Templars: Jack of No Trades, Master of None?

deathperadoeb17_ESO · May 2014

Damn, why do i keep making heavy armor melee chars as my mains? And gods forbid, with healing ability... I got here WoW Vanilla paladin, ffs!
I already see those posts "templars are healers"

PayneTK · May 2014

I didn't mind being a Jack of All Trades, Master of None, because i was happy with a decent melee build.

But now its like you say, Jack of No Trades, Master of None.

nickster2112b16_ESO · May 2014

Templars the class that can do everything but badly and no one cares either as we watch this thread sink to the depths of the forums sad really sad

NordJitsu · May 2014

nickster2112b16_ESO wrote: »

Templars the class that can do everything but badly and no one cares either as we watch this thread sink to the depths of the forums sad really sad

Ya its odd.

If this thread was about Night Blades it'd be 50 pages long and have a developer response.

fyrefenix · May 2014

NordJitsu wrote: »

Also:

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Thank you all for your patience as we tracked this one down. We have an answer for you.

In patch 1.1.2, we increased the internal cooldown of Biting Jabs from 0.5 seconds to 1.2 seconds. Unfortunately, this change was not documented in the patch notes. This was not intended, and we do apologize.

This change was made to balance the ability's high single target damage. However we have been reading your feedback, and agree that the ability feels too unresponsive now. We will be reverting this change for the next patch (as soon as possible), and instead will slightly increase the ability's resource cost.

It already costs enough...

are they aware it already costs about 340 mana per use lmao i think some of these devs are about half.

about half re.tar.ded

hk11 · May 2014

I want to try a templar, because at least at sub 40 levels they appear to just wreck ***. But you guys scare me away from it.

Nox_Aeterna · May 2014

hk11 wrote: »

I want to try a templar, because at least at sub 40 levels they appear to just wreck ***. But you guys scare me away from it.

Mate before lvl 50 , it is fine , any class can do those and have fun , no problem.

if you want a class to really spend time and go vet , then pick DK or sorc.

JacobJ · May 2014

Personally I think the Restoring Spirit nerf is ridiculous. Why you ask?

Nightblades ( my main ) have siphoning strikes. What's siphoning strikes? It is a toggle effect on your weapon that gives back 4% of your total magicka/stamina on EVERY hit. Not to mention there is a 10% chance on hit to gain 15% of your total magicka/stamina, and then if you morph it you can either have all that + 4% hp on basic attacks, or take the other morph which makes it so ALL attacks have a chance to restore the 15% magicka and stamina.

So even as a Nightblade is seems like ZoS is saying " Forget you Templars. Nightblades may be the most buggy class, but they are entitled to much more resource returns than you, sorry."

I don't see how they can justify a Nightblade with near infinite HP, Stamina, AND Magicka, but Templars aren't entitled to a boost in their magicka regen.

NordJitsu · May 2014

hk11 wrote: »

I want to try a templar, because at least at sub 40 levels they appear to just wreck ***. But you guys scare me away from it.

@hk11‌

Templars can be a ton of fun. And really I think they're still good in PvE.

They have some unique abilities that make them the best support class in dungeons/trials (even if they aren't always the best pure healers.) Backlash is pretty amazing for group DPS. Honor the Dead is one of the best oh-**** heals in the game. Remembrance is the best Ultimate for a healer. Repentance can be great in group situations. They are still the fastest rezzers, which is good in competitive PvE and PvP.

The problem comes when they try to be pure DPS/Tank or when they try to play those roles in PvP. They aren't BAD, but they get outshined in DPS by DKs, Sorcs, and NBs. DKs can out Tank them (no other class comes even close in tanking potential.) Sorcs and NBs can be just as good of healers.

If you want to be like a Healer/DPS or a Support-Tank, you could probably have fun with it.

The class mostly suffers from cast times, slow projectiles, and magicka problems which is why I focused on those for fixes.

Just fixing Restoring Spirit would go a long way.

NordJitsu · May 2014

JacobJ wrote: »

Personally I think the Restoring Spirit nerf is ridiculous. Why you ask?

Nightblades ( my main ) have siphoning strikes. What's siphoning strikes? It is a toggle effect on your weapon that gives back 4% of your total magicka/stamina on EVERY hit. Not to mention there is a 10% chance on hit to gain 15% of your total magicka/stamina, and then if you morph it you can either have all that + 4% hp on basic attacks, or take the other morph which makes it so ALL attacks have a chance to restore the 15% magicka and stamina.

So even as a Nightblade is seems like ZoS is saying " Forget you Templars. Nightblades may be the most buggy class, but they are entitled to much more resource returns than you, sorry."

