The Growing pains of a veteran 2 templar

jesterstear

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH3bBMgYWjE

Be honest, am I just terrible, or is my character just pathetic?

I know people don't usually start to QQ till VR6 or 7, but after 12 hours in game I have less gold than I did before the weekend (repairs) and i'm finding this tough going....

Cinna

Ok, I'll attempt to give some feedback. Without a further knowledge of your spec or attributes the advice is obviously going to be generic, superficial and can't target exactly what you want to do with your character, but I am doing it with the best intentions and trying to be constructive.

You did not seem to be using actual damage spells much at all so the fight lasts long and wears you out. 1h&s basic attacks are not going to cut it for dps in veteran content, I am afraid. I didn't see you use aoe that would have allowed killing the adds effectively, nor nukes against the boss. Entropy is more of a utility spell. Silver bolts is great choice against undead (the adds), but don't be afraid to use magicka for offense - I saw you sitting on full magicka a lot (I presume you were saving it for heals), but with your weapon choice you can always regen it (restoration staff heavy attack returns 10% per finished channel). I see you are in a robe so I assume your attributes go more for magicka, but if you're not using hardly any magicka you're also not actually getting the benefits from wearing the robes and the passives that come with them.

I would add to your bars at least one spell from dawn's wrath (dark flare/reflective light/vampire's bane) and/or mages guild fire rune (which ever morph, one adds more damage the other is great cc for solo, your build could use either). Or consider puncturing strikes, if you prefer that style. If you have resto staff passive cycle of light unlocked, put your biggest nukes on the resto bar, so you gain 10% extra damage on them. Personally I have had success with having also Toppling charge or Binding javelin on my resto bar, so I can do an interrupt/control even if I have been taking distance. Instead of trying to block or bash everything, you can disable the opponent instead. Give it a go.

Now you're wondering, how to fit in all these spells... Try not to have same spells on both bars, swap the weapons more instead. (With the exception of an emergency heal, if you feel too uncomfortable without.)

Edit/addition:
I see now through your profile that you have built for a tank role. The concept of tank however does rely on team support: someone else does the damage and keeps you alive while you focus on being the center of enemies attention. But when we go solo, we need to adjust if we still want to be efficient. In ESO the need to adjust is even more dire than in some other games due to the very limited amount of skills we can keep available in our active bar. This goes for all roles: the healer and the tank have to add damage, the damage dealer has to add survivability. As you've experienced this game is not one where tanking mechanisms allow you to comfortably just outlast and outheal a big boss enemy, you've got to burn them down and control them. So in order to be comfortable in dungeon play and solo play you will need separate setups for them, I am afraid.

Above I was suggesting some spells to add in your bars. I am not trying to turn you into a mage, you can be a tank to your hearts desire, but you do need to add some damage for solo play, in a way or another. An offensive ultimate could boost your damage a lot. For example Soul strike for single target, Radial sweep for aoe.


To sum up, in my opinion you can improve your game play a lot by reconsidering your skill choices, using your resources more offensively and utilizing weapon swap more actively.

p_tsakirisb16_ESO

Had same issues mate when i went to VR with the gear I had no issue during 1-50 (7/7 HA, Shield, Mace)

And I was stupid enough, to try keep pushing for almost two months more in the VR content, instead of going back to the drawing board and make an NB or DK.

The only way to cut through as Melee Templar is
a) put 1060 Armour on a purple jewel. (purple glyph)
b) put as much as you can on power (melee) on another purple jewel.
c) Respec to 2H or DW and Medium armour. (Hunding Rage set)
d) Optional become a vampire (and have invigorating drain all times slotted).

Have resto staff and spells on Qbar 2. 3 2H skills on qbar 1, plus a heal and eclipse or invigorating drain.

You can cut your way though the trash & bosses, and yes you will die, but is not as bad as trying to go with a shield or templar spells only.

If your are AD, the Shadowfen (VR3) going to frustrate you, but on the other hand I was still trying to figure my build then.

Thats what I have done, and while is tough playing the game on "very hard mode", I do not use the "easy mode" solution of light armour and destruction staff. Because there is no skill involved doing that either way.

Thechemicals

jesterstear wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH3bBMgYWjE

Be honest, am I just terrible, or is my character just pathetic?

I know people don't usually start to QQ till VR6 or 7, but after 12 hours in game I have less gold than I did before the weekend (repairs) and i'm finding this tough going....

You have no dps in either loadout. Silverbolts is nice though. Here try this...

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/106373/templar-build-for-troubled-templars#latest

Its a bit old but the build is solid and the info is sound. Especially pay attention to the part about attributes. If you need any help just pm me or msg if in DC.

danno8

You need some offensive skills.

