Cinbri wrote: »

tinythinker wrote: »

Mr_Nobody wrote: »

tinythinker wrote: »

Wow, didn't realize this thread had kept going. No way I can catch up. Sorry if I write something redundant.

I don't like to "bash the devs", because we aren't there when they are having meetings and doing their daily work, but do Templar as a case study strike anyone else that there may be an incomplete or inconsistent vision in what combat is supposed to be in ESO or how the elements (ground DoTs, sticky/curse DoTs, beam DoTs, gap-closers, etc.) work together effectively? It's like different models or aspirations in conflict with each other. And if not, it would be nice to have combat devs do a stream or vid using their preferred combos explaining how they see the pieces working together.

One small idea to toss out as well:

For the DoT-heavy classes, it would be nice if curse/sticky DoTs did half the damage remaining for their ticks if the DoT is purged. So a target could take half-damage as burst or deal with less damage at once over a longer period. Would also make siege much more interesting in Cyro

Great ideas but remember that siege, dots and cc against groups dont work because... Purge.

Spammable superior aoe cleanse. Dont try even try to defend it. Every group has at least 3 of these. One charging through doors looks like an xmas tree blinging every 0.3 seconds.

But that's the point. I hit you with two sticky DoTs --> you or an ally hits Purge as soon as I do --> you immediately take half of the full damage you would have taken if the DoT had run its full course as an instant burst. If you get four sticky DoTs on you and Cleanse, you just took 50% of the full damage value of all four DoTs. This just becomes base combat functionality for all sticky DoTs.

As was said on last eso live - sieges will be as ground suppressing aoe now, so effectiveness of purge vs sieges will decrease a lot.

It was my understanding the effect from catapults like meatbags would still stick to you after you left the area, but in any case I'd still like skill-line DoTs to get the upgrade.

Joy_Division wrote: »

tinythinker wrote: »

Cinbri wrote: »

tinythinker wrote: »

Mr_Nobody wrote: »

tinythinker wrote: »

Wow, didn't realize this thread had kept going. No way I can catch up. Sorry if I write something redundant.

I don't like to "bash the devs", because we aren't there when they are having meetings and doing their daily work, but do Templar as a case study strike anyone else that there may be an incomplete or inconsistent vision in what combat is supposed to be in ESO or how the elements (ground DoTs, sticky/curse DoTs, beam DoTs, gap-closers, etc.) work together effectively? It's like different models or aspirations in conflict with each other. And if not, it would be nice to have combat devs do a stream or vid using their preferred combos explaining how they see the pieces working together.

One small idea to toss out as well:

For the DoT-heavy classes, it would be nice if curse/sticky DoTs did half the damage remaining for their ticks if the DoT is purged. So a target could take half-damage as burst or deal with less damage at once over a longer period. Would also make siege much more interesting in Cyro

Great ideas but remember that siege, dots and cc against groups dont work because... Purge.

Spammable superior aoe cleanse. Dont try even try to defend it. Every group has at least 3 of these. One charging through doors looks like an xmas tree blinging every 0.3 seconds.

But that's the point. I hit you with two sticky DoTs --> you or an ally hits Purge as soon as I do --> you immediately take half of the full damage you would have taken if the DoT had run its full course as an instant burst. If you get four sticky DoTs on you and Cleanse, you just took 50% of the full damage value of all four DoTs. This just becomes base combat functionality for all sticky DoTs.

As was said on last eso live - sieges will be as ground suppressing aoe now, so effectiveness of purge vs sieges will decrease a lot.

It was my understanding the effect from catapults like meatbags would still stick to you after you left the area, but in any case I'd still like skill-line DoTs to get the upgrade.

If cleanse only got rid of half the damage, or worse made you take half the remaining damage upon its use, I'm pretty sure Id never play a templar again because we'd have absolutely zero defense mechanics in our class. It would be pointless to play.

Such a mechanic could have a cool-down like cc, but the more interesting part is the idea that defense against DoTs is the only good Templar defense mechanic for PvP.

