7.2 Order Hall Champions Guide

[Archimtiros]

With the addition of the our new champion coming with the new week and unlocking the 7th tier of Order Hall Advancement, I feel this is a good time to revisit the subject of optimizing Order Hall Champions and research.

There's a lot of leeway with regards to composition, and there's no single "best" setup. Mission counters are largely randomized, and your lineup will obviously change if you favor certain Champions or Combat Allies over others. The biggest optimization is simply ensuring you can counter as many threats as possible. That said, this is merely my logic regarding optimal combinations.


Quicklinks: New in 7.2 - Best Champions - Champion Analysis


New in 7.2

New Champion

• Darius Crowley (Alliance)/Eitrigg (Horde)
  Unlocking the new follower also unlocks a 6th active champion slot, so you don't have to immediately deactivate a champion to drop back down to 5. Unfortunately, while I want to like them, I don't find the new Champion to be that attractive. Rather than add a 3rd Protection option, we got a 4th Fury, which means overlap and Crowley/Eitrigg has the same counters as the already well-used Hydmall. There simply isn't a lot of reason to use both, so unless you're going to use him as a combat ally, or don't want to use Hymdall, it may be better to deactivate them and use another follower instead - more on this below.

Tier 7 Advancement

• Strike Hard
  Adds two new troops. Like Shieldmaidens, they provide a +30% bonus, but also provide a random counter. While at first glance this seems really attractive, I'm not very inclined to use them, especially if you've trained Abundant Valor, allowing a 4th Valarjar/3rd Shieldmaiden. I find Shieldmaidens on par or better with Ascension, and a lot of counters can situationally be ignored (increased cost, duration, lethal) depending on the mission.
  
• Roster Champions
  Unlocks a 7th active Champion slot, up from 6. I find this to be very useful in allowing more flexibility and variety in countering threats; it's essentially required to allow 2 of each counter, unless you don't want a dedicated Combat Ally.

My suggestion is dependent on your level of involvement.

• If you do missions often, leading to a well developed roster of Champions, of high level and complete with powerful equipment, I find that adding another Champion will make your team more flexible and three extra equipment slots can be far more powerful than extra troops.
• If you instead do the bare minimum, only sending out missions once per day or less, and don't have all epic/titled quality Champions, then extra troops will be more beneficial for getting high bonus % on the missions you send out.

Best Champion lineups
(what you really clicked here to find)

There are many viable setups, largely dependent on who you want to use as a combat ally, and which Champions you may have already leveled/geared up to this point.

A

Champion	Special Abilities	Counters
Finna	+15% vs Hazards	2 Protection
Svergan	+15% dual troop types	2 Fury
Hymdall	+15% over 8 hours	2 Arms
Hodir	+15% vs Minions	2 Pummel
Thorim	+15% when solo	2 Whirlwind
Ymiron	+poop	2 Leap
Crowley (ally)	+5% per troop vitality	Fury/Leap backup

• Strength: Well balanced specs/counters.
• Weaknesses: Slightly weaker special abilities (Thorim/Ymiron), Crowley is now a much less useful combat ally.
• Optional allies: Thorim or Hodir can be used as optional combat allies if desired, just swap them when a mission they counter comes up.

B (my setup)

Champion	Special Abilities	Counters
Finna	+15% vs Hazards	2 Protection
Svergan	+15% dual troop types	2 Fury
Hymdall	+15% over 8 hours	2 Arms
Dvalen	+20% with 1 health troop	2 Pummel
Ragnvald	+5% per troop vitality	2 Whirlwind
Thorim	+15% when solo	2 Leap
Hodir (ally)	+15% vs Minions	Fury/Whirlwind backup

• Strength: Well balanced specs/counters, Hodir is great for world PvP.
• Weakness: A lot of "solo champion" specials, Hodir is very good for missions.
• Optional allies: Dvalen/Thorim.

C

Champion	Special Abilities	Counters
Finna	+15% vs Hazards	2 Protection
Svergan	+15% dual troop types	2 Fury
Hymdall	+15% over 8 hours	2 Arms
Hodir	+15% vs Minions	2 Pummel
Ragnvald	+5% per troop vitality	3 Whirlwind
Ymiron	+poop	1 Leap
Thorim (ally)	+15% when solo	Arms/Leap backup

• Strengths: Stronger special abilities, Thorim's buff is good for less geared players and in PvP, "KROLMIR!"
• Weaknesses: Only one dedicated Heroic Leap counter, though Thorim can be used for missions when not actively being used.
• Optional allies: Hodir.

