I'm pretty sure I must have run into you and you probably killed me with your build. I just tried it, including the scribed skills, albeit with some significant differences. I only had a Redguard available. I wore Zoal, for now, as an anti-gank measure. I wasn't a vampire. And I ran 1H+S with Spell Wall as the back bar. Oh, and I made Swift jewelry, since I find that helps keeping people in Jabs.

At first I thought you were crazy running Thrassian and swapping out Honor the Dead. I also thought the build has low sustain. Then I realised the skills are actually not a million miles away from my templar and could fit it into my habits / muscle memory. So I went into IC.

The news is not good. I'm clearly not used to the build. I found it buff heavy, having to juggle more buffs and heals than I normally do. Mostly I found the payoff for the 7K+ spell damage isn't there. This was reflected in the Jabs tooltip, which never quite reached 4K, not even fully buffed. I consider that low for stamplar by historical standards. It doesn't give you the pressure you need. It's barely more than the 10K ranged spammables I have on my magblade and magsorc, and those buff up rather more quickly.

This could well have something to do with my build changes, but I don't know how you live without Swift, and without the gap closer it felt no fun to play. I get that the gap closer is not strictly effective for damage, but not having it against the sorcs and NBs in IC felt pretty miserable.

I got killed in two ways. One was not having enough pressure and resources being worn down rather easily. This was very possibly the result of my unfamiliarity with the build. On the other hand you can have all the healing in the wold. Unless you are an outright tank, you need to pressure the opposing player(s), so they can't find time to keep hitting you so hard.

The other was just being bursted down by a combo. I ended up with 35K health going down to 29K at full Thrassian. I also went for the extra resist from CP and had ~25K armor. Merciless Resolve alone still hit me for 15K. I'm actually not used to that anymore with my other builds, because I use the Esoteric Greaves. Unfortunately I think that mythic mainly suits magsorc and magblade.

Perhaps my main problem was not being used to Acuity and making the most of the burst potential together with Ulfsild. That said, there was simply a world of difference to the magsorc I made last week. It is only single target, but perhaps unsurprisingly it is miles ahead. For me Streak and Cloak / Shadow Image also wins big in the fun department. In the same vein, I like templars with gap closers.

As to your constructive criticism, I don't really have an opinion. I don't PvP enough, these days. You wrote: "The class needs modification to stop oscillating between being brutally overpowered or severely weak.". I'm trying to think when templar was last super strong. I think it was when the DOT meta was killing everyone else, right? Meta shifts are strange.

Magsorc was down and actually received a lot of buffs, come to think of it. There's +18% magicka from class passives / skills, putting a high stat build back on the map. Honestly that feels great. I don't necessarily disagree, but that is stacked with the combined shield / heal and Dark Deal gives both Minor Berserk and Minor Force now. Shielding has always been expensive, but I was able to back bar Wretched Vitality and still end up with almost 50K magicka on the front bar.

For reference, the sorc I just made doesn't currently have much pen, but it has a ~10K Shocking Soul with resource return and Major Vitality, ~20K procced Frags, ~12K Haunting Curse, ~50K magicka, a ~14K shield (PvP value) with an ~8K heal, and a metric crap ton of sustain, something like 2.8K mag without a potion and 1.1K stam plus Dark Deal to keep the Esoteric Greaves in the green. This approach is not perfect. The Greaves can fail (especially against a templar), and DOTs / status effects can still hit you hard. I think there may be better duelling sorc builds. But just an example of how much sorc is ahead, even just on paper. You need to proc Ulfsild plus your ult to generate ~20K burst. Sorc basically just procs a Frag and pelts you with that every few seconds, possibly with a 12K Curse on top. Perhaps this says more about the overbuffed state of sorc, but the only devastating thing templar has is arguably the execute in group play.

This doesn't mean I disagree with you, not at all. It just goes to show how insidious meta shifts are. The arguably too big heal on the sorc shield is the smoking gun, but the magicka buffs and, now, the Major Vitality from Wield Soul are enabling that skill behind the scenes. Sorc has also always been well-placed to make the most of foreign / weapon skills. Their passives mean you do more damage with them than other classes do. Morphing Wield Soul to Shock or Physical damage yields +5% damage on a sorc, for example.

fred4 wrote: »

I'm pretty sure I must have run into you and you probably killed me with your build. I just tried it, including the scribed skills, albeit with some significant differences. I only had a Redguard available. I wore Zoal, for now, as an anti-gank measure. I wasn't a vampire. And I ran 1H+S with Spell Wall as the back bar. Oh, and I made Swift jewelry, since I find that helps keeping people in Jabs.

