosses. To easily make Artifacts in Titan Quest use the TQVault Third Party Program, it's an amazing program and essential if you plan to play multiple builds in this game.