Joy_Division wrote: »

tinythinker wrote: »

Cinbri wrote: »

tinythinker wrote: »

Mr_Nobody wrote: »

tinythinker wrote: »

Wow, didn't realize this thread had kept going. No way I can catch up. Sorry if I write something redundant.

I don't like to "bash the devs", because we aren't there when they are having meetings and doing their daily work, but do Templar as a case study strike anyone else that there may be an incomplete or inconsistent vision in what combat is supposed to be in ESO or how the elements (ground DoTs, sticky/curse DoTs, beam DoTs, gap-closers, etc.) work together effectively? It's like different models or aspirations in conflict with each other. And if not, it would be nice to have combat devs do a stream or vid using their preferred combos explaining how they see the pieces working together.

One small idea to toss out as well:

For the DoT-heavy classes, it would be nice if curse/sticky DoTs did half the damage remaining for their ticks if the DoT is purged. So a target could take half-damage as burst or deal with less damage at once over a longer period. Would also make siege much more interesting in Cyro

Great ideas but remember that siege, dots and cc against groups dont work because... Purge.

Spammable superior aoe cleanse. Dont try even try to defend it. Every group has at least 3 of these. One charging through doors looks like an xmas tree blinging every 0.3 seconds.

But that's the point. I hit you with two sticky DoTs --> you or an ally hits Purge as soon as I do --> you immediately take half of the full damage you would have taken if the DoT had run its full course as an instant burst. If you get four sticky DoTs on you and Cleanse, you just took 50% of the full damage value of all four DoTs. This just becomes base combat functionality for all sticky DoTs.

As was said on last eso live - sieges will be as ground suppressing aoe now, so effectiveness of purge vs sieges will decrease a lot.

It was my understanding the effect from catapults like meatbags would still stick to you after you left the area, but in any case I'd still like skill-line DoTs to get the upgrade.

If cleanse only got rid of half the damage, or worse made you take half the remaining damage upon its use, I'm pretty sure Id never play a templar again because we'd have absolutely zero defense mechanics in our class. It would be pointless to play.

It might just happen, because in order to be effective against dots, I'd have to roll meditate and sit in the pressure.

But if I wanted to play with stationary rocks, I'd go outside lol. I agree Templars are going to be SOL.

Joy_Division wrote: »

tinythinker wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

tinythinker wrote: »

Cinbri wrote: »

tinythinker wrote: »

Mr_Nobody wrote: »

tinythinker wrote: »

Wow, didn't realize this thread had kept going. No way I can catch up. Sorry if I write something redundant.

I don't like to "bash the devs", because we aren't there when they are having meetings and doing their daily work, but do Templar as a case study strike anyone else that there may be an incomplete or inconsistent vision in what combat is supposed to be in ESO or how the elements (ground DoTs, sticky/curse DoTs, beam DoTs, gap-closers, etc.) work together effectively? It's like different models or aspirations in conflict with each other. And if not, it would be nice to have combat devs do a stream or vid using their preferred combos explaining how they see the pieces working together.

One small idea to toss out as well:

For the DoT-heavy classes, it would be nice if curse/sticky DoTs did half the damage remaining for their ticks if the DoT is purged. So a target could take half-damage as burst or deal with less damage at once over a longer period. Would also make siege much more interesting in Cyro

Great ideas but remember that siege, dots and cc against groups dont work because... Purge.

Spammable superior aoe cleanse. Dont try even try to defend it. Every group has at least 3 of these. One charging through doors looks like an xmas tree blinging every 0.3 seconds.

But that's the point. I hit you with two sticky DoTs --> you or an ally hits Purge as soon as I do --> you immediately take half of the full damage you would have taken if the DoT had run its full course as an instant burst. If you get four sticky DoTs on you and Cleanse, you just took 50% of the full damage value of all four DoTs. This just becomes base combat functionality for all sticky DoTs.

As was said on last eso live - sieges will be as ground suppressing aoe now, so effectiveness of purge vs sieges will decrease a lot.

It was my understanding the effect from catapults like meatbags would still stick to you after you left the area, but in any case I'd still like skill-line DoTs to get the upgrade.

