Thoughts about about templar changes

Bossdonut

As a templar, I finally think I understand how lifelong Cubs fans feel.

TheMadGod

Toxic_Hemlock wrote: »

It seems to me they want to reduce the BOL spammers that use it as a get out of jail free card. The problem with this thinking is it is hard enough to find healers and reducing the healing ability by one player it will make more healers less likely to volunteer. Being blamed as the weakest link in a pug party is bad enough without being nerfed even more.

The changes to healing ritual will not make it more used as it still has a cast time and in almost all cases I don't want to stand in one place long enough to get dead.

I completely agree with this statement, and I can't say I'm against the BoL nerf. I've run with templar healers that all they do is spam BoL and it's almost cost me dungeon runs and has got me killed because the BoL went out half a second after I died. The problem was/is for some reason when I group with templars none of them run regeneration. I don't know why, it doesn't make sense to me perhaps they were doing it wrong. That being said there is a lot of "breath of life is the only heal you ever need" talk I've seen that just isn't true.

And the reason it's hard enough to find healers is I've experienced in groups that when a healer joins and it's not a templar they immediately get dropped. Not only is that discouraging but it's rude and there's no reason to boot someone unless they're bringing down the group.

This has to be said. The good templar healers that actually know what they're doing will find a way to work with this and prevail and the ones that just spam breath of life and hardly anything else will fall flat on their face until they learn to work around it or decide to play something else.

Though I will admit the changes to Radiant Aura to give everyone the intellect recovery boost as well will make Templars more viable for groups that have mostly magicka builds in them because Luminous Shards just never seemed to be enough magicka regeneration in my opinion.

timidobserver wrote: »

Nah, this BOL nerf came from one place. It wasn't even an issue until he started a nerf Templar campaign. Though like I say above, I can live with the nerf. I'd just like to see nerfs of equal impact handed out to the other classes.

I'm sorry but do you ever have zone chat on? I can't count how many times in a day I see people arguing that "no other class is viable to heal but templar", maybe this will finally change peoples' views and we'll have more classes healing besides Templar.

I've been to the starter zones I see zone chat I see nightblades, sorcerers, and dragon knights ask if their class is viable to heal only to be met with "Templars are the only class that can heal go re-roll templar" and "if a healer joins my group I kick them if they're not a templar lol".
I honestly hoped this was coming eventually, I main templar and attitudes like this make me ashamed to play my favorite class. I'm glad for the buffs we're getting, they've been long needed but the nerfs were needed as well.

As for class nerfs? Dark Cloak isn't going to remove negative effects anymore, just stop them from damaging for the duration of the cloak. Now nightblades need either Purge (Alliance War) or Cleansing Ritual (Templar) Dragon Knights have seen a lot of nerfs over the duration of the game. And let's face it Sorcerer pets have always been bad, they're finally giving them some use.

Buffs happen, nerfs happen, balancing MMOs is hard, yes when changes happen it makes us happy, and it pisses us off, but it's also hard for the developers and while they play the game too it's not as huge of an investment as it is to us because all we do is play the game. If it turns into a serious issue it will get fixed at some point.

The bottom line is every class has things unique to them they can bring into every role. People don't seem to respect this and I think with the changes for all the classes, not just templar is going to bring some extra diversity to the game that's been needed, especially for healers.

timidobserver

TheMadGod wrote: »

timidobserver wrote: »

Nah, this BOL nerf came from one place. It wasn't even an issue until he started a nerf Templar campaign. Though like I say above, I can live with the nerf. I'd just like to see nerfs of equal impact handed out to the other classes.

I'm sorry but do you ever have zone chat on? I can't count how many times in a day I see people arguing that "no other class is viable to heal but templar", maybe this will finally change peoples' views and we'll have more classes healing besides Templar.

I've been to the starter zones I see zone chat I see nightblades, sorcerers, and dragon knights ask if their class is viable to heal only to be met with "Templars are the only class that can heal go re-roll templar" and "if a healer joins my group I kick them if they're not a templar lol".
I honestly hoped this was coming eventually, I main templar and attitudes like this make me ashamed to play my favorite class. I'm glad for the buffs we're getting, they've been long needed but the nerfs were needed as well.

As for class nerfs? Dark Cloak isn't going to remove negative effects anymore, just stop them from damaging for the duration of the cloak. Now nightblades need either Purge (Alliance War) or Cleansing Ritual (Templar) Dragon Knights have seen a lot of nerfs over the duration of the game. And let's face it Sorcerer pets have always been bad, they're finally giving them some use.

