Runes of Magic US / AU

Champions received an item set skill, Disassembly Mode, a while back. This item set skill is the "reverse" of Shield Form:

Add 5% accuracy, and convert 80% stamina into strength

There are two issues with this Item set skill.
1) Cannot Be Used In Combat
2) Lower Chain Drive Activation Rate

The first issue is somewhat minor so I won't spend much time with it. Essentially, shield form can be toggled, while this mode cannot, during combat. This makes it slightly impractical to use, since many abilities require shield form to use in the first place. Not all of these abilities are restricted to tanking --- some damage reduction abilities can be used from a support perspective to aid allies. But once you leave Disassembly Mode, you can't re-enter until you leave combat, so you either don't use a number of skills, or you can't re-enter this mode until you leave combat.

The second, and more important issue, is that Chain Drive activates approximately 80% of the time on white attacks in Shield Form, and only roughly 20% in Disassembly Mode or regular dwarf form. This mode is clearly designed for outputting damage, and yet the quintessential champion dps skill is not as easily accessible in this form as it is in shield form. Players that have tried champion all determine that a non-upgraded shield form (only converts 10% strength into stamina) is better for damage output as it allows you to get more chain drive activations. Due to this, this Item set skill has gone unused.

A simple fix would be to increase the base probabilty of chain drive activations. While having it also at 80% would be wonderful, that would also turn this form into a rune pulse spam. So a modest change, nothing crazy, just up to say, 40% instead of 20 or 25, w/e it is now may adress this. Coupled with elite skills and the other item set skills, this would ideally give champions a viable rotation in the Disassembly Mode that could match or surpass the damage output of non-upgraded shield form champions. While it is possible to create a skill rotation for damage output without using shield form, the damage provided from an abundant number of chain drive activations makes the shield-form DPS method much better in comparison to anything else (except for champion/mage Elemental Rampage, which is a 5minute cooldown skill).

A second fix I can suggest, could be in the opposite direction --- reduce the activation occurance in Shield form. This is the least preferred method, but a possible one to make all forms of Champions viable. A reduction to match the other forms, 20%, would make it so champions actually have to use a skill rotation to hold aggro when tanking, opposed to just spamming Rune Pulse, and would be NOT use shield form to dps because there is no benefit to doing so.

Quoted from "ancientgear"

I would prefer it to be 80% or more in both shield form and disassembly mode. Rune pulse is like the main attack champs have.

It is the main attack, but shouldn't be the "only" attack. There'd literally be no reason to use anything else for single target damage/aggro if rune pulse was higher thaan 80%. Even at 80%, I feel like its already too high, eliminating the use of skills. But as already stated, 20% in dwarf/disassembly is too low.

Quoted from "ancientgear"

Tanking on champ without using rune pulse isn't too bad.

This statement is why I think lowering the activation rate in shield form is fine. The high rate of activation just makes most of the other champ skills pointless if you're tanking (or dps in shield form). It is that, or lower the aggro bonus significantly, like 2.5x down from the current x10 aggro bonus. That way you'd be inclined to use elites or even shock strike on bosses, which has a x5 aggro bonus and less than half the damage of rune pulse (shock strike is roughly 1/4 the aggro of rune pulse for these two reasons), rather than just spam rune pulse and Rune Energy Influx (w/e the aggro buff skill is called).

Keeping a class "cheap to play" is not a valid reason for not balancing them. If they're going to balance things at all, it should be "BALANCE", not pick and choose what they want to make op, and leave the rest as is. No class filling the same roles should be cheaper to play than others. If this causes people to reroll so be it -- but making a new knight with zodiacs and tp and weapon skill and egg pet etc. seems more work than just regearing an already in use and competent tank class.

Regardlesss, it is silly for rune pulse, a skill with essentially 1.5s cd and x10 aggro bonus and 1200% main hand dps (500%+ x2 for the cast x1.2 for chain drive) to stay as is. No other tanking class has a skill close to this, and the other champion abilities are so bad compared to it that its all tanks use for single target aggro. It would be vaguely understandable that champions would have such an op skill IF and ONLY IF they did not have aggro bonuses from other sources. However, since they have a skill equivalent to Threaten from knights, and they hit harder inherently, it is again silly for this skill to remain as is. There's literally no need for any single target damage elite skills on any champion combination since they all fail compared to rune pulse.

Hopefully attention is brought to champions, and if a balance is done, it is done properly -- this means addressing the OP aspects (however few they may be) as well as the less impressive parts of the class.