D

Champion	Special Abilities	Counters
Finna	+15% vs Hazards	2 Protection
Svergan	+15% dual troop types	2 Fury
Hymdall	+15% over 8 hours	2 Arms
Hodir	+15% vs Minions	2 Pummel
Thorim	+15% when solo	2 Whirlwind
Ymiron	+poop	2 Leap
Dvalen (ally)	+20% with 1 health troop	Fury/Pummel backup

• Strength: Well balanced specs/counters.
• Weakness: Weaker special abilities; Dvalen.
• Optional allies: Thorim/Hodir.

*Meatball & Moroes
*If you want to use Shocktroops instead of 7 Champions, either drop the dedicated Combat Ally, or drop Ymiron and use Thorim/Dvalen as combat allies to retain the second Arms/Pummel counter.



Champion Analysis
(long winded shit you don't care about)

Combat Allies

Mostly subjective, but can have a big impact on who you decide to run in your main mission-going roster.

• Finna - Random proc, 1.5m internal CD. Uncontrollable makes it annoying, often pulls neutral mobs or attacks PvP flagged players (and guards) in towns.
• Dvalen - Bodyguard. Useful at low levels, but fairly worthless at higher ones.
• Thorim - 2m CD 3m duration 25% AP buff with a short AoE stun 3m. Good in world PvP, and the buff is a nice ~10% damage increase that can be kept up permanently. Very useful for undergeared players, less useful when you're already two-shotting world mobs.
• Hodir - 3m CD 8s AoE stun, deals more damage than Thorim, but doesn't provide a personal buff. Very powerful in world PvP.
• Crowley/Eitrigg - A second combat ally, with the option of putting them in proc mode, working similar to Finna, which causes him to appear and bladestorm a group of enemies for ~500k damage.

Personally, I find Thorim and Hodir to be the best allies, because you can control them. I don't really like Finna because she often procs when you don't want her to, and her cooldown prohibits her from appearing when you do (she also procs on and chases non-hostile targets such as neutral mobs and PvP zone/server players not actively engaged in combat). She's also really important for her Pummel, since the other two champions which offer it are, in my opinion, pretty weak. Likewise, I'm not a fan of Dvalen for similar reasons, and I find the extra damage output unnecessary at higher gear levels.

Another important thing to remember is that Combat Allies can easily be taken on and off, meaning you can use them for the occasional mission, and so they should complement your group. This can compensate for an imbalanced roster, since you can still use them to complete missions, especially during "off" hours when not actively playing the game.


Missions

Protection

• Finna Bjornsdottir - Shield Charge synergizes well with the Shieldmaiden's Ascension, and the strongest option for Pummel.
• Svergan Stormcloak - Royal Bloodline is strong bonus with the right follower equipment, but requires two open slots for troops, making it difficult to counter missions with multiple threats. Pairs well with Shock Troops.

Arms

• Ragnvald Drakeborn - Commanding Shout has the highest bonus potential of all Champion special abilities. Slightly stronger than Thorim or Svergans bonuses because it still gets some benefit with only one troop and another Champion.
• Thorim - Titan's Wrath precludes any other Champions on the mission, making it more difficult to counter missions with multiple threats. Pairs well with Shock Troops.
• King Ymiron - Screams of the Dead is pretty bad in my opinion. A [I]chance/I] to save a 30m cooldown and trivial amount of resources. However, he provides Pummel.

Fury

• Hymdall - Gatekeeper is very useful as the hardest to complete missions are often the longest, and synergizes quite well with long-duration equipment bonuses.
• Hodir - Frozen Blows is almost always active, since his Whirlwind also counters Minions.
• Dvalen Ironrune - Enrage is useful though kind of niche; hard to plan on it being available, forces you to counter Lethal, and takes awhile to force availability if it's not already up. While the bonus can stack high, it encourages keeping troops at 1 health, which is at odds with Ragnvald/Crowley/Rallying Cry which benefit from high health troops. However, he provides Pummel, and is typically a better option than Ymiron.
• Darius Crowley/Eitrigg - Leader of the Pack/Blood and Honor is disappointingly the same effect as Ragnvald, although it is one of the stronger bonuses. His true fault is that his counter also copies Hymdall's, who is likely far more useful as a "long mission" specialist, and likely already well developed during the time leading up to 7.2.