If cleanse only got rid of half the damage, or worse made you take half the remaining damage upon its use, I'm pretty sure Id never play a templar again because we'd have absolutely zero defense mechanics in our class. It would be pointless to play.

Such a mechanic could have a cool-down like cc, but the more interesting part is the idea that defense against DoTs is the only good Templar defense mechanic for PvP.

Interesting as in "wait, isn't this a bit too limiting and too narrowly focused?"

I can't say because I'm not in the dev meetings, but it seems like there are different philosophies or approaches that have existed from alpha to today, and what is in the game is a mix of those plus fixes added along the way. I would imagine that it's like building and rebuilding an airplane while flying it. I wonder if they ever sit down to discuss the overall guiding principles they want for combat, the design categories and parameters associated with the axioms derived from those guiding principles, the rules for how the design categories/elements interact based on those axioms, etc.

That would make it easier to deal with so many skill lines and set bonuses/effects, to know that a certain skill or bonus is both type 1 and 2, and this other skill is type 3, and "whenever a 1 and 3 interact the following occurs..." That makes the system modular and help in skill/set bonus passes and reviews, as anything that doesn't fit within the categories/elements, or any executions/interactions that don't obey the basic axioms, would have to be modified or eliminated. Thus less potential for error or mismatches with new skill lines and gear sets.

Beyond overall combat, each class could also have its own design parameters to make it more comparable with the others.

I'm not a pro-theorycrafter, or even an aspiring armchair developer, but if they do have such a clear system I would love to see a schematic overview to better understand the design goals and limits as well as to be able to better explain my concerns and make better suggestions by knowing what is on or off the table. Having so many variables to deal with for combat has got to be a nightmare, so even when I don't agree with the changes made (and not made) I always have at least a little sympathy for the combat team.

I am interested in a re-tooling of the Templar cleanse though -

I like the idea of reducing cleansed effects from 5 to 2 but removing ALL roots/snares and providing 2 seconds of root/snare immunity. Additionally the heal should tick every 1 second and cost should be brought back down a bit.

Isn’t the change to Empower a pretty big nerf to Magplars?

They get empower from Dark Flare, and it currently empowers the next Dark Flare. That adds a ton of extra damage. After these changes, empower will only work on light attacks. So it basically will be an effect used for weaving. But there’s two problems with that. First, even with light attacks getting buffed, I think it’s highly unlikely that a 40% increase to a light attack will add as much damage as a 20% increase to Dark Flare did.

More importantly, the empower from Dark Flare will now only do something if you light attack weave. But 1.1 second channel abilities like Dark Flare (and abilities like Sweeps and Lethal Arrow) are essentially designed to NOT be utilized with light attack weaving. This is because the channel lasts just long enough that you can actually immediately cast an ability again because, by the time the ability goes off, the global cooldown is already over. This basically eliminates the need to weave light attacks to maximize DPS.

In other words, Dark Flare now has a buff attached to it that is completely counterintuitive to its design. In order to make use of the empower, you have to do something that doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense given the skill’s design. Yes, you could still make use of it through something like: Dark Flare —> Instant-Cast ability —> Light Attack —> repeat. And I suppose it’s possible that just light attack weaving Dark Flare could be a very slight DPS boost, especially with light attack damage being buffed. But it still just seems completely bizarre to me to have a 1.1 second channel ability have a buff to light attacks.

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

Isn’t the change to Empower a pretty big nerf to Magplars?

They get empower from Dark Flare, and it currently empowers the next Dark Flare. That adds a ton of extra damage. After these changes, empower will only work on light attacks. So it basically will be an effect used for weaving. But there’s two problems with that. First, even with light attacks getting buffed, I think it’s highly unlikely that a 40% increase to a light attack will add as much damage as a 20% increase to Dark Flare did.

More importantly, the empower from Dark Flare will now only do something if you light attack weave. But 1.1 second channel abilities like Dark Flare (and abilities like Sweeps and Lethal Arrow) are essentially designed to NOT be utilized with light attack weaving. This is because the channel lasts just long enough that you can actually immediately cast an ability again because, by the time the ability goes off, the global cooldown is already over. This basically eliminates the need to weave light attacks to maximize DPS.