These may seem like small changes but already, by going redguard and dropping 3 infused, you lose about 450 spell damage and 12% critical damage. Furthermore this loss also impacts healing drastically. My playstyle revolves around baiting targets to attack me since I usually run solo, a templar is not designed to chase. ulfsilds should be used before using your ultimate in melee or before jabs. Furthermore, dropping balorgh also means you give up a large amount of offensive stats. With this many changes to the setup, you lose the offensive potential of this build. For reference, here are the maximum stats I have reached offensively with continuous attacks :

fred4 wrote: »

The news is not good. I'm clearly not used to the build. I found it buff heavy, having to juggle more buffs and heals than I normally do. Mostly I found the payoff for the 7K+ spell damage isn't there. This was reflected in the Jabs tooltip, which never quite reached 4K, not even fully buffed. I consider that low for stamplar by historical standards. It doesn't give you the pressure you need. It's barely more than the 10K ranged spammables I have on my magblade and magsorc, and those buff up rather more quickly.

This could well have something to do with my build changes, but I don't know how you live without Swift, and without the gap closer it felt no fun to play. I get that the gap closer is not strictly effective for damage, but not having it against the sorcs and NBs in IC felt pretty miserable.

NBs and sorcs are not classes you should waste resources on chasing. You need to have enough damage to heavily pressure them when they are going offensive. Block an incap and DB a nightblade, DB a sorc when they are on their frontbar. You only need to get them to a low enough hp threshold for them to be unable to survive radiant.

fred4 wrote: »

I got killed in two ways. One was not having enough pressure and resources being worn down rather easily. This was very possibly the result of my unfamiliarity with the build. On the other hand you can have all the healing in the wold. Unless you are an outright tank, you need to pressure the opposing player(s), so they can't find time to keep hitting you so hard.
The other was just being bursted down by a combo. I ended up with 35K health going down to 29K at full Thrassian. I also went for the extra resist from CP and had ~25K armor. Merciless Resolve alone still hit me for 15K. I'm actually not used to that anymore with my other builds, because I use the Esoteric Greaves. Unfortunately I think that mythic mainly suits magsorc and magblade.

Templar is not a tanky class. I do not have a lot of mitigation, I also get hit by 13k to 15k assassin's wills in open world. The difference is however that my heals go up to and over 10K/s when I am fully buffed, hence why the class is resilient to pressure as I said earlier. It is up to the player to use positioning, Line of sight and efficiently use blocking and dodging to overcome situations where one faces ennemies with high burst.

fred4 wrote: »

As to your constructive criticism, I don't really have an opinion. I don't PvP enough, these days. You wrote: "The class needs modification to stop oscillating between being brutally overpowered or severely weak.". I'm trying to think when templar was last super strong. I think it was when the DOT meta was killing everyone else, right? Meta shifts are strange.

Most notably, High Isle, before purifying light nerfs. Templar was one of the strongest classes in the game. Before that, Blackwood, which was when templar was in my opinion the second strongest PvP class in the game.


As to compare with sorcs, yes templar is definitely weaker. Sorc has better passives and better tools to naviguate cyrodiil. Templar however has its own playstyle and strengths which definitely have viable options at the moment. My style of playing the class will not suit everyone. I am a thoroughly defensive player and build around baiting groups of players to fight on terrain where I can fully use Line of sight or bottleneck groups. I do hope you'll try the setup again with stats that live up to the build's potential have fun!

I an glad the OP is excited enough to share a build and I'm glad they have had some success with it. But I'm not sure that's what some Templar players are looking for.

Most people on these forums associate me with a templar and back-in-the-day I was decent at it. I haven't played consistently for the past four years or so, but I find it odd the language in the OP implies Templar has a history of being oppressive in PvP when they have spent the vast majority of the game in B tier. Only when the devs do something ridiculous (DoT patch, e.g.) were ever 'plars thought of as a top solo class.

I think that a build using gimmick like Thrassians (I'm guessing you go kill a few mudcrabs or wolves before actually PvPing?) and having to line up a specific narrow window to do damage w/ Acuity suggests to me the class is what most people think it is: C tier except the Meteor-Javelin-Jesus Beam combo. I'm sure the build works more than fine when these conditions are met, but how often is that? NBs, Sorcs, Wardens, and Arcansists do fine 100% time without jumping through such hoops and ultimately, that's what people who like Templars want.