I am VR6 on my Templar right now, and don't have too many issues, unless there are scripted fights with no downtime inbetween mobs (which is why I believe we need more resource management as Templars.

First off let me say that you block a lot of attacks to stagger you opponent but seem to almost never take advantage of following up with a heavy attack. You should, as it does sizable damage and knocks them down also.

If a mob (like the one you are fighting in the video above) IS cc'able you can just use Binding Javelin + Resto heavy attacks to win if you must.

If they are not cc'able then it is harder, and gets harder the higher you go in VR levels. Healing, kiting/straffing and moving out of the way of big attacks are the only way to win in that case.

In any case, since you have a resto staff try debuffing the enemy with Siphon Spirit first it heals you with every hit, and gives 1% power return as well.

Reflective light/ Vampires bane are great skills, as are any DoT's you can put on the enemy because they let you do damage while concentrating on movement and defense. In the video above your only offense is light attacks, which are terrible since they do little damage, and you can not block at the same time.

With any INSTANT skill in this game you can block at the same time. For better or worse this is how the game works making instant cast skills the best option for melee oriented builds.

Your build above also seems to have no AoE skills. You should put some on your bars to help with adds/groups.

At the end of the day, like the first responder says, a pure tank build using only light attacks is meant to complement healers/DPS builds in a group. Solo, you must have a more balanced build to succeed. You need some survivability through tankiness/healing and a whole lot of DPS.

Generally you only want as much survivability skills that you feel you need and everything else DPS skills.

jesterstear

Sorry about the original rage post guys, but I was feeling it after an 8 hour session in game. My head is clearer for sleeping on the problem.

You did not seem to be using actual damage spells much at all so the fight lasts long and wears you out..

..don't be afraid to use magicka for offense - I saw you sitting on full magicka a lot (I presume you were saving it for heals),

I would add to your bars at least one spell from dawn's wrath (dark flare/reflective light/vampire's bane)

Up till until an hour before this fight, I had always been 5H 2L armour. Magika was extremely scarce and the class DPS skills seemed to cost more in Magika than they did in damage. The only way to get more points healed or more points in damage than the skill cost was to use stuff like Vampire's bane and Degeneration, and of course Honour the Dead (but only if I heal below 700 health, so as to proc the power return feature). I'd softcapped health because a) proccing honour the dead requires letting yourself get extremely low, so I needed a massive health pool to do this safely and b) as a tank i'll need high health anyway.

When fighting groups of 3 mobs on the landscape I would sometimes die and in these deaths would occur when i'd run out of magika for healing.

I'd heard this fight was a nightmare, so in preparation I hit the guild store and bought a jewellery piece to complete the Warlock set I had a couple of parts to.

The warlock set is is a chest piece and a hood, and a ring. Since I wear light shoulders (the heavys don't look good on women) it made little sense keeping the heavy belt and gloves, very little armour on these slots, so I changed those to light too and only wore heavy boots and legs (which have a lot of armour per slot) into the fight. So now i'm a 5L 2Heavy build.

I only had an hour or so to acclimatise to the differences and the suddenly vastly more available magika.

When you die, Magika bar goes to 0 so it wasn't till watching the videos back after finally completing the quest, just how much unused magika I now had.

So maybe, waiting till 700 health before healing was no longer worth the risk of getting wiped by a random lag spike/floor trip hazard, especially given that my turtling approach would necessarily make for a long fight.

To be honest, the incoming damage in this fight probably isn't as bad as you get fighting packs of 3 trash mobs in melee with no CC skills, which can eventually drain my magika reserves with heavy , sustained healing requirement. The problem is the stuns and bursty damage, which is of course how players defeat healing mobs. Now i'm the healing mob, and Vox is using stunlock and burst to kill me.

As regards Vampire's bane , i had it on my bar for the first attempt but I swapped it for silver bolts when I saw the ghosts. I've since learned that the ghosts spawn ad infinitum, there was no point trying to kill them. I was asking in all the chat channels if this was the case but no one knew.

I've not played any since this fight, it's going to take a while to get over it.

But , I the Volcanic rune is my favourite suggestion. I could easily handle Vox, if I had a way to root her adds it would have made the fight much easier. Since the skill lasts 30 seconds, the 300 magika cost seems worthwhile, especially when you consider how much healing it would save. Up till then I've wondered why use CC as a melee fighter.. well now I can see a reason!

I've worried about putting points in new skills, since I cannot afford a respec (every day my bank balance gets less with repairs, consumables and soul gems since VR). But checking the deed log, I 've missed loads of skyshards in the lower level areas. Time to clean house.

jesterstear

danno816_ESO wrote: »

You need some offensive skills.

