Need Help with Skill Decision.

Zsymon

I need help deciding what last skill to slot.

My first bar (solo'ing in pve):
- Quick Siphon
- Puncturing Sweep
- ???
- Breath of Life
- Inner Light

My second bar (healing in pve and pvp):
- Rapid Regeneration
- Ritual of Rebirth
- Purifying Ritual
- Breath of Life
- Inner Light

Rings are enchanted with armor, necklace with spell power.

I wear 6 light armor pieces with heavy imperial shoulders. Now what I need help with is deciding what skill I might place in the "???" slot. Any suggestion with explanation is very welcome. I've been pondering about this for days and I just can't decide.

ThatHappyCat

I'd suggest one of the following:

Focused Charge. Saves you some time getting in range for Puncturing Sweep. Note however that this skill has a GCD that locks you out of everything for a short time, if you're willing to drop Quick Siphon (it really doesn't help much given you're already using Sweep and Breath) a stamina-based charge may be better.

Blazing Spear. Great AoE damage ability to supplement or use instead of Sweep, especially against ranged enemies that don't clump up as easily.

Blazing Shield. Awesome survivability and damage boost for a relatively low cost. Especially useful versus bosses you can't solo with Sweep alone.

Reflective Light. Something to spam or whatever as you close in for Puncturing Sweeps. Decent damage and DoT.

Channelled Focus. Even if you don't stand in the Focus you still benefit from the magicka regeneration boost, which can allow you to spam Sweep a few more times before running dry. As with Blazing Shield, useful against bosses you can't otherwise solo.

Out of these, I'd probably choose a gap-closer and Reflective Light (replacing Quick Siphon), switching out the gap-closer for Blazing Shield if necessary.

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Another thing is I'd drop Inner Light for soloing if you're relying on Puncturing Sweep as your primary DPS. Sweep uses weapon crit, not spell crit; so Inner Light does nothing for it.

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Also, I know you didn't ask this, but for your healing bar I'd recommend Healing Springs instead of Ritual of Rebirth. Ritual takes too long to cast and is pbAoE, leaving you very vulnerable. Healing Springs' numbers may seem low, but it stacks with itself so you can spam it if you need a lot of healing (and besides, you have Breath of Life). In fact for 4-person groups I'd forgo an AoE heal altogether and rely solely on Breath of Life.

xarguideb17_ESO

Blazing spear and reflective light, both are aoe and dot. Cast spear, castlight, cast sweep. Keep dots up. Stuff will die quick.

I used blazing spear, reflective light, solar barrage, blazing shield and some utility spell or heath of life.
Start with blazing shield, cast blazing spear on group of mobs, then reflective light, solar barrage.
You can do most of that holding block.
Actually I hear even ground target spells like Blazing Spear can be cast while blocking, if you remap your bash key to something else than RMB+LMB, but I still haven't done that.
So technically you could do all that while holding block.
The problem with puncturing sweep is, you can't block during the casting.

Zsymon

Thanks a lot both of you.

Btw, adding Quick Siphon on top of Puncturing Sweep, for me makes the difference between soloing triple elite world bosses, and wiping on them. Breath of Life is an emergency, not something you want to use unless you've got no other choice, and adding Quick Siphon on top of Puncturing Sweep, causes you to regain a crap ton of health with each jab, I found that it works really well to solo most content. I regain about 500hp with each cast of Puncturing Sweep (that's almost the same as Breath of Life), and that's just on one target, if there's multiple targets, my health bar just jumps back to full as soon as I'm hit by something. If I would add the hots from Regen and Purifying Ritual into the rotation, I don't know what I could solo, I will try it on a dungeon, but not until I have some legendary armor rings.

It's useless in pvp, since sweeps is so easy to avoid, but in pve I find it's gold.

Also, I use Inner Light mainly so I don't have to reactivate it, but also in emergencies to have Breath of Life crit really hard. If I pick Reflective Light for example, that'll also benefit from the crit, but I definitely will think about swapping out Inner Light on the first bar.

I'll also definitely swap Ritual of Rebirth with Healing Springs, thanks.

Zsymon

I decided on Reflective Light, I like using it, only costs me 155 magicka at vr5, it gives me another +500 spell resistance, and is affected by Inner Light. I much appreciate all the suggestions.

ThatHappyCat

IIRC Quick Siphon only ever heals you once per casting of Puncturing Sweep, regardless of how many times/targets it hits. You definitely don't need it to heal back to full with Sweep against multiple enemies, Sweep does that by itself very well.

Regeneration would likely give you better HPS than Quick Siphon with Sweep.

xarguideb17_ESO

Why did I always use biting jabs morph with my templar...
Also, in case of either morph, stuns and knockbacks are really annoying. Maybe consider using Immovable if you don't use your stamina for blocking anyway (since you can't block while spamming puncturing sweep).

Zsymon

HappyCat, Quick Siphon is triggered four times during one cast of Puncturing Sweep, and four additional times per enemy that is debuffed by Quick Siphon, I tested it many many times. It also triggers Siphon Spirit four times, giving you 4% of max magicka back (per enemy, so 12% against three enemies), but I prefer Quick Siphon because it'll make multiple elites much easier to manage. In the time it takes me to cast Siphon Spirit I usually die.

Without quick siphon, I always wipe on most triple world bosses, with quick siphon I never go below 80% hp. Also makes a huge difference against tough targets like world boss atronachs and such enemies.

Zsymon

I just block the stuns and knockbacks inbetween my Sweeps, works so far, just requires you to pay a bit of attention to the cues.

ThatHappyCat

Perhaps it was changed at some point, but when I had points in Quick Siphon it never showed more than one proc on any skill cast according to combat logs.

Against difficult foes I just use Blazing Shield +/- Channelled Focus. Works on almost everything.

EDIT:

You are correct, Siphon does indeed proc off each hit (in fact according to the log it sometimes procs twice from one hit... hmmm). My mistake.

Zsymon

It procs twice because of Burning Light passive.

Burning Light adds an extra hit (25% chance), and I reckon if it fires it will set off Siphon additionally.

Trust me, Quick Siphon + Puncturing Sweep is amazing.. I wouldn't say overpowered because it's useless in pvp and group content, but for soloing it is sweet.