Buffs happen, nerfs happen, balancing MMOs is hard, yes when changes happen it makes us happy, and it pisses us off, but it's also hard for the developers and while they play the game too it's not as huge of an investment as it is to us because all we do is play the game. If it turns into a serious issue it will get fixed at some point.

The bottom line is every class has things unique to them they can bring into every role. People don't seem to respect this and I think with the changes for all the classes, not just templar is going to bring some extra diversity to the game that's been needed, especially for healers.

I don't even care to argue the BoL nerf. It happened, I can live with it. However, ZoS was light on the other classes in comparison. No nerf in the patch notes is as significant as the BoL nerf. I either want additional nerfs to compensate for the loss or more equivalent nerfs to other classes.

TheMadGod

timidobserver wrote: »

I don't even care to argue the BoL nerf. It happened, I can live with it. However, ZoS was light on the other classes in comparison. No nerf in the patch notes is as significant as the BoL nerf. I either want additional nerfs to compensate for the loss or more equivalent nerfs to other classes.

Other classes have been nerfed before though, hard, Dragon Knights especially, it's all just balancing the game. Honestly I think the Dark Cloak nerf for nightblades is the worst one, they used to be able to get rid of debuffs but now all they can do is spam it to mitigate the damage or just take the damage itself.

timidobserver

TheMadGod wrote: »

timidobserver wrote: »

I don't even care to argue the BoL nerf. It happened, I can live with it. However, ZoS was light on the other classes in comparison. No nerf in the patch notes is as significant as the BoL nerf. I either want additional nerfs to compensate for the loss or more equivalent nerfs to other classes.

Other classes have been nerfed before though, hard, Dragon Knights especially, it's all just balancing the game. Honestly I think the Dark Cloak nerf for nightblades is the worst one, they used to be able to get rid of debuffs but now all they can do is spam it to mitigate the damage or just take the damage itself.

Yes everybody has been nerfed in previous patches. I am referring to this one. Templar took the hardest nerfs. Between the nerf to Purifying Ritual and BoL, no other classes even comes close.

Animal_Mother

Still no AOE crowd control while mobility is decreased with the hopeful? shift from BoL to Ritual of Rebirth. The biggest difficulty in using HR isn't the cast time, it's the radius; 10m is nothing compared to Rushed Ceremony's 28m. Perhaps instead of nerfing BoLs additional heals, reduce the radius? Or better yet, leave BoL as is and learn to interrupt/stun/silence healers?

Why can't Radial Sweep have the same radius as Steel Tornado (was 12m now 9m)? Perhaps I should be asking why Steel Tornado doesn't have the same radius as Radial Sweep?

We got our healing synergy back! Can't wait to test it and see how it's broken.

Kevmeister

I know this won't matter much to most, and I'm sorry if it's OOT.

I just cancelled my sub. It may sound hasty, but I have a feeling the change will most likely make it through to Live, but probably with minor tweaks that does not help to elevate the gameplay.

I'm not one to play on many characters, despite having 6 out of the 8 filled, they aren't even well into any Vet levels aside from my main, which is a Templar, that I have spent majority if not all of the time invested in that character.

Thanks Zenimax for your time, but I won't miss it after the subs end (which is roughly 3 months from now). I'll enjoy as much as possible, then leave.

Dyride

Am I wrong in thinking that Restoring Focus is now a huge buff skill for tanking or stamplar PVP?

Restoring Focus now gives +30% Healing Done +8% Healing Taken +8% Spell/Physical Mitigation +8% less damage taken from one skill. Obviously the drawback is no mobility but that looks like an awesome tanking ability.

TheMadGod

Dyride wrote: »

Am I wrong in thinking that Restoring Focus is now a huge buff skill for tanking or stamplar PVP?

Restoring Focus now gives +30% Healing Done +8% Healing Taken +8% Spell/Physical Mitigation +8% less damage taken from one skill. Obviously the drawback is no mobility but that looks like an awesome tanking ability.

I'm really thinking about toying with that myself honestly, though I enjoy the magicka restoration of channeled focus since I do use some utility with my magicka abilities and the regen is nice, when/if that change comes to live which I'm sure it will I'm going to consider swapping the morphs.