I am VR6 on my Templar right now, and don't have too many issues, unless there are scripted fights with no downtime inbetween mobs (which is why I believe we need more resource management as Templars.

First off let me say that you block a lot of attacks to stagger you opponent but seem to almost never take advantage of following up with a heavy attack. You should, as it does sizable damage and knocks them down also.

If a mob (like the one you are fighting in the video above) IS cc'able you can just use Binding Javelin + Resto heavy attacks to win if you must.

If they are not cc'able then it is harder, and gets harder the higher you go in VR levels. Healing, kiting/straffing and moving out of the way of big attacks are the only way to win in that case.
.

Sadly this mob is immune to all forms of CC in VR, even the heavy attack after blocking one of hers does not work. Blocking her power attack does not even set her off balance so I did not do so, since it restricts my movement and opens me up to attacks from adds etc.

Volcanic rune would have been good though. The boss would simply run through it but that's fine I can handle her and want to be toe to toe, the ghosts would get stuck.

Syphon sounds great too. I've bought it, but am slightly concerned this will be the end of melee fighting for me.

In Coldharbour I quested exclusively with resto staff, to save stamina I would have spend on ransack, block etc. for Silver bolts spam.

Cinna

As regards Vampire's bane , i had it on my bar for the first attempt but I swapped it for silver bolts when I saw the ghosts.

... to save stamina I would have spend on ransack, block etc. for Silver bolts spam.

Another alternative is that as you're fighting alone and do not need to taunt, you could consider situationally swapping ransack for silver bolts instead of trading Vampire's bane off. I know the debuff of ransack will give you damage gain when you keep light attack spamming, but what sort of numbers we're talking I am not sure here - you don't use other physical attacks so...

Syphon sounds great too. I've bought it, but am slightly concerned this will be the end of melee fighting for me.

If you mean left click spam by melee, then it might be time to get more tricks to your toolbox indeed, but if you simply refer to melee range, then don't you worry: you can use instant spells from resto staff in the melee while holding block and then swap back to 1h&shield - using selection of 12 spells instead of 6 just gives you so much more means to adapt to tricky situations.

if I had a way to root her adds it would have made the fight much easier. Since the skill lasts 30 seconds,

Um, this makes me think I am not sure if you've read the tooltip right, so I feel the need to clarify to save you from a disappointment. The rune lasts 30 seconds on the ground as a trap, until someone walks on it, then it tosses the mobs in air and stuns them for 4 secons, then they are free - no 30sec cc.

I 've missed loads of skyshards in the lower level areas. Time to clean house.

Sounds like a plan! I really do encourage you to experiment with more variety of skills in the bars. And when you buy all the new shiny skills, make sure to fill your bars with them as you're handing in quests (outfitter addon can help with this) to get them leveled up efficiently.

Oh and by the way, if you like the resourcefulness of light armor but want more armor rating, experiment Rune focus (morph Channeled focus returns the mana even if you have to go outside the area) or armor jewellery as options.

danno8

One other thing. Ransack. Reducing a targets armour by 40%+ sounds great but the reality in PvE is enemies have very little armour and this skill, on a more heavily armoured enemy only increases your damage by about 5%. On enemies with no armour it will make virtually no difference at all.

The +600 armour sounds good, but there are skills like Immovable that give way more armour (+1000) for about the same amount of time as well as cc immunity, and it is independent of weapon/armour you are wearing.

Just something else to consider.

jesterstear

danno816_ESO wrote: »

One other thing. Ransack. Reducing a targets armour by 40%+ sounds great but the reality in PvE is enemies have very little armour and this skill, on a more heavily armoured enemy only increases your damage by about 5%. On enemies with no armour it will make virtually no difference at all.

The +600 armour sounds good, but there are skills like Immovable that give way more armour (+1000) for about the same amount of time as well as cc immunity, and it is independent of weapon/armour you are wearing.

Just something else to consider.

There is the issue of cost.

Ransack is 227 Stamina, lasts 12 seconds. Cost 1135/minute

Immovable cost 448 and lasts 8 seconds, cost 3360/minute.

Don't think that's sustainable tbh, though perhaps I should have it on my staff bar. Ransack is enough to push me into armour softcap around 1700 or so, even with 5 light armour heavy boots and legs.

The magika furnace set would suit my playstyle , but i'm sure lots of people would say the same.

jesterstear

Cinna wrote: »

if I had a way to root her adds it would have made the fight much easier. Since the skill lasts 30 seconds,

Um, this makes me think I am not sure if you've read the tooltip right, so I feel the need to clarify to save you from a disappointment. The rune lasts 30 seconds on the ground as a trap, until someone walks on it, then it tosses the mobs in air and stuns them for 4 secons, then they are free - no 30sec cc.

