Templar Magicka PVE Dps Help! - Abilities questions + Gear

Will16 · May 2015

Hey guys, im a templar who is trying to maximise their pve magicka based dps

I would like some help as to what certain skills I should use, and which ones are better than others. I have a few questions, and I know they're long, but if you could answer them I would greatly appreciate it

The skillsbar setup I am currently using is: Here

http://www.esohead.com/calculator/skills#1.mokz9s8rFTl8hMhW8hmOd8A4hI8A4fM8A4uT8rZp08rFTd8bznQ8A4hI8fraS8A4uT8N7xLDG6LDu8j7JrUM6LU06LUx8n7JrWF8e7rLaqk6LaqT8O7ardeF6LkP6LdeB847zzxLCe8zf7zzNbo8zu7zzHfYE6zHfZd8zG7zzHQ3F8zI7zzJIoX6zJIkL8zN7zzJZcY8zA7zzKpUN8zL7zzK4EX

My first bar is my single target bar, and my second is my execute/AoE bar.

Questions

1 - Firstly, my understanding is that, to get the best dps from a templar build, you need about 2 or so DoT effects, along with a spell power effect, and then inbetween them cast a filler ability with medium weave, to finish with the radiant oppression ability. The DoT effects I currently use are Vampires Bane and Destructive Reach. However, I would like your opinion. I know Vampires bane is a good DoT to have, but should I continue using Destructive reach? Or should I change it for another ability, such as Purifying light, blazing spear or weakness to elements etc, for a better dps output? Or should I just ditch it completely, stick with one DoT and replace it with channeled focus or something different, like another buff?

2 - For my main attacks I have been using Force Pulse. However, I have heard that Puncturing sweeps can produce better dps, but I have also heard that it is not as effective. Which one is better for dps? I know puncturing sweeps is a melee ranged ability so does this cause a problem/drawback?

3 - I use Radiant Oppression as my execute. When should I start using it? I have heard at like 20% but I have also heard around 40-45%. Which one will give the highest overall, final dps? And also is the ability affected by the spell damage bonus from structured entropy or solar barrage?

4 - Finally (ability-wise), are there any abilities that you would recommend? I have seen a variety of different builds and have picked out ones I think will work best, but I may be missing a major one that produces high end dps. I dont mind re-speccing my morphs about this if I have made the wrong choice. So are there any seriously brilliant abilities, damage-wise or simply buff abilities, that I am missing that I should use?

5 - Now for gear

I have an ideal gear bonus' setup in my head, but im not sure if it would work. I am currently using one of the monster helm sets (head and shoulders) and yet I would still like to be able to have gear that gives the following set bonus': 4x Spell Damage, 2x Max Magicka. I know that you do have enough slots to do this, but is it actually possible to get that exact combination? I know a way to get 4x Spell Damage, 1x Max Magicka and 1x Magicka Regen, but I would prefer to have 2x Max Magicka instead. Is this possible? If not I would also like to know if the following is possible: 4x Spell Damage, 1x Max Magicka and then 1x Max Health, so then I can invest more enchantments/attributes into magicka in the hope of achieving a similar outcome to my ideal setup.

Thanks for reading and I hope you can help me out :P Thanks in advance!

Will

Will16 · May 2015

Bump I could really do with help with this

nagarjunna · May 2015

OK really quick

1) Spell Damage - affects heals as well as DPS
2) Magicka Pool - affects heals as well as DPS
3) Crit - affects heals as well as DPS

In that order. So your equipment should reflect that.

All should have Magicka with your jewelry doing cost reduction.

Your bar should reflect your play style and there is another post on a build you should look at

nagarjunna · May 2015

here:

forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/169694/magicka-templar-healer-dps-vdsa/p1

This would be a good solid start point.

Will16 · May 2015

nagarjunna wrote: »

OK really quick

1) Spell Damage - affects heals as well as DPS
2) Magicka Pool - affects heals as well as DPS
3) Crit - affects heals as well as DPS

In that order. So your equipment should reflect that.

All should have Magicka with your jewelry doing cost reduction.

Your bar should reflect your play style and there is another post on a build you should look at

nagarjunna wrote: »

here:

forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/169694/magicka-templar-healer-dps-vdsa/p1

This would be a good solid start point.

Ah right, well I knew about the benefits of spell dmg, magicka and crit, but thanks for linking that build. It was quite helpful, abilities wise, but what I am really looking for is a full out dps build, with no offhand healing or anything. Thanks anyways though, but could you help me out with that? Also Im still looking for the answer to my 5 questions

Will16 · May 2015

Bump would really like these questions answered!

david31741 · May 2015

What you are looking for - all depends on your playstyle/how much you want to min/max - sacrifice survivability/sustainability. But the options are straightforward - do you want to be in melee range or caster range.