Other

• Meatball & Moroes - Both are great champions, and can be really useful for hitting 200% with underdeveloped teams, but the downside is that they don't actually counter anything. Personally, I don't have much problem hitting 200% as long as I can counter the missions... the hard part is actually having whatever combination of counters it requires, which is why I favor regular champions. TLDR: Meatball & Moroes allow you to 200% one mission - having a wide range of counters allows you to 200% many missions.
  If you do want to use them, my suggestion would be to use only one, either as a combat ally, or using your combat ally to cover any counters that you lose by replacing one of your primary mission going champions.

I tend to find Finna, Hymdall, Ragnvald, Hodir, Svergan, and Thorim the most useful due to their bonuses, while Dvalen and Ymiron the least, in that order. Since we're going for an extra Protection and Pummel, there really isn't a lot of choice - Svergan is the only choice, and unfortunately, getting a second Pummel counter requires the use of either Dvalen or Ymiron. Although Dvalen's special ability is better than Ymiron's, there are already too many good Fury picks, so Ymiron wins out in the end. This is why I find Roster of Champions more useful than Shock Troops - you can't get two of every spec/counter and have a dedicated ally without it. Although you could get by with 6 and a "flexible" combat ally used part time, I still favor an extra Champion, as it allows more variety and a greater chance of being able to counter missions.

As I said in the beginning, there's a lot of flexibility, and I don't really think there's any "right" choice as long as you can counter mission threats. The biggest influence is who you decide to take as a Combat Ally, and which Champions you may have already spent time leveling up/equipping already. I'm currently using setup for B.

[Deleted]

Thanks as always Archi.

What I got out of this is that I need to reactivate and level Finna asap. I didn't care what champions I picked early on since I didn't look into it, but since she's in every comp.

So currently I have Thorim(HCL), Hodir(WW), Hymdall(HCL), Svergan(WW), Ymiron(PML) and Eitrigg(HCL). Should I deactivate Eitrigg for Finna in favor of keeping Ymiron? Then my comp will be 2 of each. Just wanted to know if Eitrigg is worth keeping active over any of the ones I listed.

[Shieldarm]

Although it's not as easy (obviously), considering theres some RNG to getting either, what are your thoughts on roster including Moroes and Meatball

[Archimtiros]

Although it's not as easy (obviously), considering theres some RNG to getting either, what are your thoughts on roster including Moroes and Meatball?

I was kind of leaning towards a roster including Moroes, Meatball (Ally when I WQ), Finna, Ragnvald, Thorim, Crowley, and still debating the 7th. Probably Hymdall. I know he overlaps with Crowley, but his ability (especially with the right items) to cap off a high duration is good enough that I don't mind the overlap so much.

There's a section on them above. You can really use whatever Champions you want though, the system isn't so restrictive that you have to have a certain setup; these are just my picks.

As it says above, I personally don't like Moroes and Meatball, because they don't actually counter anything. Champion equipment can be extremely strong (another reason I favor a 7th Champion over Shock Troops), and I rarely have an issue getting 200% on missions unless I simply can't counter them; so while Meatball & Moroes offer a lot of bonus % and some neat effects, they don't enable me to actually do any more missions, in fact they restrict my ability to do so, because using them means I have less natural counters.

So, I personally don't use them, I don't feel the need. If you want to anyway, I'd suggest using the Combat Ally slot to cover whatever counter you sacrifice by taking them.

- - - Updated - - -

Thanks as always Archi.

What I got out of this is that I need to reactivate and level Finna asap. I didn't care what champions I picked early on since I didn't look into it, but since she's in every comp.

So currently I have Thorim(HCL), Hodir(WW), Hymdall(HCL), Svergan(WW), Ymiron(PML) and Eitrigg(HCL). Should I deactivate Eitrigg for Finna in favor of keeping Ymiron? Then my comp will be 2 of each. Just wanted to know if Eitrigg is worth keeping active over any of the ones I listed.

She's in every comp simply because I find her to be the most universally useful Champion.

• She's Prot, of which there are only two options (and ideally you want both in 7.2).
• She has Pummel, of which the other two options are underwhelming choices (other Fury picks are too good to make room for Dvalen, and Ymiron has a crap special).
• She has a decent, easy to activate special ability.

You should have a 7th Champion slot if you take the appropriate research though, which would allow you activate Finna without removing anyone, in which case you'd be using setup A.

[Deleted]

And here i am doing missions with only 100%+ chances using those heroes i like the most :-P no math or thought put into it - but hey they also gets the job done :-)

[Shieldarm]

And here i am doing missions with only 100%+ chances using those heroes i like the most :-P no math or thought put into it - but hey they also gets the job done :-)

If it works for you, it works! I like to maximize mine, mainly for the free gold and AP. That 600 gold mission becomes 2100g by getting that percentage up.