Speaking for myself, when I want to play a Templar, I do not want to go scrolling through a hundred of sets or looking at skills from other sources to tell myself, "if I use these, I can make a templar work." I want to look at the templar skills and say, "these skills are effective and I have fun using them." I was playing with a NB about two weeks ago and they said something that I found revealing: they mentioned how some recent changes to the kit (siphoning strikes and Merciless) made the class feel good and more fun to play. Legit: when was the last time any templar player uttered those words? I'm not being facetious when I say Barack Obama was President. Maybe when they made stopped making Templars fight over Repentance? But neither I nor anyone I play with need the stamina sustain anymore, so that's a dead skill right now, along with Sun shield, Dark Flare, Sunfire, Nova, etc.

Ultimately, templars were designed to win fights of attrition and that is why they often struggle since ESO has become a game that requires burst. So they can;t just put on metas sets and be competitive against players who know what they are doing. Another problem they face is they used to be unique in having a burst heal that the other classes envied. Now every class, even "assassins" have one. That the OP removed Honor in their build for a generic replacement that is superior sums up the situation perfectly. If I can play a class like a Sorc that can press a single button and basically do what Honor used to be alone in doing, why would I play a 'plar? I'll play the sorc who can press a single button and *blink* be over there away from the dozen people chasing me. The only objective answer to that question of playing templars is subjective: because it's my main or I have a soft spot in my heart for the class.

Joy_Division wrote: »

I an glad the OP is excited enough to share a build and I'm glad they have had some success with it. But I'm not sure that's what some Templar players are looking for.

Most people on these forums associate me with a templar and back-in-the-day I was decent at it. I haven't played consistently for the past four years or so, but I find it odd the language in the OP implies Templar has a history of being oppressive in PvP when they have spent the vast majority of the game in B tier. Only when the devs do something ridiculous (DoT patch, e.g.) were ever 'plars thought of as a top solo class.

I think that a build using gimmick like Thrassians (I'm guessing you go kill a few mudcrabs or wolves before actually PvPing?) and having to line up a specific narrow window to do damage w/ Acuity suggests to me the class is what most people think it is: C tier except the Meteor-Javelin-Jesus Beam combo. I'm sure the build works more than fine when these conditions are met, but how often is that? NBs, Sorcs, Wardens, and Arcansists do fine 100% time without jumping through such hoops and ultimately, that's what people who like Templars want.

Speaking for myself, when I want to play a Templar, I do not want to go scrolling through a hundred of sets or looking at skills from other sources to tell myself, "if I use these, I can make a templar work." I want to look at the templar skills and say, "these skills are effective and I have fun using them." I was playing with a NB about two weeks ago and they said something that I found revealing: they mentioned how some recent changes to the kit (siphoning strikes and Merciless) made the class feel good and more fun to play. Legit: when was the last time any templar player uttered those words? I'm not being facetious when I say Barack Obama was President. Maybe when they made stopped making Templars fight over Repentance? But neither I nor anyone I play with need the stamina sustain anymore, so that's a dead skill right now, along with Sun shield, Dark Flare, Sunfire, Nova, etc.

Ultimately, templars were designed to win fights of attrition and that is why they often struggle since ESO has become a game that requires burst. So they can;t just put on metas sets and be competitive against players who know what they are doing. Another problem they face is they used to be unique in having a burst heal that the other classes envied. Now every class, even "assassins" have one. That the OP removed Honor in their build for a generic replacement that is superior sums up the situation perfectly. If I can play a class like a Sorc that can press a single button and basically do what Honor used to be alone in doing, why would I play a 'plar? I'll play the sorc who can press a single button and *blink* be over there away from the dozen people chasing me. The only objective answer to that question of playing templars is subjective: because it's my main or I have a soft spot in my heart for the class.

Imho ranged templar is in a good place, turns out Aurora javelin hits like a truck when you are sporting 7k plus spell damage(torc build), jbeam is fine, power of the light is a bit lackluster but when I look at my cmx data and combine all the dmg it does including the double sundered proc, it's actually not bad damage overall.

It's really the more traditional brawler melee plar where I feel like other classes are just better.
As you mentioned it doesnt help that nbs that can unleash 20k plus burst from stealth have almost the same tankiness as a templar that just doesnt have that capacity.

Joy_Division wrote: »

I an glad the OP is excited enough to share a build and I'm glad they have had some success with it. But I'm not sure that's what some Templar players are looking for.