I don't see how they can justify a Nightblade with near infinite HP, Stamina, AND Magicka, but Templars aren't entitled to a boost in their magicka regen.

@JacobJ‌

Not to mention DKs have almost the exact same thing through the Helping Hands passive, but for Stamina.

Sorcs, interestingly enough, have to worst Magicka management. Dark Exchange sucks in PvP because you have to be completely stationary for it to work and its easily interrupted.

nickster2112b16_ESO · May 2014

DK's= tanky as hell can survive a ton Sorcs= bolt escape NB's= dark cloak Templars = Dead we have no survivability heals just don't cut it when you have no magicka sustain.

Locke_ESO · May 2014

The simple reality is the Templar class offers little over the other classes. We have the big instant group heal, the area heal, the ground target purify/HoT and shards for some stamina regeneration and those are really the things that define the class. It makes for a decent support and healing class but thats about it.

Everything else is done better or cheaper by other classes.

Natjur · May 2014

Its interesting that most V1+ templars that are still 'doing ok' don't use any templar class skills (besides one heal) To be playble at the moment, you have all mage guild line skills as they are the only ones worth loading now due to their cost/dps ratio

So just a quick question. Of those V1+ templars who are still playing (solo, not group) and finding it ok. How many class skills do you have on your bar? (both bars, but if its the same skill of each bar, count it only once) I only use "Breath of Life" now.

dodgehopper_ESO · May 2014

I do agree that there are some tweaks they should probably do with the Templar. There have been a lot of interesting ideas in this post, like turning Blazing Shards into a better CC ability. Most people I know don't even bother with it, because it is difficult to choose who you will stun, it takes longer to click then targer the ground you want to fire it at, and the damage is neglible. In my way of thinking, some of the powers in Restoration should have had an obvious Internal Heal for those wishing to tank spec, ie: Something more along the lines of Green Blooded that a DK has. I enjoy being able to heal, but I must say that it feels like my Dragon can vastly outheal my Templar, and he gets a lot of great damage shields to boot, oh he also has huge crowd control, oh he also does massive fire damage. I'm not saying Templar is an awful class, but I think it is clear that there could be some balance tweaks both in Actives and in Passives.
Some of the flaws we have as Templars are mechanical in nature as well (easily avoidable circles, fields of protection, etc).

Lalai · May 2014

Very well thought out and written post OP. I agree with everything stated. The Templar class definitely needs some love. It's not as broken as some make it out to be.. I can level up just fine on my own, and survive in dungeons, however it also is not on remotely the same level as some of the other classes in the game when it comes to balance between the three main roles. Balance is not easy, and I don't expect any developer will ever unlock the secret of having perfectly balanced classes/skills across everything available in a game, nor do I expect Templars to be the best at everything. It would be nice for us to be a little closer to the other classes though, instead of scraping by dps/tanking/healing things.

On the plus side, those of us making it work as it is now are probably better off for it long run

anakaki · May 2014

Already on page 2 with no acknowledgement from ZOS. Just as all the other threads about templars.

madangrypally · May 2014

anakaki wrote: »

Already on page 2 with no acknowledgement from ZOS. Just as all the other threads about templars.

We be the unwanted step children. If you desire you can murder your character and be reborn as a dragon knight or sorc who is gods chosen child.

Jeremy_gelber_ESO · May 2014

Mystborn wrote: »

Master of Healing.

that's great and all. except it means killing mobs with old age when 90% of the content is solo

Khivas_Carrick · May 2014

NordJitsu wrote: »

Ah Templars, the red headed stepchild of the Elder Scrolls Online.

The class that seems to get nerfed each patch, despite already being relatively weak.

There are plenty of complains about Night Blades, but their issues are mostly bug related. The class itself is extremely powerful when its working.

Templars on the other hand have several mechanical issues that make the class under powered when things are working "as intended".

They have good healing skills and the only healing abilities that don't require a resto staff. You'd think that'd give them the ability to be unique off healers and support. Well, it would, if they had any magicka regen. Their best passive, Restoring Spirit, was nerfed late in the Beta process. It may have been OP in its past state, but the change almost certainly went to far.

Another problem is that so many of their abilities are easy to avoid due to long cast times and slow animations making them subpar damage dealers and support in PvP.

They also have poor stamina regen making them inferior choices to tank (in addition to the cast times on the heals.)

Basically, I think Templars could use some love. Here are my ideas for improvements and some feedback on existing skills.

Restoring Spirit

Templars are a magicka intensive class. Their spells are expensive. In order to be effective, they need to heal a lot and try to wear people down. They simply can't match the burst of a NB, Sorc, or DK.

