Help with Templar Build

MaxBat · June 2014

Since prelaunch I've been playing DWing NBs. I wanted a break from that those builds and I wanted to play an Imperial, so I thought Templar might be a good class to try.

What I soon discovered, in actual gameplay, is that my Templar pretty much sucks at solo, pve. Of course, I probably should L2P, but there's more going on here than that. I chose sword and shield as my weapon choice. I'm at level 8, with 2 skyshard points, and 2 points to spend. My skill choices include:

AS -> Puncturing Strikes
DW-> Sun Fire & Solo Flare
RL-> Rushed Ceremony & Healing Ritual

1h&S-> Puncture, Low Slash, Fortress.

I've invested 5 of my stat points into magicka, 2 into stamina, and 1 into health. I'm wearing enchanted armor: 2 x stamina and 3 x magicka.

I'm doing everything I can to make this build work but I still suck. PvE, one on one, I can survive, but it takes me 4-9 attacks to kill a Dagger in Bal Foyen. Get two or three coming at me and I will most certainly die.

What I'm looking for is paladin, warrior-style build that I can get into as an Imperial. I asked in-game and the responses were along the lines of "Build a Healer" or "Destro/Resto staff". I don't want to use a staff, I don't want to play a mage, and my interest in being a healer is purely secondary. Most of my gameplay time in TESO is spent solo questing, PVE.

I'd really like to be able to play a templar, but from what I've read on this forum and on other forums, it doesn't seem like it's a viable choice any longer for solo questing, let alone solo PvP. If you're in a group, great: you can heal everyone else and watch while they fight. But the only time I group is if I'm required to do so to do a dungeon like Spindle.

I see my options as:

(1) Deleting this character and rerolling and DragonKnight.
(2) Respecing (but to what?)

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

akriden · June 2014

The only answer is reroll. Believe me, played a vet 10 templar and rerolled a few days ago to a dk. The right decision.

bobby_nayb14a_ESO · June 2014

I leveled solo in veteran content and did fine. I respec'd a few different and was able to efficiently take down whatever was in my way
I used a mix of light/heavy armor (5/2) or heavy/light (5/2). I used all weapons except DW throughout the different zones. I've had a blast on my Templar personally.

In my experience for a melee build biting jabs and honor the dead/breath of life are almost must haves on 1 skill bar (if you choose to not have it on both).
Just hang in there and try new things as you level. I personally didn't find it as bad as what you read on the forums.

jesterstear · June 2014

I have a veteran rank 1 altmer Templar that's similar in concept.

Puncture -> Ransack (sword and shield)

Repentence (restoring light)
restores stamina and health when you kill an enemy

Sun Fire (morphed to vampire's bane)

Rushed Ceremony (morphed to honour the dead)

Defensive posture -> Absorb Magic (sword and shield)

Entropy -> Degeneration (Mage's guild)

Healing ritual was a waste of time. It takes far too long to cast and you'll take more damage than you heal in the time that you're casting as opposed to blocking/dodging.

Honour the Dead only returns power if you are at 50% health after healing.

To make use of this, means you need stack tons of health and have an add-on that reports your health as a numerical value. I have 2400 health and if I heal at 720 or below, then I will get the power return if the heal doesn't crit. If it does crit well, happy days.

Our class DPS skills are mostly awful, apart from the Sun Fire dot which is very magika efficient. Basically you're trying to outlast the enemy and not waste resources. You kill slowly with light attack and heavy attack when exploiting enemies that stun themselves with a failed power move.

The mage guild skill is also very resource efficient, 1 point of damage and 1 point of heal for every point in magika cost. You can put it on multiple opponents and get quite a bit of heal over time. But only if you can spare the power.

I'm using 5 heavy 2 light. I have one piece of regen jewellery for each primary stat. Magicka and Stamina are both rather low at1300 ish... hence the need to conserve.

I'm at a crossroads really. Stay with 5 pcs heavy armour and stacking huge amounts of health, so that I can proc the power return on Honour the Dead.

Or I go light armour. This will make me too squishy to safely drop down to 720 before healing, but i'll have lower spell costs and better regen, so I can simply do without the power return. In fact I may as well then pursue a more balanced build. And put that stupid shield away while i'm at it, and get a resto staff...

My existing build does work well enough for most bosses.

Mannimarco redux - level 44. Fear my 90DPS !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkaKY9P5ZYs

The trash was harder, but you can see me use more self heals etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbOM1ikel_4

The lack of CC and burst DPS is a weakness, as is the fact that a combination of Ransack being my only melee skill and healing agro results in absolutely every mob ignoring the NPCs and choosing to target me.

Molag Bal fight , pretty easy despite all the lag

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPizRANnzt4

I did roll an alt, also Templar, this time a Breton with light armour and restoration staff. Has made it to level 8 without dying an made pretty short work of Norion..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMILJEklu0I

jesterstear · June 2014

I think the problems the build faces, are that

1) Templar class skills having poor dps/magika ratio

2) Sword and Shield skills having poor dps/stamina ratio

3) little or no CC or Burst damage

What are the class's strengths? Gee that's a tough one.

I guess it's the fact we can instant cast a self heal and don't need a staff equipped to do so. I'm not sure how this compares to the self healing potential of nightblades specced to funnel, or Dragonknights. To take advantage of this though, you need to conserve sufficient resources to use these heals.