What are my CC options as a Templar then, and the costs of each in terms of magika/stamina or whatever?

The volcanic rune seems to be aoe, which is unique. But as a melee, in most fights that means you negate the usefulness - if mobs are knocked down for 4 seconds, rather than using that to open some distance so you can kite, you're just going to run up to them anyway so you can left click spam. I can kite already with vampire's bane on the mob I am not fighting, but flyers are immune and it takes a bit of target juggling. What i'd really like is a long lasting sleep spell that breaks on damage, but there's nothing like that in game.

I suppose a single target stun / disorient for a few seconds could be used on members of the melee pack I am not fighting, but they are so brief it's hardly worth the magicka cost. We have a few like that further up the Aedric spear/Dawns wrath trees?

Nidwin

jesterstear wrote: »

What are my CC options as a Templar then, and the costs of each in terms of magika/stamina or whatever?

The volcanic rune seems to be aoe, which is unique. But as a melee, in most fights that means you negate the usefulness - if mobs are knocked down for 4 seconds, rather than using that to open some distance so you can kite, you're just going to run up to them anyway so you can left click spam. I can kite already with vampire's bane on the mob I am not fighting, but flyers are immune and it takes a bit of target juggling. What i'd really like is a long lasting sleep spell that breaks on damage, but there's nothing like that in game.

I suppose a single target stun / disorient for a few seconds could be used on members of the melee pack I am not fighting, but they are so brief it's hardly worth the magicka cost. We have a few like that further up the Aedric spear/Dawns wrath trees?

I'm wondering how you did before VR2, just wondering and not meant as an insult. Was it enough to just melee block till the end of the NPC's?

Anyway.
My way of doing it if it can help you out a bit

CC for Templar.
Blinding Javelin for single target
Volcanic rune for trash packs up to 3.

How I handle the 2/3-packs.

Check the pack to see if there's a stagnant NPC in there (Archer, healer, caster)

If there's one
Volcanic rune under the pack. Volcanic rune has an animation which gives you a delay that's actually useful to cast a Reflective Light, so both nearly hit at the same time.
Heavy attack to restore 10% Magicka while running to the pack. That's the moment they will start to split up a bit once the NPC's get up again.
Solar Barrage spam (while blocking) 2-3-4 times. Keep an eye on their health and yours going down. Solar Barrage has enough range to always hit all 3 of them if you're positioned properly.
Now my Ult Crescent Sweep will be up so this should finish at least 2 of the 3. Most of the time only the tank still up and that's the easiest to solo. Switch to single target to finish him/her.

If there's no stagnant.
Volcanic rune 2-3 meters before the pack and use Reflective light to pull the pack into Volcanic rune. Heavy attack to restore 10% Magicka, 2nd Reflective light before being in contact. Block and spam Solar Barrage till ult up. Ult and this should do it.

If there's a healer.
Do enough damage while not burning down your magicka, so the healer starts to heal his 1-2 companion(s). Focus/dps the healer down. Works well with 1 Reflective Light + Blinding Javelin spam + ult.

I tried different builds and setups and opted at the end for.

Resto staff in both setups. 5Heavy and 2 Light. Warlock Focus + 2 rings.
All points in Health, all armor glyphs Magicka.
Alchemy for Heal + Magicka pots. Those pots make the difference when it goes wrong.

Single target setups with resto staff (Naga mouse here)
Breath of Life (slot 1)
Blinding Javelin (slot 2)
Inner Light (slot 3 as passive)
Reflective Light (slot 4)
Eclipse (not morphed as I've no clue yet to what's best to morph it into) This is also my switch slot if I need something different for specific fights
Ult -> Crescent Sweep

Aoe setup with resto staff
Breath of Life
Volcanic Rune
Inner Light
Reflective Light
Solar Barrage
Ult -> Crescent Sweep

Most Boss fights are 1vs1 with sometimes some small adds during the fight. Blinding Javelin is plainly amazing for it, except against non CC-able bosses. Just keep your Magicka up for the moment those adds appear. Switch to AOE build, aoe the adds down and switch back to single target against the Boss. The key is Heavy attacks for the Magicka regen, blinding javelin for the CC and Reflective Light for DD/Dot and Ult of course when up. Same against Elite mobs.

Hope any of this helps you.
Good luck.

danno8

jesterstear wrote: »

danno816_ESO wrote: »

One other thing. Ransack. Reducing a targets armour by 40%+ sounds great but the reality in PvE is enemies have very little armour and this skill, on a more heavily armoured enemy only increases your damage by about 5%. On enemies with no armour it will make virtually no difference at all.