Most people on these forums associate me with a templar and back-in-the-day I was decent at it. I haven't played consistently for the past four years or so, but I find it odd the language in the OP implies Templar has a history of being oppressive in PvP when they have spent the vast majority of the game in B tier. Only when the devs do something ridiculous (DoT patch, e.g.) were ever 'plars thought of as a top solo class.

I think that a build using gimmick like Thrassians (I'm guessing you go kill a few mudcrabs or wolves before actually PvPing?) and having to line up a specific narrow window to do damage w/ Acuity suggests to me the class is what most people think it is: C tier except the Meteor-Javelin-Jesus Beam combo. I'm sure the build works more than fine when these conditions are met, but how often is that? NBs, Sorcs, Wardens, and Arcansists do fine 100% time without jumping through such hoops and ultimately, that's what people who like Templars want.

Speaking for myself, when I want to play a Templar, I do not want to go scrolling through a hundred of sets or looking at skills from other sources to tell myself, "if I use these, I can make a templar work." I want to look at the templar skills and say, "these skills are effective and I have fun using them." I was playing with a NB about two weeks ago and they said something that I found revealing: they mentioned how some recent changes to the kit (siphoning strikes and Merciless) made the class feel good and more fun to play. Legit: when was the last time any templar player uttered those words? I'm not being facetious when I say Barack Obama was President. Maybe when they made stopped making Templars fight over Repentance? But neither I nor anyone I play with need the stamina sustain anymore, so that's a dead skill right now, along with Sun shield, Dark Flare, Sunfire, Nova, etc.

Ultimately, templars were designed to win fights of attrition and that is why they often struggle since ESO has become a game that requires burst. So they can;t just put on metas sets and be competitive against players who know what they are doing. Another problem they face is they used to be unique in having a burst heal that the other classes envied. Now every class, even "assassins" have one. That the OP removed Honor in their build for a generic replacement that is superior sums up the situation perfectly. If I can play a class like a Sorc that can press a single button and basically do what Honor used to be alone in doing, why would I play a 'plar? I'll play the sorc who can press a single button and *blink* be over there away from the dozen people chasing me. The only objective answer to that question of playing templars is subjective: because it's my main or I have a soft spot in my heart for the class.

First of all you can use the dummies at spawn to stack thrassians. Besides this post never had the intention to prove that templar was as good as other classes. It was to provide a competitive setup which of course has its requirements and maybe isnt easy to play.

I disagree about your take on templar being designed for fights of attrition. The class is a natural tank cracker and has one of the best toolkits for outnumbered PvP, by this I mean strong aoe damage and strong healing. Finally, templar is not the only class replacing its burst heal with healing soul, the skill is just that good.

Finally I agree with you on the fact that to play plar atm you need to love the class, which definitely is my case as I haven't played any other in years. This post is dedicated as stated "to those who enjoy the templar class".

Of course this setup can be adapted but thorough testing would need to be performed for every change.

Fixing the class is a bit more complicated than shuffling the healing and passives around.

There are skills on the kit that were designed to compensate for it’s weak areas, but haven’t been in a usable state for years.

Just look at Sun Shield. The developers knew when they designed the kit that you weren’t going to be able to heal through all of the nonsense or deal damage while blocking so they made a skill to help when outnumbered… except the skill has been nerfed to Oblivion.

Making skills that were staple to our class identity into viable options again would be the perfect first step to fixing Templar.

I came to the forum today just to talk about the shield. It's an absolute joke. 40k health and I get a 6k-7k shield that pops in one second in pvp. If the shield is going to be that pathetic, it should offer more. How about a unique 10% damage reduction for 6 seconds after activation?

emsuperman24 wrote: »

Excellent write up!

I have a couple questions regarding the scribing skills you are using.

Specifically the contingency skill which I see you are using offensively. Find that really cool since most people have been stacking it defensively.

So the 2000+ direct damage is flat or does it scale with weapon damage/modifiers?

Also does it add to every tick of a channeled for example does it add +2000 damage to the first hit of jabs or all 3?

Lastly the focus script adds 6800 damage does that hit simultaneously if the next skill used is a direct damage hit?

I don’t play a Templar main but do main a dk and play a similar style where I play defensively to try to secure the kill. As you know on the Templar it’s very hard to burst certain classes down and really like the way you have leveraged the scribing skills to add to your play style.

The 2k damage scales with modifiers (including skill modifier for instance crescent sweep). It only affects one instance of damage (even on jabs). The detonation is off gcd which means it will hit at the same time as the next resource consuming action. (You can even use it, then use the skill again while roll cancelling to perform two detonations simultaneously).