Champ Still Bad

🛡️ Champion Is a Dated Ascendancy — It Needs a Rework

Champion is the only ascendancy in Path of Exile where half the nodes do nothing on their own — and require external investment just to function, or shoehorns you into very specific builds.

⚰️ Broken Nodes That Require External Crutches

Unstoppable Hero: Does nothing unless you already have bonus max Fortify. Champion gives 20 Fortify — but Unstoppable Hero doesn’t scale off that. These are essentially dead points unless you get either one or both unique that give max fortify or you take the nodes on the tree.

First to Strike, Last to Fall: Adrenaline is barely usable. For consistent uptime you need to do some janky self damage and press a button every 20 seconds, and even then the 100% increased damage can fall off incredibly fast.

Master of Metal: Power-crept. Most builds are elemental now, not to mention Impale scaling is just better on Slayer, or Berserker. Champion has no edge here anymore, and the flat phys it gives is kinda pathetic.

Worthy Causes: Banners are just not good enough, they are too painful to use, and frankly not worth the investment in the skill tree.

Inspirational: This node is one of the best and it is still not great unless you are invested heavily into auras. Aura/armour stackers also perform way better on scion anyway.

🧱 Fortify Is No Longer Unique (And Others Use It Better)

Champion was once the “Fortify class.” That’s dead.

Fortify is on the Support Gem

Fortify is in the passive tree

Fortify is on gear

Even Trickster builds — full evasion/ES hybrids — are tankier than Champion -using Ephemeral Edge + Fortify on Hit, with action speed immunity to boot.

Champion offers:

❌ No chaos scaling

❌ No spell synergy

❌ No DoT support

❌ No ailment scaling

❌ Nothing for mana, ES, or hybrid builds

It doesn’t scale anything modern. Even phys slam + Impale builds now run:

Berserker: Warcries, rage, massive tempo

Slayer: Overleech, AoE, consistent damage scaling

Everything Champion was built around — Fortify, Adrenaline, Impale — is now obsolete.

I see people are praising Unstoppable Hero — a node that does nothing at baseline — because it used to be even worse.

That’s how bad this ascendancy has gotten. A dead stat stick gets applause — while Slayer has 20% more damage always, max endurance and frenzy charges, culling strike, and Juggernaut has guaranteed endurance charges, action speed and stun immunity, and proper scaling.

Champion needs:

✅ Baseline Fortify (already has it — but make Unstoppable Hero actually synergize: give it +4 max Fortify or some form of action speed immunity at minimum)

✅ A reason to exist in the current meta

✅ Real synergy with modern mechanics (ES, armor-scaling, hybrid, elemental builds)

It's hilarious that a node called Unstoppable Hero doesn’t make you unstoppable, or a hero. It’s just trash.

TL;DR

Champion is:

Outdated

Unsynergistic

Power-crept

Disconnected from every build archetype in the game

And everything it does, another class does better — with less resistance.

The only real use champion has right now is to sit afk in fubguns maps and give him max fortify while he plays a real ascendancy.

This is.....not a good take.

What Champ ACTUALLY brings to the table (not limited to):
1) Free resolute technique with no downside
2) Free 15% MORE multiplier through taunt
3) Free 20% fortification unconditional
4) MASSIVE scaling of fortification, completely unique to champion without very expensive jewels.

The only completely dead node on Champ is Worthy Causes because Banner manipulation sucks.

You are wrong about Adrenaline node, you simply don't know how to maximize it.
You are wrong about the flat damage on Master of Metal
You are wrong about the insane defensive capabilities of Champion compared to the other classes you mentioned.

You are wrong about Unstoppable Hero being a "dead node".....OF COURSE you build around it! What the hell kind of comment is that....who would take that and NOT get max fortify in the first place? Same thing can be said about nearly every single ascendancy node anywhere. Are you gonna take the occultist Chaos node....on a non-chaos build? You gonna play a necromancer and not use minions? How about running a Warden and taking the tincture nodes without equipping a tincture?