The +600 armour sounds good, but there are skills like Immovable that give way more armour (+1000) for about the same amount of time as well as cc immunity, and it is independent of weapon/armour you are wearing.

Just something else to consider.

There is the issue of cost.

Ransack is 227 Stamina, lasts 12 seconds. Cost 1135/minute

Immovable cost 448 and lasts 8 seconds, cost 3360/minute.

Don't think that's sustainable tbh, though perhaps I should have it on my staff bar. Ransack is enough to push me into armour softcap around 1700 or so, even with 5 light armour heavy boots and legs.

The magika furnace set would suit my playstyle , but i'm sure lots of people would say the same.

Well you are right about the cost. If you are looking to have permanent protection 100% uptime then Rune/Channeled Focus are the best option for a (more or less) stationary face tanking play style, with a base 190 magicka cost/base 18 second duration and 1250/1250 armour+spell resistance.

The magicka return is more than the tooltip states also. It is actually 20/second and you do not need to stand in the circle for that part, effectively returning twice the cost of the cast.

jesterstear

Nidwin wrote: »

I'm wondering how you did before VR2, just wondering and not meant as an insult. Was it enough to just melee block till the end of the NPC's?

I'll respond to this quickly but the rest of what you said needs time to digest and I've had a long day, some sleep wouldn't be a bad idea.

I did reasonably well I'd say, especially in boss fights. Mannimarco and Molag Bal went down first attempt and never even got close to defeating her.

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

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

The trash fight before Mannimarco was harder, I got punished a little by my lack of CC, and from pulling the agro of every single mob off the NPCs with a combination of Ransack and Healing agro.

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


In general I did ok out on the landscape, but I've certainly encountered some impulse spam types and thought WTF, hax?

Things were hard early levels, but that's also tempered by the fact it was my first character. It took me 6 attempts to beat Norion at level 8 and I struggled with packs of 3 mobs up to about level 15. I don't have many reference points.

I have a level 14 sorcerer alt who went sword and shield. He dies a lot more than my Templar and feels very squishy. The lack of any self heal hurts him. He trusted in a shield instead of investing in pets and the CC skills of the destro staff. His DPS is pretty good but his ability to overcome tough fights is poor.

I have another alt, level 14 Breton Templar who went full light amour, all enchants and attrib points in health, magika regen/power cost jewellry, restoration staff, Rapid Regen , Honour the Dead , Reflective Light and Silver Bolts as active skills. She's disgustingly OP , curb stomped Norion and toys with packs of mobs 2 levels above her just for fun -

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSF_bcz0WGc

You're being a little unfair to say that my Templar's playstyle consists of holding down block. My house is 2km from the centre of my rural village, so my ADSL connection isn't the best. It took 90 minutes to upload that video and the quality isn't good enough to see what is going on, but I do not stand there and hold block? I'd be out of stamina in 10 seconds and die.

But yes it's entirely possible to win fights vs packs of 3 mobs using nothing but honour the dead, light attack, heavy attack, blocking power attacks and moving out of red circles. Healers are a problem, but 3 melee or 2 melee 1 ranged or even 2 casters 1 melee, can be done if you block and move right.

My previous fight strategy for 3 mob trash pull -

1. put the mutagen HOT on myself before the start.

2. hit one of the mobs with vampire's bane to pull.

3. put Deneneration on each of the others in turn, and refresh the DOT/HOT on each mob still living and over half health every 15 seconds.

4. spend the rest of the time fighting, left click, block, move out of the red, heavy attack on off-balance foes etc. Backpedal constantly to try keep them in front of you and force them to waste time stepping around each other/only the ones at the head of the queue can attack.

5. if I go below 700 health use honour the dead to heal me and trigger the power return proc if it fails to crit.

6. when an enemy falls, use repentance to restore stamina/health

7. at any point in the fight if my power bar reaches 100% use honour the dead to heal myself

8. if things get real bad, I have my ultimate , Remembrance

A mistake, lag spike can kill me though and that gets old fast, and yes, healing mobs are a huge annoyance when combined with others. Tackling packs of 3 was comfortable in the 30-50 range but now it's not, and I don't like seeing my hero die. So i'm looking to improve her skills, if i'm dying when turtling, the solution obviously is more turtling, i want more self healing, some CC and more armour buffs. Bring it on and weigh me down with so much armour I can't move, please.

Nidwin

I didn't want to sound or be unfair, was just wondering.

I actually struggled hard on my Templar before entering the wonderful world of Veteran Ranks. After getting rid of Molag not Bal but pain in the arse (5+ hours to get him finally down) I went back to my drawing board and completely changed my playing style and build.