[lordzed83]

Thanks for this writeup

[Roiids]

I must not have as good as follower equipment on all my guys. With meatball its always 200%.

Not saying always but I can only hit 200% about half the time with normal champions... so with meatball I get 200% on the other half i cant get with regular guys.

[psiko74]

Im going to go with option D since I have Thorim equipped with 2 combat ally legionaries already.

[Shieldarm]

Im going to go with option D since I have Thorim equipped with 2 combat ally legionaries already.

Eesh. Very nice. Across my 12 110s, I haven't gotten any champion legendaries at all

[Roiids]

Eesh. Very nice. Across my 12 110s, I haven't gotten any champion legendaries at all

Yeah I didn't even know they existed... best i've seen is a few blues and epics.

[ramayana1423]

Yeah I didn't even know they existed... best i've seen is a few blues and epics.

Do you not have the order hall trait to get equipment work orders for OR?

[Roiids]

Do you not have the order hall trait to get equipment work orders for OR?

Yeah I have ran those work orders since I go that trait as well. I feel like its a pretty large waste after you upgrade all the champion ILVL's. Get mostly green equipment over and over.

[Bigbazz]

I've put zero thought or effort into my champions, the addition of Moroes means every mission is 200%.

[Archimtiros]

Well, they went and fucked Crowley/Eitrigg by removing the combat ally bonus (Heroic Leap CD reduction) and making them bodyguards. As such, I can't see any reason to use them unless you simply like their look more than Dvalen. As such, I'm going to adjust the guide, so don't freak out if some things shift around.

They now serve as a standard bodyguard/Dvalen clone, or you can use the "Fall Back" command to despawn them to change them from a constant bodyguard to a proc based one - showing up and bladestorming enemies for ~500k damage. Proc is similar Finna, on attack when there are 3+ enemies nearby on a ~1m CD.



While this is a neat functionality, I find it far less attractive than Heroic Leap reduction. In my mind, Crowley/Eitrigg was the champion of choice for well geared players who don''t care for Thorim's power increase due to already 2-shotting world mobs; Crowley/Eitrigg would allow you to get around faster, and have a lot of synergy with the legendary Leap shoulders. Still useable as an ally, but I personally find it to be a much less useful bonus all around.

[Montegomery]

FYI, countering mission threats does not inherently increase your success chance unless you're countering the Boss or a Powerful threat. Countering any other threat only removes its negative consequences.

Example: Two champions are identical save that one counters a Lethal threat. On any given mission with a Lethal threat they'll increase the success chance identically, even though one of them doesn't counter the Lethal threat. This is also true for Cursed, Disorienting, and Slowing (though obviously countering Cursed will remove the 100% cap, and countering Slowing can enable/disable some equipment).

If you're curious as to how the math actually works I did a bunch of research a while back on a different forum:

Spoiler: 

• Champion Base Value: 10% + 5/6% for every 5 iLvls above the mission requirement, capping at 5% (30 iLvls).
• Boss Value: 50% + 2.5% for every 5 iLvls above the mission requirement (determined by counter Champion), capping at 15% (30 iLvls).
• Counter Value: 15% against Boss/Powerful countered by that spec/ability.
• Cursed/Disorienting/Lethal/Slowing Value: 0%
• Powerful Value: 50%. Champion, Boss, Powerful and Counter values are divided by (1 + 0.9 * # of Powerful Threats). Equipment, Troops, Hall Upgrades and Abilities are unaffected.
• iLvl Penalty: Champion, Boss, and Counter values are reduced by 16 2/3% for every 5 iLvls below the mission requirement. Counters, Abilities, and Equipment stop functioning when the difference is 30 iLvls or more.

Some additional comments:

Counter Stacking: While the Boss Value will only be awarded once the Counter Value will be awarded once for every champion with the relevant spec/ability, provided that there are either as many champions as threats, or that all Boss/Powerful threats have been countered at least once. There may be other conditions, but I haven't discovered them yet.

Threat Irrelevance: A fact that might surprise people is that most threats do not provide any benefit to success chance when countered. If you have two otherwise identical champions, the only difference between the one that counters the threat and the one that doesn't is simply that you won't have to deal with the threat's effect, success chance will be identical. For practical purposes this means you need not worry about trying to counter Disorienting, Lethal or Slowing in search of higher success rates.