Your list of what Champion does NOT give you is a very telling sign that you have absolutely no idea what it DOES give you. Why even mention chaos damage? mana? spells? lol......

Do you have any idea how VALUABLE a single support gem is in pretty much any build? Not having to use the fortify gem or getting any fortify wheel, yet having max fortify all the time anyway is enormous all on its own. Probably worth the entire champion ascendancy right there, and you still have the taunt bonuses on top of that. Everything else you specifically build around maximizing, like every ascendancy and build in existence.



Also...for someone willing to use banners, those two nodes together are insanely powerful against bosses.

i think you, OP, have lots wrong, but one thing very right

the 'modern' POE kinda is elsewhere but actually thanks to old problems - mainly how damage conversion works. it works in a way where physical is the worst choice with very limited scaling potential compared to outright converting it

also to make things worse - the only way to get good phys damage is getting a very good phys weapon. you cannot get damage 'from air' via various XXX stacking bs. abys jewels or trauma stacks alone are not enough

getting good phys weapon is expensive AF, unless you aim for RT slams - but then again, that is 10m builds territory, not 100m+


so, that premise of 'modern POE' having fun elsewhere is sadly very true. attacks in general are in pretty bad spot - carried heavily by XXX stackers (smite and his friends). making competitive Smite character based around say 500 pdps mace is unreasonable and wont happen because any smuck with ES EE setup blows it out of the water

the other problem is Energy Blade setup. no physical weapon ever existed that can compete with that

so, that out the way, we have Champion

nodes doing nothing without extra investment - i can live with that. it kinda sucks that the Fortify node is gated by very expensive gloves and thats it. this one is bad and for most players this is a dead node due

The impale node is as strong or weak as impale is. and impale is in kinda rough spot. phys builds got massive buff in 3.25 by introduction of surefire and cheap ways to ignore phys resistance on both hits and impales (via masteries). my slight issue with that is that it is mandatory passive tax, one of several.
the flat phys heavily promotes fast weapons and as such it works - but you better invest fully into raising no of impales on enemies, without it is like 2 good steel rings. not great, not terrible

worthy foe (taunt) is actually great because it is RT but with crits and you can activate it with warcries


banners are crap. the numbers are good, the charging of them is utter desing failure. the ONLY way of having them even remotely available is the Warcry Pump - autoexertion with 2-3 warcries + 'gain 5 valour per warcry' + passives for 'increased valour gain'. it is the ONLY way to charge them more than twice per map. champions node (like Perfidy chest) allows for some tricks to have TWO banners at once - that is kinda strong but very clunky and depends on how much space your map has to trigger the trick. is that enough to start using banners - aka the new ancestral totems but with worse uptime? not likely. pretty much noone does that and for a good reason, so this node is kinda dead as well

the Adrenaline node is good and bad. first - it is for low life builds and you trigger Adrenaline with life flask to momentarily go above low life and dip below it immediately. it is on-demand, 100% reliable. but - to get the perma intimidate you have to make sure your minions/totems/whatever dont make a first hit on an enemy. herald of purity is out of the question, golems, minions in general, mercenary - they all break this effect


in general - it is good ascendancy. 20% always up fortify is great value (not because of support link - this is ~7% more damage in most cases - but because of it being ALWAYS UP, great for stuff like phased bosses. but there is very little reason to pick it over Trickster, Slayer, Berserker or Jugg for attack build

there is a point in making it into a summoner but that requires some big brains and coffers

solutions:
- impale is bad, make impale better. right now impale is a mechanic that allows phys damage to catch up to elemental damage scaling. that is not enough. i think that making impale ignore phys reduction all the time, freeing the mastery to actually pick something else might be a good start
- banner's charge acquisition needs complete overhaul. the .5sec cooldown in reality makes banners charge every full minute. like what the actual duck? the banner passives are also very diluted and point inefficient. investing into them fully surely makes numbers bigger but the issue of banners being ass to charge and use remains

fix these two and champion might see some use other than generic 'fortify for the rich'