The funny part is that I've created a new one recently to see if I would struggle less. She's still low level in Stonefalls (Pact only player here) but I can already say it's night and day compared to what I experienced at launch with my first Templar. It seems so easy and easy mode with her now while I struggled hard back then.

p_tsakirisb16_ESO

Sorry guys, but Molag Bal took 5 minutes for my Templar to kill.

What I used was Mace, Shield, 7HA and only 2 Templar abilities.
Ext Ritual and Breath of Life.

So if Molag Bal who is pitiful took someone 5 hours to kill, then any quest or dungeon boss at VR5+ areas going to take a day?

To kill Sinmun at V5/10 Rift it will take a week?

I wonder if you do actually know how to play, or you are the usual standard Templars I see around spamming Bitting Jabs on the air, crying that they have no Magicka.


If you want melee templar, I wrote above, you need 7/7 MA, 2H/DW, Ext Ritual, and breath of life or invigorating drain.

Thats all you need on your main bar to solo everything all way to V10 (except most world bosses, but all dungeon bosses are OK).

On Casters drop an eclipse/unstable core from Qbar 2.
Thats all you need. Along with brains of course.

CaptainSilverbrow

You're wearing light armor, main-handing a resto staff, and off-handing SnB, and your bars don't really make much sense; I daresay, you're doing something catastrophically wrong. Pick up HA, DW, and Bow (Magnum Shot, you are my greatest ally). I'm also a Vamp', so there's that. When you're proficient, you'll be able to solo most content and quest bosses breezily.

Edit: You're also gonna wanna pick up and morph Crescent Sweep, it's perhaps my favorite boon of all with Update 2. Initially, I used it because it was cheap, and my Templar/Paladin experience informed my reasoning that a cheap (by virtue, rotational) and effective AoE that buffs armor would be a tremendous survivability and DPS boon; it's now the former in far greater magnitude than it has ever been. Reducing its cost as much as possible will be on most seasoned players' agendas, for both PvE and PvP.

jesterstear

Update.

Collecting all those non-vet Skyshards took ages. I also respent attribute points putting everything into health. All but two armour enchants are Health too, the others Magika. Yeah... balanced.

I bought some new skills. Fire Rune - I need to level it before I can morph into the CC. Will swap it on before turning quests in, for now, not too useful.

Rune Focus & Force Syphon - These are indeed very good for my face tanking style, add a lot of survivability. Been doing some quests in Shadowfen vs packs of 3 mobs, more comfortable than before. However that results in a 1H bar with only "Degeneration" as a DPS skill, so need something else to deal with healers.

Puncturing Sweep - Returns 40% of damage as health, but combine that with Force Syphon and it's more like 150% of damage returned as health. Makes it the best bang per buck per point of magika spent provided i'm not already at full health.

I can't wait till I can morph Force Syphon into it's instant cast version. At the moment it's something I pull with then don't have for the rest of the fight.

Still had two annoying deaths in Shadowfen. One in those Altmer infested ruins where they are abducting folk from the first village. I'd swapped DPS skills on my bar to deal with a pack of 3 including a healer, but someone had been that way before and started to get respawns from another pack while there was still 1 or 2 left on the first one. Resources got low and I needed to use the honour the dead power return to not run out of magika... got killed by it.

Another taking on a pack of 3 Ailit things for that smorgasboard quest, again I had mostly dps slotted , ran low , was trying to save power with the Honour the Dead power return proc and it bit me in the ass.

If they fix Honour the Dead I'd avoid most of the annoying fatalities, save a fortune on repairs and soul gems and smashed keyboards. My blood pressure will be lower and I might live longer too.

Edit - I'm not sure about those who say I should switch weapons more often.

Seriously, have you tried it while fighting 3 in melee? Lag, Lag, Lag, it can be a costly 5 seconds if you're continually being beaten on. I have all the block passives from sword and shield line and basically take no damage from power attacks if I block them. With the staff out, that changes drastically and I loose big chunks of health before I can get the shield on again.

jesterstear

Update. Well, if this rehash has improved things then the increased difficulty of Shadowfens content has countered it, and i'm still some way off being able to morph the new skills. Had a lot of deaths today, some were "stupid" like dropping off a wall and being trapped in a corner by 3 Bosmer.. not able to get out the way of the archer's volley because of the two melee trapping me in the corner. Missing a heavy attack or running into a group of mobs unprepared, or getting caught by respawn. A couple at least were genuinely from being overwhelmed. Can't cope with 3 Lamia, nor 3 Bosmer when doing the egg rescue mission. Lamia too much incoming damage and they self heal, Bosmer spamming CC on me, ran low on stamina to keep blocking/interrupting the cast, being CC means can't abuse honour the dead power return proc, so ran out of power and died just before getting the first one down. OTOH I didn't really need to fight 3 of those to get the quest done.