For magicka dps full out - best a Mag Temp can do - - use the same gear as the other magicka based classes are wearing - go for max spell power - cyro light/adroit/torug/MK - mix in options that support your playstyle - obviously CP allocation can help support your build through spell cost reduction/mana regen/damage increase.

Skills are entropy - jabs - shards - radiant sometimes reflective light is good too. Use radiant around 30% and adjust based on group dps

weapon is two 1h or once you get some VDSA weapons the options open up a little.

Joy_Division · May 2015

Templar magicka DPS theorycrafting is still something of a terra incognita which is why you have not gotten as many responses as you had hoped for.

I will say there is no debate regarding gear because ZoS's failure to provide us with meaningful options here. Stack spell damage as best you can. Everyone runs 4 piece martial knowledge + 2 rings of Cyrodiil light + 2 pieces of adroitness. I personally would use Valkyn Skoria undaunted set (more boring non-variety) and a Master's Inferno staff to fill out the build. If those last 3 items are unavailable to you, just use Torug's Pact; point is stack spell power as high as it can go.

To your questions:

1. Destructive Reach is a bit expensive and the Dot is not strong. I'd use this if I had a Master's staff. Without one, if it's not a DPS loss it is not adding anything productive to warrant a slot on your bar. Your healer should cast elemental drain (this is only morph that should be taken); if you're healer ain't running it, someone needs to and your group will be better off if you do this rather than using destructive reach.

2. Puncturing Sweep > Force Pulse if positioning is not an issue. In addition to damage, it is an AoE and it heals you. Also you can weave in a heavier "medium" attack than force pulse.

3. Radiant Destruction has gotten changed so often I forget exactly when the damage spikes surpasses your bread and butter. My memory tells me 30% is the sweet spot - I know for sure 20% is too low and I don't care what unscientific PvPers anecdotal whines exist on these forums say, your DPS will suffer -significantly - if you spam this skill willy nilly. Only one tick of this channel is affected by empower bonuses so don't get your hopes too high.

4. For casual raiding, I'd probably slot breath of life because you are a magicka templar and backup is always nice (and lose destructive touch). I've seen templars spam jabs as an AOE instead of solar barrage/elemental ring; my instinct tells me works fine but I have no figures to substantiate this.

leshpar · May 2015

I've been working on maximizing a dps magicka templar build as well. Currently I am only VR2, and I mainly heal in group content, so I am not 100% worried about being competitive, just so long as I can kill things.

I plan to finish my bar out with Radiant Destruction, reflective light, structured entropy, blazing spear, and radiant ward. My ultimate will be the mages guild one once I can get it, meteor.

I am currently using force pulse instead of radiant destruction (will morph to radiant glory for the heal) because I can't unlock it yet, however force pulse will be gone and my primary single target nuke will be radiant destruction no matter what health percent the target is at. If I can't afford the channel time, then spamming light attacks works in those situations.

Reflective light is my primary spammable ability when there are 2 or 3 targets near to each other that I can hit. This becomes a "keep the dot up" on single targets though.

Structured entropy offers a small heal as well as a pretty massive boost to max health and spell damage. With the mages guild passive this also adds a small boost to max magicka and magicka regen. its a win win win win. ^_^

blazing spear is a good single target stun as well as a single target or aoe dot that you can use which has a chance to proc the passive from the aedric spear line that has a chance to do additional damage. That's pretty much the only reason I chose this over something else.

Radiant ward I chose more for the survivability than the damage it does. Its an absorb, so it helps a lot.

There are also great passives in both of the templar dps trees that increase spell resistance and increases crit damage and reduces magicka cost of spells.

My second bar is set for full on heals, so I will switch to it if I ever need to heal myself or someone else.

I can't really offer the best advice on gear yet as I just am using crafted sets right now. The easiest one to get is the seducer set. I find the flat 8% reduced spell cost is amazingly useful and the extra magicka and magicka regen are good too.

Currently at level VR2 with full VR1 gear (I recently hit VR2) I am doing roughly 3500-3800 single target dps and around 5500 aoe dps.

Stinkur · May 2015

Head Torugs Pact medium infused
Chest Torug Pact heavy infused
Shoulder, Leg, glove,feet, martial knowledge
waist Adroitness set
neck adroit set
rings cyrodil rings for 2 piece spell power
full magic enchants, spell cost reduction,

I've been using 2 1hand axes and 1 destro flame staff(torugs pact) for the 3 piece, spell power and HP
The above is an endgame gear set up, but if you look up the sets you can probably find some crafted pieces to substitute in.
You want as much magicka as you can get, then spell power and spell crit on a Templar. We have a passive in aedric i think it is that gives +10% more spell crit damage.

my DW Bar( single target boss burns)
Radiant Destruction once boss at 30-35%
Puncturing Strikes- bread and butter key
Vampire Bane- strong single target dot
Structured Entropy- +20% spell dmg, +8% health
Magelight(or charge) magelight passive is 10% crit,
Shooting Star ULT

3 mage guild abilities gives you more mag regen, more overall mag from passives plus of course the crit and health.
If you go with charge you will need to keep Vamp Bane up for the extra crit. Charge good for those times you need to run away from boss but want to get back quick.