In other words, Dark Flare now has a buff attached to it that is completely counterintuitive to its design. In order to make use of the empower, you have to do something that doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense given the skill’s design. Yes, you could still make use of it through something like: Dark Flare —> Instant-Cast ability —> Light Attack —> repeat. And I suppose it’s possible that just light attack weaving Dark Flare could be a very slight DPS boost, especially with light attack damage being buffed. But it still just seems completely bizarre to me to have a 1.1 second channel ability have a buff to light attacks.

Even with the old empower it was more beneficial for DPS to LA weave than to just spam DarkFlare (only exception: you use dark flare on a DW-bar or any other stam-weapon...).
Reason: 20% more damage to darkflare is less damage than an empowered LA...

So this is definitely a buff, but we'll see if it's usefull for magplar DPS...bc from what i remember, darkflare is pretty expensive and i highly doubt it can be sustained in a way a templar really benefits from that change.

Minno wrote: »

Destruent wrote: »

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

Isn’t the change to Empower a pretty big nerf to Magplars?

They get empower from Dark Flare, and it currently empowers the next Dark Flare. That adds a ton of extra damage. After these changes, empower will only work on light attacks. So it basically will be an effect used for weaving. But there’s two problems with that. First, even with light attacks getting buffed, I think it’s highly unlikely that a 40% increase to a light attack will add as much damage as a 20% increase to Dark Flare did.

More importantly, the empower from Dark Flare will now only do something if you light attack weave. But 1.1 second channel abilities like Dark Flare (and abilities like Sweeps and Lethal Arrow) are essentially designed to NOT be utilized with light attack weaving. This is because the channel lasts just long enough that you can actually immediately cast an ability again because, by the time the ability goes off, the global cooldown is already over. This basically eliminates the need to weave light attacks to maximize DPS.

In other words, Dark Flare now has a buff attached to it that is completely counterintuitive to its design. In order to make use of the empower, you have to do something that doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense given the skill’s design. Yes, you could still make use of it through something like: Dark Flare —> Instant-Cast ability —> Light Attack —> repeat. And I suppose it’s possible that just light attack weaving Dark Flare could be a very slight DPS boost, especially with light attack damage being buffed. But it still just seems completely bizarre to me to have a 1.1 second channel ability have a buff to light attacks.

Even with the old empower it was more beneficial for DPS to LA weave than to just spam DarkFlare (only exception: you use dark flare on a DW-bar or any other stam-weapon...).
Reason: 20% more damage to darkflare is less damage than an empowered LA...

So this is definitely a buff, but we'll see if it's usefull for magplar DPS...bc from what i remember, darkflare is pretty expensive and i highly doubt it can be sustained in a way a templar really benefits from that change.

It's a buff for rangplars. But a Nerf for DWplars.

Going ranged with a dw-build wasn't really good since they changed the destro-passives...
atleast for pve, can't comment on PvP here.

Destruent wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

Destruent wrote: »

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

Isn’t the change to Empower a pretty big nerf to Magplars?

They get empower from Dark Flare, and it currently empowers the next Dark Flare. That adds a ton of extra damage. After these changes, empower will only work on light attacks. So it basically will be an effect used for weaving. But there’s two problems with that. First, even with light attacks getting buffed, I think it’s highly unlikely that a 40% increase to a light attack will add as much damage as a 20% increase to Dark Flare did.

More importantly, the empower from Dark Flare will now only do something if you light attack weave. But 1.1 second channel abilities like Dark Flare (and abilities like Sweeps and Lethal Arrow) are essentially designed to NOT be utilized with light attack weaving. This is because the channel lasts just long enough that you can actually immediately cast an ability again because, by the time the ability goes off, the global cooldown is already over. This basically eliminates the need to weave light attacks to maximize DPS.