In one of the dungeons I saw a ghost run past me, respawn as a naked PC, agro a train of mobs, die again and respawn as ghost. Well that's one way to get past trash you can't beat, if you got a big enough stack of soul gems

I'm stuck between wondering if I've just got a low tolerance for watching my character die (really makes me miserable, especialy when it happens every 15 minutes) or whether the problem is my character is no good and should be avoiding death completely unless playing in a risky way.

jesterstear

Logged on for a bit this morning to do the Trial of the Fang quest in Shadowfen. You have to fight an Elite while under the influence of a poison that reduces max health by 25%, stops all health regen and all heals from working. Learned to kite it after 10 deaths. 761g repair bill and 350g quest reward, great.


The random deaths to groups of 3 mobs are annoying , because you don't get a chance to learn how to do it right. Unless you have a server farm in your back yard, you don't record ALL of your gameplay video. If you waste one of those VERY expensive soul gems you can try again on the spot against the same group of mobs, but if you run back from wayshrine, even if you make it to same spot the group composition is likely to have changed.

Then again I suppose my build must still be weak if a single mistake or bit of bad luck kills you at ONLY vr3..

Nidwin

I feel for you jester.

For solo elites I always do it the same way. Same for most Boss fights

Blinding javelin + heavy attack and if I feel mighty a Reflective Light in between.
If the Elite is a caster I use Eclipse.

It's the ez mode for us Termplars.

edit 1.
Heavy attack with restoration staff for the Magicka regen of course.

Nidwin

p_tsakirisb16_ESO wrote: »

So if Molag Bal who is pitiful took someone 5 hours to kill, then any quest or dungeon boss at VR5+ areas going to take a day?

I wonder if you do actually know how to play, or you are the usual standard Templars I see around spamming Bitting Jabs on the air, crying that they have no Magicka.

I'm fine bro, no worries for me.

Molag Bal was my lesson and I did change my entire setup and game play afterwards.

I've never used Biting Jabs but I've added Puncturing Sweep to my arsenal past week-end. Tried it after dying 4 times trying to kill that "whatever ghost Boss" spawning wisps to retrieve that shard and save Horsi whatever in Stormhaven. Went from epic fail to easy mode.
It works well in certain situations, depending on what kind of pack you're fighting.

Boss fights are easy 95% of the time. The only thing that annoys me is that trash mob fights are often way harder draining out my energy and fun to play.

Qumulous

At VR1 i put my Templar in 5 light, 1 heavy, 1 medium to get a 3 set bonus with six traits. I use 2hs and resto staff. Volcanic rune is one of the best soloing abilities from the mage guild and i consider it a must. I rolled through content, not saying i didn't die but i didn't have a lot of problems till i started fight VR5 and VR6 mobs. So i changed up to a 5 heavy 2 light set up and i barely get hit and owning 3 spawns. I set up my Templar with 4 magic enchants to 3 stamina enchants. I put magic into helm chest and legs with infused traits to gain a little more magic. After that it doesn't matter where the other enchants are placed. I put magic return enchants in both my weapons.

danno8

Here is a quick video I made of some general day to day fights in a VR 7 zone as a mostly melee oriented Templar.

A couple things to note. I am using sword 'n board for the video, usually I go double resto (so if you see me swinging at targets 28m away that would be why, lol) I chose an area that had healers and those annoying shaman types that silence you if you get too close to their totem, since I find these types the hardest to deal with.

I only edited out between the fights but left them all intact so you can see the warts and all. At around the 2:10 mark you can see what happens when you run out of magicka as a Templar, and a good example of where Spell Symmetry would be useless as it would surely kill me.

But you can see that 3 mobs are perfectly doable, adds are manageable if you don't panic and I am using nearly all Templar abilities.

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

jesterstear

Nice vid, some interesting looking plugins too. I have War Genesis but it hides the game text labels of NPCs. Annoying when you're in a new town and you just want to find a vendor. Working the rest of this week so I won't be able to compare playstyle till the weekend.

My initial impression is that i'm a lot more methodical and cautious, but it doesn't seem to do me any good. Your knockdowns remove a lot of the need to block/move/dodge.

I was persuaded to log on again , died again on first quest involving combat, this time to a boss, on Dreams from the Hist. Captain Henaamo was actually rather easy to beat but I was stood outside his red circle and meleeing him, but didn't see I was still taking damage from his frost aoe till I was dead. Somehow went through 2400 health without seeing anything amiss?