Powerful Threats: Powerful threats obviously complicate the math considerably, and are one source of 200% missions that mysteriously fail as the division by 1.9-2.8 leads to a lot of awkward decimals.

Missions with Powerful threats are generally much harder to 200% due to inherent losses in success chance. While the Boss Value is effectively distributed across threats with no loss (and technically a small gain), nothing recoups the lost Champion and Counter Values. The net loss is at least 10%, but if you're stacking Counters can be much higher, resulting in a significant but not insurmountable headwind.

[Roiids]

FYI, countering mission threats does not inherently increase your success chance unless you're countering the Boss or a Powerful threat. Countering any other threat only removes its negative consequences.

Example: Two champions are identical save that one counters a Lethal threat. On any given mission with a Lethal threat they'll increase the success chance identically, even though one of them doesn't counter the Lethal threat. This is also true for Cursed, Disorienting, and Slowing (though obviously countering Cursed will remove the 100% cap, and countering Slowing can enable/disable some equipment).

If you're curious as to how the math actually works I did a bunch of research a while back on a different forum:

Spoiler: 

• Champion Base Value: 10% + 5/6% for every 5 iLvls above the mission requirement, capping at 5% (30 iLvls).
• Boss Value: 50% + 2.5% for every 5 iLvls above the mission requirement (determined by counter Champion), capping at 15% (30 iLvls).
• Counter Value: 15% against Boss/Powerful countered by that spec/ability.
• Cursed/Disorienting/Lethal/Slowing Value: 0%
• Powerful Value: 50%. Champion, Boss, Powerful and Counter values are divided by (1 + 0.9 * # of Powerful Threats). Equipment, Troops, Hall Upgrades and Abilities are unaffected.
• iLvl Penalty: Champion, Boss, and Counter values are reduced by 16 2/3% for every 5 iLvls below the mission requirement. Counters, Abilities, and Equipment stop functioning when the difference is 30 iLvls or more.

Some additional comments:

Counter Stacking: While the Boss Value will only be awarded once the Counter Value will be awarded once for every champion with the relevant spec/ability, provided that there are either as many champions as threats, or that all Boss/Powerful threats have been countered at least once. There may be other conditions, but I haven't discovered them yet.

Threat Irrelevance: A fact that might surprise people is that most threats do not provide any benefit to success chance when countered. If you have two otherwise identical champions, the only difference between the one that counters the threat and the one that doesn't is simply that you won't have to deal with the threat's effect, success chance will be identical. For practical purposes this means you need not worry about trying to counter Disorienting, Lethal or Slowing in search of higher success rates.

Powerful Threats: Powerful threats obviously complicate the math considerably, and are one source of 200% missions that mysteriously fail as the division by 1.9-2.8 leads to a lot of awkward decimals.

Missions with Powerful threats are generally much harder to 200% due to inherent losses in success chance. While the Boss Value is effectively distributed across threats with no loss (and technically a small gain), nothing recoups the lost Champion and Counter Values. The net loss is at least 10%, but if you're stacking Counters can be much higher, resulting in a significant but not insurmountable headwind.

I like to pump out the missions so I always make sure the slow and increased mission cost, etc are countered.

[Arbiter]

I like to pump out the missions so I always make sure the slow and increased mission cost, etc are countered.

Same, though when you have over 120K Order Resources with nothing to do with them then you quickly start to pass up on trying to decrease mission costs.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the guide Archi, a good read as aleays.

Since we are talking champion roosters and the third equipment slot comes into reach soon, I have a couple of questions I did not find answers to yet:

- Do the same champion equipments stack, let's say 2x 40 % success chance increase for missions shorter than 4 hours equals 80 %?
- If they do not stack on the same champion (is it even equippable?), do they stack if two or three champions in a mission carry the same equipment?
- Do same champion equipments of different quality stack, e.g. the rare 30 % success chance increase + the rare 40 % increase equalling 70 % bonus?

Any tip is greatly appreciated.

[Archimtiros]

Thanks for the guide Archi, a good read as aleays.

Since we are talking champion roosters and the third equipment slot comes into reach soon, I have a couple of questions I did not find answers to yet:

- Do the same champion equipments stack, let's say 2x 40 % success chance increase for missions shorter than 4 hours equals 80 %?
- If they do not stack on the same champion (is it even equippable?), do they stack if two or three champions in a mission carry the same equipment?
- Do same champion equipments of different quality stack, e.g. the rare 30 % success chance increase + the rare 40 % increase equalling 70 % bonus?

Any tip is greatly appreciated.

No.
Yes.
Yes.