In other words, Dark Flare now has a buff attached to it that is completely counterintuitive to its design. In order to make use of the empower, you have to do something that doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense given the skill’s design. Yes, you could still make use of it through something like: Dark Flare —> Instant-Cast ability —> Light Attack —> repeat. And I suppose it’s possible that just light attack weaving Dark Flare could be a very slight DPS boost, especially with light attack damage being buffed. But it still just seems completely bizarre to me to have a 1.1 second channel ability have a buff to light attacks.

Even with the old empower it was more beneficial for DPS to LA weave than to just spam DarkFlare (only exception: you use dark flare on a DW-bar or any other stam-weapon...).
Reason: 20% more damage to darkflare is less damage than an empowered LA...

So this is definitely a buff, but we'll see if it's usefull for magplar DPS...bc from what i remember, darkflare is pretty expensive and i highly doubt it can be sustained in a way a templar really benefits from that change.

It's a buff for rangplars. But a Nerf for DWplars.

Going ranged with a dw-build wasn't really good since they changed the destro-passives...
atleast for pve, can't comment on PvP here.

99% of my comments are for PvP. The empower change messes with dual weld Templars who use the swords to boost both direct and dot DMG while being stuck in channels. But current empower doesn't do much because only a few abilities get buffed, and you have to cast the empower which adds to the clunky purfying light rotations.

First of all, my hat's off to you @Joy_Division for your tenacity in keeping on fighting for Templars. I have mostly given up. After 4 years of inane nonsense from the devs, glaring unbalance issues and broken mechanics and general lack of vision, I just can't bring myself to believe in any kind of improvement.

The best I can hope for, is that they change something unrelated to Templars that somehow brings about an unintended combo or build that actually makes Tempalrs viable. It has happened in the past, and it might happen in the future. But intentionally making Templars decent is just not something I can believe in.

After your tagged me in the opening post of this thread, I tried to get into the discussion, to muster once more and try to fight for our cause. I started to formulate my view on the current state of Templars, and the things that are an issue with the class, and what ZOS could do to rectify these problems. I got as far as writing an analysis of the Restoring Light tree, and pointing out the broken skills, the useless morphs, and the lack of any real synergy with any other sort of healing, and the lackluster nature of the passives in general.

I was gonna do the same to the other 2 trees but ran out of steam.I just couldn't force myself into doing it again. When I realized I was writing another lengthy post on the same issues I wrote lengthy posts about 3 years ago. With the exact same reasoning, with the exact same problems, with mostly the same solutions, I just gave up.

And that is my stance on the class itself pretty much. My main is a Templar, an Imperial Templar, rolled up during early access back in 2014. That is the character I complete content with, get achievements and learn all the crafting motifs and recipes and blueprints. I played that character as a magicka build for most of the games existence. I played magplar even after soft caps were removed and being an Imperial was a really bad idea for a magplar. I kept on playing that character despite the constant nerfs patch by patch. I struggled, but I kept trying.

With every new update, more and more core skills got discarded. It's been ages since I last tried to get Radiant to work - people kept whining about it 'cause it actually worked and managed to kill people. I kept telling them that it was working as intended. That it had flaws and was far from being an instant "I win button", and that the pros and cons were pretty solidly balanced. If the skill was nerfed then people would stop using it. Well, the whiners got their way, RO was nerfed and it's mostly gone from the battlefields of Cyrodiil.

Every year I've been complaining about lack of mobility for Tempalrs, every year the game has evolved towards more mobile play style, yet still Templar have been stuck sitting in their "homes" Sitting on our circles and runes, providing nice targeting reticles for our foes - free of charge. At this point, using any kinda build based on jabs, is just a mild form of masochism. You will not land hits with that - the only way you can make it work, is if you run into a mob of enemies and start jabbing indiscriminately, hoping that someone runs in to your pokey bit. You certainly are not gonna land any hits intentionally.

My last build, as a magplar, saw me discard jabs and radiant and every offensive Templar ability except Purifying Light and go full turtle. I got myself a full heavy set of Torug's Pact and a full set of Knight Slayer with an an infused lightning staff enchanted with an Oblivion damage glyph. Everything else about the build was aimed at defense including CP allocation and skills picked. No point to buff damage done, since 90% of meaningful damage done in the build comes from Oblivion procs. No point to pick any damage skills since am never gonna be using them. No need to use ability points for magicka since I'll mostly be spamming heavy attacks and can just get more stamina for dodging and sprinting or go with more health in general.