Basically always make sure Entropy is up so you are doing 20% more dmg, vamp bane, and puncturing strike, weave a light attack in for ultimate generation. Punct Strikes till you need to refresh entropy/bane.

2nd Bar- destro flame staff(aoe) utility
Blazing Spear toss into a group
Elemental Ring- the morph that adds a dot
Extended Ritual/charge- nice little helpful ground aoe heal for group and your self
Channel Focus- this is a good magic return you can toss down to help with mag either on boss fight or aoe's
Magelight for the crit and +mag and so you dont lose it when swapping from bar 1 to bar 2

basically I will toss my spears while moving in then drop channel focus down as i run around spamming elemental ring and toss down healing circle.

I just switched to this setup because I dont like over complicated builds and bar swapping alot. It is a strong single target build and strong aoe.

Will16 · May 2015

Ah great thanks for all the responses guys! Its helped a lot, ill have a play around with it and see what I can do

One thing I would like to ask though, is about dark flare. Ive recently heard that it gives good dps, but im uncertian. Do you guys think it is viable for high end dps or is force pulse/puncturing sweeps with weaving always better??

Stinkur · May 2015

No to dark flare, cast timer on it makes it bad for DPS rotation, but if you meant insta cast solar barrage the other morph it is good aoe, comparable to force pulse spam(force pulse adds a dot to the aoe and passive to return mag killing with it).

If you build AOE bar I would use 2 primary spam buttons for AOE time, force pulse, solar barrage or blazing spear. I prefer blazing spear because the passive while slotted is +10% crit damage. So blazing spear a must, barrage good for the +20% damage on next attack(works on next barrage or spear I've read), impulse is good because of the passive that returns magicka for enemy killed with a destro spell.
In theory if you like 3 skill aoe rotation over simple 2 button,.... blazing spear ground, barrage, pulse, barrage, pulse, refresh spear...

Will16 · May 2015

Ah okay, and yeah I meant the cast timer dark flare, its just because I saw a build on youtube where apparently it worked quite well. And yeah Ive changed my build now it looks something like this:
http://www.esohead.com/calculator/skills#1.mokz9s8rFTl8rHnY8hmOd8A4hI8A4fM8A4uT8rZp08bzno8bznQ8A4hI8fraS8A4uT8N7xLDG6LDu8j7JrUM6LU06LUx6rUR8n7JrWF8e7rLaqk6LaqT8O7ardeF6LkP6LdeB847zzxLCe8zf7zzNbo8zu7zzHfYE6zHfZd8zG7zzHQ3F8zI7zzJIoX6zJIkL8zN7zzJZcY8zA7zzKpUN8zL7zzK4EX

So as you can see for aoe I use blazing spear and then just spam puncturing sweeps, and refresh the spear every so often.
I change out the force pulse depending on the boss for puncturing sweeps.

Addihul · May 2015

Dark Flare is excellent. You can get it critting for 22k+ with the right setup . It's damage bonus also stacks on itself now. Situationally, I use it as a main attack without the need to light weave.

Will16 · May 2015

Yeah, thats what I heard, it can produce huge dps even with the slow cast time. What gear are you using? Thats pretty awesome for you to get 22k damage in one hit

Whats your spell damage and max magicka at?

Stinkur · May 2015

Interesting with Dark Flare idea, you keep entropy up for the +20% spell dmg and spam the flare? Plus make sure you have an aedric skill on bar for the extra crit dmg, in theory could be high DPS.

Addihul · May 2015

Well. Most dungeon boss fights I'll single target for 15-18k with my 50/50 gear on. Really long fights tend to be a tad less. With someone running 3 piece infal, ele, combat prayer, etc I occasionally get to 20k. I keep my magicka at 35k on my dps bar. Sp dmg in all gold with entropy up 100% is at 2700. I roll 4pc Martial, 5pc Healer, 2/3 Pc Torug. 6 light / 1 heavy chest. All infused / divines with mage mundus. Dual swords with off resto. That's because I 50/50 90% of the time. I actually get the same(ish) DPS running my 50/50 set as I do going full DPS gear (cyrodil, adroit, torug, martial, master sharp infern staff). I've tried Valk helm/shoulders too and I end up sticking with my 50/50 build so I'm versatile while also dropping great deeps. I've also got a hardened full heals set I use situationally in trials.

DPS rotation goes: shards, entropy, flare, flare flare (repeat but only doing entropy every 2nd rotation). Then radiant at 40% to tick the DPS parse up significantly. I keep channeled focus under me at all times on my offbar.