Restoring Spirit was an awesome passive before. It used to return 4% of your maximum magicka each time you activated a skill. Now granted, that was kinda OP. It gave Templars better magicka regen than every other class without requiring them to even slot a skill for it. In high magicka builds with 2,000+ magicka it was pretty crazy. Especially since it returned magicka on all abilities. People would spam Flying Blade for a Stamina dump and get 80 magicka back each time they cast it. So you could alternate between Stam and Magicka like no other class.

That said, there were plenty of reasonable options to bring this skill into balance besides making it a 4% flat cost reduction, which is fairly insignificant. You could have made the 4% return only work on Dawn's Wrath abilities. You could have made it work only with class abilities. You could have made it work only with magicka. You could have made it work only with Stamina (preserving the magicka battery option but making it less OP overall.) There were lots of options. The chosen one was the worst and needs to be reverted.

If you want to learn more about this particular ability I suggest you read this Reddit thread by a really dedicated tester/player who quit ESO in part in response to this change:

http://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/1zwa6u/an_in_depth_look_at_the_restoring_spirit_nerf/

Suggested Solution Change restoring spirit so that it returns 2-4% of magicka either when activating a Dawn's Wrath ability or when activating an ability that costs Stamina.

The first solution would bring this skill in line with the DKs crazy Stamina regen passive Helping Hands, which returns 5% of Stamina when activating an Earthen Heart ability. The second solution would preserve the "Balanced Warrior" thing that seems to be a theme of the Templar class. Both would help a lot with fixing a major problem with Templars.

Backlash

Back Lash is an amazing ability. I'm not gonna say it isn't. Its the best call target ability in the game, bar none. This makes Templar's a uniquely good support/utility class in group situations. And it should be.

However, it is also plagued by a recurring problem with Templars: long cast times.

This ability's 1.5 sec cast time makes it easy to interrupt in PvP. If you're in an organized group situation, with two good groups fighting each other, its quite easy for a Bow user to stop your Templar with Venom Arrow or a D-staff use to pop them with Force Shock. Even a ranged CC will do.

This is bad. Most other mark type abilities in the game are Instant or have a morph option to make them instant. I'm talking about things like Mark Target, Weakness to Elements, and Quick Siphon (Force Siphon and Siphon Spirit are not) which can be used to indicate to your group who you want them to attack.

My problem is, Back Lash doesn't do damage on its own. It shouldn't be so easy to counter. The counter in group play should be that you run away, block, hide, use your heals or armor buffs, ect. while you wait for Back Lash to wear off.

Suggested Solution Either remove or reduce the cast time of this ability so it isn't quite so easy to interrupt in group PvP.

Eclipse

This is a great ability. At first glance it might look like a poor man's reflective scales, since its single target. When you realize it reflects all spell damage, not just projectiles, it starts to look better. The morphs that debuff the enemy or deal damage make it really good skill.

So really I don't think it needs any buffs on its own.

However, there is currently a crippling problem with this skill. I desperately hope its a bug or not working as intended because it basically makes the skill trash.

I'm not going to go into detail, because I'm hoping its considered an exploit and is changed, but myself and others have reported ZOS about it in game.

Healing Ritual

Here we have another good ability that is plagued by the cast time. 2 seconds is simply too long. A sword and shield user has enough time to get up, go to the bath room, make a sandwich, come back and eat that sandwich, shield charge, and then interrupt the Templar.

The buff to Lingering Ritual was nice an much needed. This heal is now close to on par with Green Dragon's Blood as a self heal, when you are actually able to use it.

Ritual of Rebirth is still a joke. A 0.3 sec reduction in cast time is a joke. Like really, that's just stupid.

Suggested Solution Lower the cast time on the base ability to 1.5 secs and have Ritual of Rebirth lower that to 1 sec.

Biting Jabs

This was a really solid ability. The nerf/delay on 1.1.2 was bad. Jessica Folsom said in another thread that she's investigating it though, so I'll hold off on giving feedback there for now.

Conclusion

I think the Templar could be a really great and fun class. I think there are already some decent builds out there, but there's also no doubt in my mind that the class overall is under powered compared to DKs, Sorcs, and properly working NBs.

I think the changes I suggested above are moderate enough that they won't make Templars OP and just strong enough to bring them on par with what they should be.

What do you think?

Restoring Spirit - Make it so that everytime you use an ability that costs Stamina, you get 4% of your Magicka back. That actually works better for the theme of a Templar and makes using a weapon that isn't a staff a viable choice.

