Templar Craglorn Solo Build.

Qhival

I appreciate all the feedback. I've learned a lot and hope to continue to learn more. Note this build is purely for solo purposes in craglorn. This is not meant to be a competitive pvp build.

Here's a video, had some input lag so I made a lot of mistakes, but it gets the point across
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3en166q5ZA&feature=youtu.be

Hotbar
-inner light
-blazing shield
-puncturing sweep
-blazing spear
-repentance
U- Empowering sweep


Some other important build info
-max points in health (for blazing shield)
-create a light armor seducer set with +health enchantments w/ traits and use mana reduction jewelry.
-use a restoration staff as your main weapon
-max out your racial passives of course.
-max out all the fighters guild passives
-max out light armor tree passives
-max out restoration staff passives
-in the aedric spear tree max out all the passives
-in the dawn wrath tree max out the restoring spirit passive
-in the restoring light tree max out master ritualist


Play style is simple.
-Turn inner light on for +20% spell crit chance.
-Round everything up, using corners and basic logic.
-Keep blazing shield up all the time.
-Use blazing spear every 6 seconds.
-Use puncturing strikes regularly, sometimes you will have to spam it.
-If you get low on mana, restore it with your heavy restoration attacks.
-Use your ult whenever you can.
-Use repentance every once in a while to collect health & stamina from corpses
-When fighting a boss, sometimes the best approach is to cast only your shield and use heavy attacks for mana in-between shield bursts.

All my testing has come brought me to FOUR conclusions:

1. Even though puncturing sweep and empowering sweep both use weapon crit and don't benefit from inner light, Inner light does effect blazing shield and blazing spear (and the ticks) This alone makes it worth keeping.

2. max health or max mana both can work. With max health my shield damage makes up for the lack of spell power. With max mana my puncturing sweep, blazing spear and empowering sweep makes up for the loss of shield damage. Shield damage does seem to be more important in those situations against hard hitting mobs and bosses though, because all you have time to do is keep your shield up and it's the only source of damage at that point. Health has a slight advantage because of this.

3. Blazing spear adds about 300dps to the build. I throw it down every 6 seconds because the ticks trigger the burning light passive. It's not a spam skill, and can't replace puncturing sweeps survivability, but It's still worth using.

4. I did have werewolf transformation as my mainbar ult. The reason was simply because the blood rage passive generates massive bonus ultimate points with this builds play-style. I would then switch to my other bar and use another more useful ultimate with the points it generated. I thought I had stumbled upon something great thinking of that, but it turned out switching bars is still too clunky to depend on in combat. I also found myself not being able to keep up with the amount of ultimate generated and it was overkill when using a cheap ultimate like empowering sweep. I may revisit this combination later if weapon switching is ever reliable.

Shinra

It's pretty similar to my own build.

Since you have a lot of life, spell symmetry (last skill from the mages guild) gets stronger, so I would suggest that. Still, it's hard to use because you can't heal yourself for 4 seconds and during that time most of the damage needs to be blocked by sun shield.

And I don't really use a combination of werewolf ability+Empowering Sweep to get the ulti up, but instead use Nova, when there are lots of enemies.

guybrushtb16_ESO

First of all, I'd recommend you max out magicka to softcap first, and then put the remaining points into health. Food should be taken into account, it's really cheap and provides big stat advantages.

AFAIK, for blood rage to work you have to have the werewolf ultimate slotted. In any case, werewolf, both as a whole and for it's ultimate is rather lacking in power, especially when on a magicka build and 1.5 probably won't change that. Sadly, templars lack really good offensive ultimates on their own, your best bet would probably be either soul strike or bat swarm for pvp if you were willing to go vampire for it, for pve solar prison is ok.

Inner light is a bit questionnable if you're intent on spamming puncturing strikes as your main source of damage, since as a melee skill it uses weapon crit instead of spell crit.

Depending on wether you'll want to pvp with it, you could probably use a charge somewhere. Unfortunately, templar's charge skill has been broken for a while and has an unlisted global cooldown that doesn't happen on any other skill, so you generally don't want to use it if you can avoid it. Weapon skills, especially invasion are a good substitute though.

The hotbar for my temp currently looks like

1. Invasion
2. Puncturing Sweep
3. Blazing Spear
4. Breath of Life
5. Blazing Shield
U: Soul Assault

I do like to carry resto staff as a secondary, and you could probably switch breath of life or blazing shield over there to take inner light, but since weapon switching in combat sadly is often slow and unreliable I tend to keep them on my primary. This is rarely neccessary in pve though, so there you could probably also do away with the charge and use something more stationary like channeled focus or blinding flashes.

Qhival

Shinra wrote: »

Since you have a lot of life, spell symmetry (last skill from the mages guild) gets stronger, so I would suggest that.

I actually planned on trying that after the free skill points refund this patch, will likely be on my secondary bar, though.

guybrushtb16_ESO wrote: »

First of all, I'd recommend you max out magicka to softcap first, and then put the remaining points into health. Food should be taken into account, it's really cheap and provides big stat advantages.