I even ran Sword and board back par just to turtle down even more and get cheap blocks and a useful reflect. Let them damage themselves I though. I certainly can't. And the Sword and Board Ulti really makes one hard to kill. Especially since I was not using my ulti to do damage. I was really hard to kill, and could kill steal targets by targeting low health fores in zerg balls and pug hordes. I wasn't really competitive but at least I as effective to some degree. But it was also really silly and boring way to play the game.

I then switched to stamina, mostly just to be able to sneak better for DB achievements, and to be able to run around more while farming mats. I did try to do some PVP as a Stamplar, even though I preferred the Magplar play style. As a Stamplar I realized that while you could sortta be effective, the lack of resource management meant that it was really hard to be competitive. Or more precisely. that any play style you went after, was easier and more effective to do on a character sporting a different class.

And you still had really bad mobility. I even ran around for a while using Cowards Gear sword and board on my back bar just to have at least some mobility. But that proved to be clunky and inefficient way to do it. I had to sacrifice too much to gain it, and it was an inelegant solution to the actual issue.

After a couple of really crappy sessions of PVP few weeks ago, I finally gave in and turned to the dark side. I started doing PVP as a Nightblade...

And boy what a difference it makes. To have actual mobility, to have the ability to reset combat at will, to have instant cast abilities that work and to have passives that offer actual synergies. And most of all, to finally have an effective counter via Mark against other Nightblades.

Even though my skill lines were not maxed out, was lacking several passives and my gear was gobbled up together from discarded pieces used by my other characters, my magblade was outperforming my Templar on all fronts. I was harder to kill, could escape from sticky situations and had less hard time on actually killing my targets.

So yeah... After 4 years of trying to get my Templar to work I just adopted the tactics of my foes and have much less headaches as a result.

So thus...I really have given up on Templars as a viable option for PVP - beyond serving as the pocket healer fot zergballs.

And as such, I've mostly given up on this game as a whole. I just don't believe they will ever fix things. There's couple of rumored reveals that may happen at E3 - if either one proves to be true, then ESO is prolly mostly dead to me as an active game. I'll still log on occasionally to PVP, and will do any story content as it is released, but if those reveals do happen, and they prove to be what the rumors say them to be, then I doubt I'll be playing all that much come this fall and next year and beyond.

Hymzir wrote: »

First of all, my hat's off to you @Joy_Division for your tenacity in keeping on fighting for Templars. I have mostly given up. After 4 years of inane nonsense from the devs, glaring unbalance issues and broken mechanics and general lack of vision, I just can't bring myself to believe in any kind of improvement.

The best I can hope for, is that they change something unrelated to Templars that somehow brings about an unintended combo or build that actually makes Tempalrs viable. It has happened in the past, and it might happen in the future. But intentionally making Templars decent is just not something I can believe in.

After your tagged me in the opening post of this thread, I tried to get into the discussion, to muster once more and try to fight for our cause. I started to formulate my view on the current state of Templars, and the things that are an issue with the class, and what ZOS could do to rectify these problems. I got as far as writing an analysis of the Restoring Light tree, and pointing out the broken skills, the useless morphs, and the lack of any real synergy with any other sort of healing, and the lackluster nature of the passives in general.

I was gonna do the same to the other 2 trees but ran out of steam.I just couldn't force myself into doing it again. When I realized I was writing another lengthy post on the same issues I wrote lengthy posts about 3 years ago. With the exact same reasoning, with the exact same problems, with mostly the same solutions, I just gave up.

And that is my stance on the class itself pretty much. My main is a Templar, an Imperial Templar, rolled up during early access back in 2014. That is the character I complete content with, get achievements and learn all the crafting motifs and recipes and blueprints. I played that character as a magicka build for most of the games existence. I played magplar even after soft caps were removed and being an Imperial was a really bad idea for a magplar. I kept on playing that character despite the constant nerfs patch by patch. I struggled, but I kept trying.