You need a playstyle and build that compensates for 1 and 2. Basically not spamming and trying to hang on to resources.

p_tsakirisb16_ESO · June 2014

MaxBat wrote: »

What I soon discovered, in actual gameplay, is that my Templar pretty much sucks at solo, pve. Of course, I probably should L2P, but there's more going on here than that. I chose sword and shield as my weapon choice. I'm at level 8, with 2 skyshard points, and 2 points to spend. My skill choices include:

Few notes.

First. Templars might not be DK or NB, however if you know how to play them they are OK

Second. A Templar until VR1 can roll all PvE content. Especially quests.
From 1 to 50 especially is a doodle as a Templar. In group dungeons a Tank Templar shines by both tanking and healing on all but 2 dungeons.

However there are a lot of misconceptions, hence all the QQ that Templars are "too weak bou houu"

How to play a solo Templar Tank until level 50

a) You need the following.
Full set of heavy armour. (to that later)

Qbar 1 - Puncture - Low Slash - Breath of Life - Eclipse - Javelin/Immovable (if the mob/boss cannot be CC).
Sweep or Nova for Ultimate.

Qbar 2 - NOTHING (to that later).

b) Simple coockie cutter approach for all normal content all way to level 50. Including bosses. (in team dungeons you can replace Pucture with Inner fire).

c) ALL points to HEALTH. Do not split them to MA/STA. All Health.

Conserve Magicka, use only to heal, cast eclipse on enemy casters, and javelin when you want to gain some space. Learn to block or interrupt power attacks. Conserve Stamina.

If you use Nova, keep it for big fights.
Believe me with the above went through everything and died 2-3 times on PvE between levels 1 to 50.

VETERAN CONTENT.
However when you hit Veteran content, you are going to need a different set of abilities, that you have to level while going from 1 to 50.
And here comes the Qbar 2.

First of all you are going to need Light armour. So I would advice you to put 1-2 LA parts (belt one of them) while levelling. Spend some SP on conservation and regeneration skills when you have free.

I didn't, and went all way to VR2 with full set heavy (to 45) and medium ( 45 to VR2). Then I saw the benefits of the light armour and the need of it struggling to raise it while in VR2 to VR4 content. (ouch).

You need a series of skills & abilties at Veteran levels that you need to morph and level while handing over the quests. Hence the Qbar 2 is left empty.

Lets start.

QBAR 2

Equip Resto staff. when goes to 50. put a weapon or something else to level. (do not waste xp).

You need to rotate the following, and level them. (as you hand over the quests switch to qbar 2)
Please note have 1 ability per skill line, for all of them to level.
You need Aedric Spear & Dawn Wrath 50 ASAP. Their two big passives are really good.

Aedric Spear.

Radial Sweep -> Empowering Sweep

Piercing Javelin -> Binding Javelin

Dawn Wrath
Nova -> Solar Disturbance

Sun Fire ->Reflective Light
Blinding Light -> Blinding Flashes
Solar Flare -> Dark Flare
Backlash -> Power of Light
Eclipse -> (to any morph you like).

Restoring Light
Rushed Ceremony -> Breath of Life
Restoring Aura -> Radiant Aura
Cleansing Ritual -> Purifying Ritual
Rune Focus -> Channeled Focus

Heavy Armour

Immovable -> Unstoppable

Mages Guild

Fire Rune -> Volcanic Rune (MUST)

Undaunted

Inner Fire -> Inner Beast
Bone Shield -> (to any morph you like).

Fighters Guild (if you like. I even have evil hunter)

Silver Bolts -> (to any morph you like).
Dawn Breaker -> (to any morph you like).

Restoration Staff

Grand Healing -> (to any morph you like).

Plus passives of course for all the above categories.

There is a nice guide describing a lot in tesoelite website also.

Good luck and enjoy. I love my Templar even soloing at VR levels as "melee"

jesterstear · June 2014

Update - (third responder, not OP)

I'm close to VR2 now and still doing OK with my Sword and Shield build, I still use that weapon for over half the fights.

From levels 20-50 I would always fight a group of three mobs if I saw one to test my skills. Mobs hit harder now and this seems too risky, it's not been necessary to fight more than two so far. I have on two occasions taken on a group of one archer and two melees, and won, but it wasn't comfortable.

I've had 5 deaths. One due to disconnecting, one due to trying to heal another person that was loosing, and one due to mobs/boss adds failing to despawn and reset from someone else's failed attempt on the boss. I call these BS deaths.

The fourth was also in my opinion BS. That quest in Ebonheart town, after uniting the factions, you get to follow that spy back to his house. Within, after triggering the communication device with the Breton Mage, two imps spawn at opposite ends of the room. Run to interrupt one and the other flames you for 1000 damage. Kept running back and forward trying to heal and interrupt but died, then got booted outside the house and not allowed back in to try salvage pride by beating the mobs. Turns out you didn't need to for quest, I suspect you are not meant to , this is just a fake difficulty video game screw you, to kill the player and make them angry. Certainly worked, I was raging in chat channel for about an hour.

The fifth was two of those half life 2 antlion things. Perhaps I should have been able to beat those.