Backlash - Make this ability instant cast on all it's forms, period, and then it'd be fair. The move does nothing on it's own before Morph, and it's easy to cast it then be CC'ed and suddenly Backlash and it's morphs do virtually nothing because you can't hit the target. The only other way to make this move worth it's cast time if you refuse to remove it, would be to lower the amount of damage returned in the percentage drastically, but make it so -everybody's- damage counted towards the soak-and-surge damage effect.

Eclipse - I have no idea what he means, I've never actually used it.

Biting Jabs - I will cut somebody and leave them to die like a stuck pig if you don't put this move back exactly as you found it. I read the patch notes, saying you'll return it to it's original CD, but raise the price slightly. The price was fine, what moron thought the best and perhaps only perfect move a Templar had at their disposal be nerfed or changed in the first place? Are you daft mate? ***, if anything you should've put in an option for the Sweeping Strikes Morph (Which sucks btw) to be named Crashing Thrust (or something) and make it an instant unload, doing all the damage upfront in one single hit but with the exact same effect Biting Jabs would normally have. That way people get a choice; Big ass hit, or critical chance raised higher. One is faster to use, since it wouldn't be a channel anymore, thus higher flat damage output, the other would remain a better aoe with higher crit chance thus higher chance for damage, but it'd be a chance, not stable/steady dps. Choices, they're what make these types of games fun.

Healing Ritual - Don't heal as a main spec, I rock the Support DPS role, and thus use Honor The Dead/Breathe Of Life depending on the month, although I think Ima stick with Honor the Dead since it refills my magicka slightly if I'm jacked up enough when I use it. Then again the point of off heals is to heal everybody, not just me or one other dude, so...yea....Ima say listen to the man in the quotations, but this leads me to my next point:

Breathe Of Life - Make this move and all it's previous forms and morphs, etc, all restore the user's mana, period, without the target being below 50%, and extra if they were below as a morph, or something. Like, First Form of the skill, heal, restore....5% of your mana over 10 seconds. For Breath Of Life, keep it as it but with the extra people, etc, but for Honor The Dead, make it so it restores the 5% over 10 seconds as before, but if the target is below 50%, you get an additional 10% back over 10 seconds. That would make this heal the bees knees it ought to be, especially for the outrageous price it charges.

Solar Flare/Dark Flare/Solar Barrage - Yea, screw an AoE Morph, just make this move Instant cast. Seriously, and instead of holy mortars in the air, just shoot a damn fireball straight forward. Or even cooler, divine lightning. A god damned fiery lightning bolt. Tell me that wouldn't be cool. That's what makes this skill terrible, the animation and cast time, and Solar Barrage becomes butt in some situations outside of PvP and a broken-ass staff user. Recap: Solar Flare = Change the Animation. Solar Barrage = AoE for PvP, yea Ok. Dark Flare = Change the animation to whatever Solar Flare has but, dark, and make it Instant Cast. Screw the lowered healing, people can't outheal the damage output in PvP anyway, have you been in a deep fray? Sheesh.

Spear Shards - Dear lord, the potential here is amazing, but having to actually aim this move like an archaic AoE spell from a point and click MMO is TERRIBAD. TERRA. BAD. BAAAD. Make it a very short .5 Second Cast time, but have it aim just like any other spell in this game; highlight a mob, pull the metaphorical trigger. When the spear hits, and it better not fly into the air but instead shoot like a holy rocket of God, it'll hit the enemy and explode, and THAT enemy will be the one stunned, thus allowing you to choose which one you want to disorient and whup booty on. This would solve a major problem with this move that people seem to be having, myself included. Also, have a morph option to up the damage on targets affected by it for a short time, that'd be AMAZING support move, period.

Sun Shield - Since people complained about Templar's survivability, I'll make a quick suggestion here with this one; Increase the amount of the Shield's health, and have it restore X% of stamina per hit you take, to aid in your blocking. Probably OP, but better than not suggesting anything at all.

Jeremy_gelber_ESO · May 2014

zenimax hates templars. want to know how i can prove it.

its very simple. look at blazing shield. which is the only useful version of that spell. has a magika cost. and cuts off magika regen. so now instead of spamming jabs we just let things hit us till they die of exhaustion. or we run out of magika

Jeremy_gelber_ESO · May 2014

Cheatingdeath23 wrote: »

I'm trying for the Heavy Armor/Sword and Board melee type Templar class...

I haven't had any issues so far, but I also have nothing to compare it to (not leveling up another character). I feel like I am an asset to a group both in DPS and in healing, I'm sort of an "oh crap" extra heal when things get rough.

trust me if you tried a dk you'd cry when you went back to your templar.