With every new update, more and more core skills got discarded. It's been ages since I last tried to get Radiant to work - people kept whining about it 'cause it actually worked and managed to kill people. I kept telling them that it was working as intended. That it had flaws and was far from being an instant "I win button", and that the pros and cons were pretty solidly balanced. If the skill was nerfed then people would stop using it. Well, the whiners got their way, RO was nerfed and it's mostly gone from the battlefields of Cyrodiil.

Every year I've been complaining about lack of mobility for Tempalrs, every year the game has evolved towards more mobile play style, yet still Templar have been stuck sitting in their "homes" Sitting on our circles and runes, providing nice targeting reticles for our foes - free of charge. At this point, using any kinda build based on jabs, is just a mild form of masochism. You will not land hits with that - the only way you can make it work, is if you run into a mob of enemies and start jabbing indiscriminately, hoping that someone runs in to your pokey bit. You certainly are not gonna land any hits intentionally.

My last build, as a magplar, saw me discard jabs and radiant and every offensive Templar ability except Purifying Light and go full turtle. I got myself a full heavy set of Torug's Pact and a full set of Knight Slayer with an an infused lightning staff enchanted with an Oblivion damage glyph. Everything else about the build was aimed at defense including CP allocation and skills picked. No point to buff damage done, since 90% of meaningful damage done in the build comes from Oblivion procs. No point to pick any damage skills since am never gonna be using them. No need to use ability points for magicka since I'll mostly be spamming heavy attacks and can just get more stamina for dodging and sprinting or go with more health in general.

I even ran Sword and board back par just to turtle down even more and get cheap blocks and a useful reflect. Let them damage themselves I though. I certainly can't. And the Sword and Board Ulti really makes one hard to kill. Especially since I was not using my ulti to do damage. I was really hard to kill, and could kill steal targets by targeting low health fores in zerg balls and pug hordes. I wasn't really competitive but at least I as effective to some degree. But it was also really silly and boring way to play the game.

I then switched to stamina, mostly just to be able to sneak better for DB achievements, and to be able to run around more while farming mats. I did try to do some PVP as a Stamplar, even though I preferred the Magplar play style. As a Stamplar I realized that while you could sortta be effective, the lack of resource management meant that it was really hard to be competitive. Or more precisely. that any play style you went after, was easier and more effective to do on a character sporting a different class.

And you still had really bad mobility. I even ran around for a while using Cowards Gear sword and board on my back bar just to have at least some mobility. But that proved to be clunky and inefficient way to do it. I had to sacrifice too much to gain it, and it was an inelegant solution to the actual issue.

After a couple of really crappy sessions of PVP few weeks ago, I finally gave in and turned to the dark side. I started doing PVP as a Nightblade...

And boy what a difference it makes. To have actual mobility, to have the ability to reset combat at will, to have instant cast abilities that work and to have passives that offer actual synergies. And most of all, to finally have an effective counter via Mark against other Nightblades.

Even though my skill lines were not maxed out, was lacking several passives and my gear was gobbled up together from discarded pieces used by my other characters, my magblade was outperforming my Templar on all fronts. I was harder to kill, could escape from sticky situations and had less hard time on actually killing my targets.

So yeah... After 4 years of trying to get my Templar to work I just adopted the tactics of my foes and have much less headaches as a result.

So thus...I really have given up on Templars as a viable option for PVP - beyond serving as the pocket healer fot zergballs.

And as such, I've mostly given up on this game as a whole. I just don't believe they will ever fix things. There's couple of rumored reveals that may happen at E3 - if either one proves to be true, then ESO is prolly mostly dead to me as an active game. I'll still log on occasionally to PVP, and will do any story content as it is released, but if those reveals do happen, and they prove to be what the rumors say them to be, then I doubt I'll be playing all that much come this fall and next year and beyond.