I have a complete 50/50 build written out in Word Doc format if you want it. It's very well detailed. It's a culmination of wisdom from a half dozen/dozen or so top tier templars.. though it's customized for what works for me.

The suggestions in this thread are also great.

Stinkur · May 2015

Interesting, will have to give flare a shot, replace punct. strikes with it. Why shards though? You can skip that for the crit of magelight plus magelight gives more magicka. I can see leaving shards(blazing spear) on your bar for the passive. Couldnt you just skip using it stick to entropy and flare spam till refresh entropy and then radiant when boss around 35-40%?

Addihul · May 2015

Shards is my primary AoE. However it is also part of the single target weave. If I didn't use it single target, it would stay on the bar anyway for the 10% sp crit dmg passive. This is a huge skill passive. It DoT's as you know and procs burning light sometimes for 3k so it adds to the DPS rotation. It ends up being like 6% total DPS when said and done but everything adds up. Possible you could cut it out of the rotation all together or only use it as an opener, but I believe adding it in the rotation will eke out more DPS, which is the point. This is also true if you DPS with the Valk set. The DoT plus burning light increases the meteor proc chance exponentially so it is a must if using Valk with Puncturing Sweeps and Vamp. The more DoTs the merrier for that build. Not to mention that shards is THE AoE skill of choice for temps for a number of reasons.

My DPS bar maximizes a number of passives. Inner Light, Structured Entropy, Dark Flare, Blazing Shards, Radiant, Ice Comet. Gotta put hella points in to Thaumaturge and the crit damage CP line as well (I forget the name). Also spell erosion. I was using Puncturing Strikes as well but switched once another guildie turned a few of us on to Flare's potential. Since you're squishier with this build, you tend to stay alive better because of being at range. Strikes is great for heals, but since you're in melee range, you're doing your whole rotation while cycling through block, hoping not to get wrecked by red.

If you stay at range, you can also (occasionally) ditch your heavy chest (if you use it), adding in the 5th martial piece for the extra 10% dmg every 4s. Though if using Valk, punc strikes will always win if you're focusing on proc chance. But the name of the game is balance here. A pure DPS set it awesome for about 30-60s of a fight unless you have huge depth in champion points or a sorc to help offload the loss of regen and spell cost reduction. Going slightly hybrid allows you to put the balance back in your build, per se. Most of the 100% pure DPS temps running around are doing so in groups of other like minded DPS beasts, wrecking through content so fast that the downfalls are minimized.

Stinkur · May 2015

Addihul wrote: »

Shards is my primary AoE. However it is also part of the single target weave. If I didn't use it single target, it would stay on the bar anyway for the 10% sp crit dmg passive. This is a huge skill passive. It DoT's as you know and procs burning light sometimes for 3k so it adds to the DPS rotation. It ends up being like 6% total DPS when said and done but everything adds up. Possible you could cut it out of the rotation all together or only use it as an opener, but I believe adding it in the rotation will eke out more DPS, which is the point. This is also true if you DPS with the Valk set. The DoT plus burning light increases the meteor proc chance exponentially so it is a must if using Valk with Puncturing Sweeps and Vamp. The more DoTs the merrier for that build. Not to mention that shards is THE AoE skill of choice for temps for a number of reasons.

My DPS bar maximizes a number of passives. Inner Light, Structured Entropy, Dark Flare, Blazing Shards, Radiant, Ice Comet. Gotta put hella points in to Thaumaturge and the crit damage CP line as well (I forget the name). Also spell erosion. I was using Puncturing Strikes as well but switched once another guildie turned a few of us on to Flare's potential. Since you're squishier with this build, you tend to stay alive better because of being at range. Strikes is great for heals, but since you're in melee range, you're doing your whole rotation while cycling through block, hoping not to get wrecked by red.

If you stay at range, you can also (occasionally) ditch your heavy chest (if you use it), adding in the 5th martial piece for the extra 10% dmg every 4s. Though if using Valk, punc strikes will always win if you're focusing on proc chance. But the name of the game is balance here. A pure DPS set it awesome for about 30-60s of a fight unless you have huge depth in champion points or a sorc to help offload the loss of regen and spell cost reduction. Going slightly hybrid allows you to put the balance back in your build, per se. Most of the 100% pure DPS temps running around are doing so in groups of other like minded DPS beasts, wrecking through content so fast that the downfalls are minimized.

thanks for the insight, I've reading alot over on Tamriel Foundry Templar forum as well. Between all the bits and pieces I've picked up i think I have my final gear/build setup. Going to give flare a chance. Just wish I knew better when I made my toon, Argonian....uhg, so wish I was Breton.
Next step is work in PVP set up, or just delegate my templar to PVE melt faces dps and use my NB and DK for pvp.