A friend of mine bought the game when I was level 40 and is already up to 49 and questing in veteran areas. I was stuck on VR2 for a couple of weeks, just got my VR3 today. Took him a couple of attempts to get molag bal down but apparently he (sorcerer) never dies to trash.

jesterstear

Well, I logged on Saturday morning and spent most of the day getting my ass kicked. I did record some fighting , unfortunately my recorder was still set to capture at 480p, which looks fine at high bitrate on my pc, unfortunately youtube only gives 480p videos a 2500k data rate which makes them blurry once uploaded and you can't see power attacks and emotes so clearly.

I need a program that can upscale Bandicam's motion-jpeg to 720p then I can upload to youtube and get 5000k. Good old Virtualdub can't handle the M-jpeg format.

As regards getting my ass kicked, several factors

1) tired from being at work, not woken up fully, not enough caffeine
2) out of practice not having played for 5 days
3) constantly changing skill bars/rotation does not help me get muscle memory for the actions - with the reaction time lost to lag, you need to be very fast , there is no time to think, muscle memory is the only way to do it.
4) the user interface is horrible, most of the time I knew what I should do, but was unable to press the correct buttons quickly enough. Hand getting misaligned over keyboard meaning I trigger the wrong skill. Getting the "cannot swap weapons now" so activating the wrong skill on the wrong toolbar.

I still do ok against single mob fights, because I can spend most of my time looking at the keyboard to make sure my hand aligned properly to trigger the correct skills. Against multiples, there are too many power attacks to watch forcing me to stay heads up.

It's funny, i'm noticing that there are certain OP skills in this game. Impulse is one of them. After the recent update, Puncturing sweep is another. It's your best AoE. It's your best single target. It knocks back. It interrupts. It's your best heal.

Fill your bar with skills like these and you don't have to keep swapping your bar around for every fight like you do with a load of one trick pony skills. This helps you get better muscle memory.

After two days getting my ass kicked all over Shadowfen I finally got Rune Focus and Force Syphon morphed. Didn't do much multi mob fighting since, it was getting late and i'd had enough being killed (down to 25k gold now, need to stop the rot!).

However, I did run into a VR3 Gargoyle. Perhaps it doesn't prove much, I was ok with single opponent encounters before all of this, but it's a small moment of triumph following defeat after defeat. Patch is out tomorrow, no doubt it's all getting nerfed to oblivion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewWp5UDpGTI&feature=youtu.be

jesterstear

Meanwhile, part one of the day's ass-kickings, courtesy of the Wispmother.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UkD0BEO_hk&feature=youtu.be

this one was originally recorded as 480p M-JPEG with Bandicam, I used VLC to upsample to 720p M-JPEG before converting to H264 with Handbrake and uploading to Youtube.

Why upscale? Because Youtube only has a 2500k data rate at 480p so there is a lot of quality loss compared to the final, H264-converted file on my computer. Youtube allows 5000k for 720p so am hoping it gives better quality, even though the resolution isn't really any higher. Let me know what you think. Have now changed Bandicam settings to natively record at 720p.

Nidwin

I think you had a hell of a fight against thar Wispmother.

Since we have received some love, Wispmothers aren't that bad anymore for us Templars but you have to understand their mechanic. Their strength is actually their weakness.

jesterstear

Nidwin wrote: »

I think you had a hell of a fight against thar Wispmother.

Since we have received some love, Wispmothers aren't that bad anymore for us Templars but you have to understand their mechanic. Their strength is actually their weakness.

That wasn't a fight, it was a slaughter.

Dekkameron

That fight is painful to watch.. Are you playing a stamina based healer?

Spam puncturing strikes and invasion as much as you can, when you run out of magika then you break out the resto staff regen a bit , then repeat.

Or...

Whip out the resto staff then intermittently do heavy attacks and Aedric spear (you should be able to do this virtually forever)

Job done.

jesterstear

Alright, here's the ugly. How I spent that morning. It was first thing Saturday after working 4 x 12 hour shifts and I hadn't had caffeine, and a week out of the game. Even so I made loads of mistakes. Edited together all the recordings of my fights versus 3 mobs and don't think I won a single one.

Another factor was, each time I made a mistake, I started thinking about the mistake i'd just made and then would fail to dodge the next power attack.

I know watching this stuff back is supposed to improve you, but it's just brought the anger back. I've got some time and could play today but I don't want to. In fact i'm full of rage right now and want to take it out on something. Going to go to the gym, or do some gardening and get this out my system.

Here you go fellas, watch this and laugh at my noobishness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3fPH7oYiOA