My first character was actually in beta and remade in early admission to the game. I was an Imperial Templar too and your story mirrors my own feelings on the game. I've tried everything with the character. I know Stamplar DoT based build is best way to go with it but playing something else (anything else) will always be easier. I think that's the part I resent most about playing Templar. Templar is the class that can never shine on its own. It is meant to make other people look good: either healing them to keep them alive while you die or simply dying easily so the enemy can feel good about themselves. I'm pretty weary as well but I've said before this is my last MMO. I'll still play because I'm having fun but like you it feels like chewing on broken glass playing Templar often times.

Drdeath20 wrote: »

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

Isn’t the change to Empower a pretty big nerf to Magplars?

They get empower from Dark Flare, and it currently empowers the next Dark Flare. That adds a ton of extra damage. After these changes, empower will only work on light attacks. So it basically will be an effect used for weaving. But there’s two problems with that. First, even with light attacks getting buffed, I think it’s highly unlikely that a 40% increase to a light attack will add as much damage as a 20% increase to Dark Flare did.

More importantly, the empower from Dark Flare will now only do something if you light attack weave. But 1.1 second channel abilities like Dark Flare (and abilities like Sweeps and Lethal Arrow) are essentially designed to NOT be utilized with light attack weaving. This is because the channel lasts just long enough that you can actually immediately cast an ability again because, by the time the ability goes off, the global cooldown is already over. This basically eliminates the need to weave light attacks to maximize DPS.

In other words, Dark Flare now has a buff attached to it that is completely counterintuitive to its design. In order to make use of the empower, you have to do something that doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense given the skill’s design. Yes, you could still make use of it through something like: Dark Flare —> Instant-Cast ability —> Light Attack —> repeat. And I suppose it’s possible that just light attack weaving Dark Flare could be a very slight DPS boost, especially with light attack damage being buffed. But it still just seems completely bizarre to me to have a 1.1 second channel ability have a buff to light attacks.

Dark flare is exempt from that change

Is that true?

Destruent wrote: »

RiskyChalice863 wrote: »

Isn’t the change to Empower a pretty big nerf to Magplars?

They get empower from Dark Flare, and it currently empowers the next Dark Flare. That adds a ton of extra damage. After these changes, empower will only work on light attacks. So it basically will be an effect used for weaving. But there’s two problems with that. First, even with light attacks getting buffed, I think it’s highly unlikely that a 40% increase to a light attack will add as much damage as a 20% increase to Dark Flare did.

More importantly, the empower from Dark Flare will now only do something if you light attack weave. But 1.1 second channel abilities like Dark Flare (and abilities like Sweeps and Lethal Arrow) are essentially designed to NOT be utilized with light attack weaving. This is because the channel lasts just long enough that you can actually immediately cast an ability again because, by the time the ability goes off, the global cooldown is already over. This basically eliminates the need to weave light attacks to maximize DPS.

In other words, Dark Flare now has a buff attached to it that is completely counterintuitive to its design. In order to make use of the empower, you have to do something that doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense given the skill’s design. Yes, you could still make use of it through something like: Dark Flare —> Instant-Cast ability —> Light Attack —> repeat. And I suppose it’s possible that just light attack weaving Dark Flare could be a very slight DPS boost, especially with light attack damage being buffed. But it still just seems completely bizarre to me to have a 1.1 second channel ability have a buff to light attacks.

Even with the old empower it was more beneficial for DPS to LA weave than to just spam DarkFlare (only exception: you use dark flare on a DW-bar or any other stam-weapon...).
Reason: 20% more damage to darkflare is less damage than an empowered LA...

So this is definitely a buff, but we'll see if it's usefull for magplar DPS...bc from what i remember, darkflare is pretty expensive and i highly doubt it can be sustained in a way a templar really benefits from that change.

An empowered LA does more damage than 20% more damage to Dark Flare, but an empowered LA doesn’t happen immediately. It’s pretty quick, since you avoid global cooldowns, but it’s certainly true that you get that next Dark Flare out quicker if you don’t LA. You may be right that it’s an overall DPS boost—especially if you’re super good at weaving—but I’m not really sure. On my Magplar, I actually don’t think it is right now. An empowered LA only does slightly more damage total than a 20% boost to Dark Flare, and the extra fraction of a second makes it a DPS loss, I think (though I can’t properly test since I’m on console).