I've considered this, but I've been waiting on the provisioning overhaul before basing my build on food.

guybrushtb16_ESO wrote: »

AFAIK, for blood rage to work you have to have the werewolf ultimate slotted.

yeah i didnt explain my build correctly above. I actually have the tranformation on my main bar, and enpowering sweep on my secondary bar, so i switch bars when my ult gets up. I don't know why I thought I needed another werewolf ability on my bar, though.

guybrushtb16_ESO wrote: »

Inner light is a bit questionable if you're intent on spamming puncturing strikes as your main source of damage, since as a melee skill it uses weapon crit instead of spell crit.

wait... so this move uses spell power and magika for damage and weapon crit for crit? are you sure? I can't find that information anywhere. I was basing my build mostly off the information on
http://www.esohead.com/skills/26114-puncturing-strikes

guybrushtb16_ESO wrote: »

Depending on wether you'll want to pvp with it, you could probably use a charge somewhere.
The hotbar for my temp currently looks like

1. Invasion
2. Puncturing Sweep
3. Blazing Spear
4. Breath of Life
5. Blazing Shield
U: Soul Assault

Yeah I have a single target pvp build that looks much like this, but i'm not as interested in pvp right now.

guybrushtb16_ESO

Qhival wrote: »

wait... so this move uses spell power and magika for damage and weapon crit for crit? are you sure? I can't find that information anywhere. I was basing my build mostly off the information on
http://www.esohead.com/skills/26114-puncturing-strikes

Yes, I'm absolutely sure. Puncturing Sweep uses magicka, spell power and weapon crit.

In general, all class abilities that are considered melee will do that, for no apparent reason. Nobody really knows why, the game is notoriously unclear or even outright misleading at times when it comes to mechanics like that, but it is what it is.

Qhival

that's so unintuitive.

Shinra

I don't think that it uses weapon crit. Better said, even I haven't heard of that. (only questionable thing, as far as I know, is destro staff and healing staff abilities using magicka, weapon damage and spell crit.)
Still, I guess I will ask around to get clear on that.

guybrushtb16_ESO wrote: »

First of all, I'd recommend you max out magicka to softcap first, and then put the remaining points into health. Food should be taken into account, it's really cheap and provides big stat advantages.

Magicka to softcap? rlly? With a health-type templar build? Nope. Templar is the only class, with blazing shield, to get stronger and stronger the more health you are able to stack on it. The magicka regen from light armor gives the boost to keep up blazing shield all the time and together with the health regain from puncturing sweep it becomes one of the strongest tank-DD hybrid builds in the game.

And what you suggested would change the complete build, from a health-type, to a magicka-type. I could as well suggest for him to use a stamina-type build, because with puncturing strike, and as finisher Whirlwind, you get in some serious damage. He already uses Repentence so he will have enough stamina recovery too.

guybrushtb16_ESO wrote: »

Sadly, templars lack really good offensive ultimates on their own, your best bet would probably be either soul strike or bat swarm for pvp if you were willing to go vampire for it, for pve solar prison is ok.

I want to remind you, that Solar Disturbance is like a combination of Dragonknight Standard and Veil of Blades. And while it's high ultimate cost limits it's use in pvp, in solo pve you gain a lot more ultimate.
(Oh, and in Trials it's one of the best skills to have, because it even stacks with Veil of blades. (Nova reduces enemies damage done, Veil of Blades reduces the damage you get))

On the other hand, we have the cheap empowering sweep. With the build to support it, we can get an almost permanent 30+ % damage reduction against PvE mobs.

So while there may not be the perfect offensive ultimates for pure-pvp DPS builds, for PvE (both Solo and Groups) we have some of the best.

Qhival

edited my original post with the updated build information i had here.

Shinra

You are looking for a replacement for a DD-AoE-heal-CC Skill. What would you possibly be able to replace this skill with, and still get the same awesome results?

That aside, playing with blazing shield and puncturing sweep is the easiest best skill combination anybody could come up with.

But a long long time ago, when puncturing sweep didn't give you life, blazing shield blocked your mana and the Veteran NPC where like half gods, you would still want to play solo.

So here are my builds from THAT time, maybe you actually like something. (Note that I always used health-type builds with light armor)

My second weapon was always my restro staff, with the skills Rapid Regeneration, Rune Focus and Extended Ritual. Before tough fights, I would use those three spells to increase my survivability. (Remember, there wasn't anything as convinient as an strong AoE giving you life back on top of it.)

Dual Wield skill set

Blood Craze (Twin Slashes Morph)
Degeneration (Entropy Morph)
Steel Tornado (Whirlwind Morph)
Blazing Shield
Volcanic Rune (Fire Rune Morph)
Ultimate: Solar Disturbance

Using as little Mana as possible during a fight I would use Blood Crace and Degeneration to get health back while keeping up blazing shield as soon as there was some life missing. Vulcanic Rune wasn't used that often, but with some strong Melee enemies this is a useful skill. as soon as all, or most, enemies got some damage in, I finished with two or three steel tornados. (This build worked wonders, since neither Blood Craze nor Degeneration cost much.)

Two-Handed skill set

Puncturing Sweep
Brawler (Cleave Morph)
Wrecking Blow (Uppercut Morph)
Breath of Life
Volcanic Rune (Fire Rune Morph)
Ultimate: Empowering Sweep

Yes, even without blazing shield. Getting a Shield up only through Brawler and the weapon enchantment. Using Volcanic Rune every ~3 seconds to keep the damage to a minimum. Wrecking Blow as soon as there where less enemies to deal with. Puncturing Sweep for some damage against enemies on the ground. Empowering Sweep would be used in every fight, if possible.

Qhival

posted a video of the build in action on the original post.