Kaliki

I'm also not quite content with the Backlash buff.
They increased the possible damage by 25 %, but I would rather have it scale with weapon/spell damage and be able to crit.
Scaling-wise it's a very boring skill, requiring you to stack only magicka to do decent damage.

kaalmoth

Kaliki wrote: »

I'm also not quite content with the Backlash buff.
They increased the possible damage by 25 %, but I would rather have it scale with weapon/spell damage and be able to crit.
Scaling-wise it's a very boring skill, requiring you to stack only magicka to do decent damage.

I don't get how the skill works, so I don't know if it's a plain buff or a nerf with the "but decreased their damage stored amount by 66%". If you get it I'd like it if you explain it to me plz

All in all I think the patch fixes some stuff we asked ages ago, and lacks creativity. Especially we wanted some mobility and some better passives (ressources management, spell damage buff), and we don't get any of that. My biggest hopes were sun shield and rune focus, and what do we get? the lamest buff ever, and another reason why we are lacking mobility. Seriously forcing us to stay in a little circle to get the buff attached to the skill?

That being said, can we still use eclipse on a winged dk so he can take the reflected spell, or was it hit also by the reflect nerf?

ub17_ESO

Faulgor wrote: »

I'm laughing hysterically.

With the amazing buffs to Igneous Weapons for DKs, Templars are now the only class without Major Brutality and Major Sorcery buffs.

I don't get the tiny changes in the Aedric Spear skill line. Only decent change is no CC immunity from jabs.

Dawn's Wrath, I'm not sure. Why did Dark Flare need a damage increase? Is Eclipse suddenly going to be good now that it works against all projectiles? With the range increase for Javelin, seems like they want Templars to be a ranged fighter. Not sure this is going in the right direction, especially for Stamplars.

Restoring Light ... BoL nerfed, Healing Ritual remains useless, Radiant Aura slightly less useless.

Absolutely nothing in here for Stamplars. No noteworthy buffs to our passives.

I see no reason here why I would play a Templar over other classes, considering Sorcerers and DKs (and all Resto Staff users) got improvements to their healing game.

SirDopey wrote: »

The nerf to BoL isreally really disappointing. There are definitely some incredibly toxic players in this community that need to take their streaming and shove it up their....

I like the damage increases, but it in no way offsets the damage done to the class by reducing the effectiveness of their healing. Seriously, why am I go to jump on my Templar to DPS when I have a fully leveled Sorc, NB and DK that will all own it in the damage game???

Disappointed, just so disappointed....

I think most of the grudge toward BoL spamming comes from PvP where the dynamic is quite a bit different. I will leave PvP alone. My comments are geared toward PvE only.

IMO if you are relying on BoL to be an effective healer you're doing it wrong!! That should be your "OH NO" button saved for rare emergencies. Not to mention most classes have sometype of self heal running save stam dk's and nb's unless they are purposely running rally bc they dont trust healers or for the Major buff. I ran vCOA a few times with the other morph Honor the Dead and I didnt have any trouble. BoL will still be strong, but it wont be completely overpowered. The mending buff will compensate for the nerf to BoL. I will remain with the 95% of templars who will never use the channled AOE heal. There are few situations where that is better than healing springs + mutagen.

Do i like it that I got a nerf to my templar heals? No. Will this make my templar healer ineffective? No. Will I still be able to heal all of the content in ESO on my Templar? Yes. I do though believe this change will open the door more for non-templar healers and in the interest of class balance I'm happy to eat this one. Where's all dem NB healers at?

As far as DPS is considered...

(A little perspective for the numbers i give below my stats with no buffs other than food are 2200 spell damage and 38k magic and during combat I keep the general templar buffs active....major/minor spell power.)

Dark Flare damage increase of 12%...not shabby. On live with no keena proc mine crits against deadra for 24k. I'm sure there are templars on live that have seen 30k crits. So I should see roughly 26.9K Dark Flare when TG DLC goes live! Pretty good increase.

Vampire's Bane Duration increase: On live this skill runs 15-20K damage over the course of its duration if I cast it when I have the empower buff active. Correct me if I'm wrong, but on live the base duration is 7 sec plus 20% from the passive so about 8.4 sec duration. Increase duration to 9 sec plus the passive got a buff so on PTS it should be running for 11.7sec.

Backlash can now crit!! This to me sounds too good to be true! This one is a little confusing though....they played around with the numbers in a way that I havnt quite wrapped my head around. So they increased the max damage by 25% so on live my max damage is 17K so looking at 21.2K max damage pre-crit! However, they decreased the damage stored by 66% which I think will make it hard for a person to reach max damage potential during solo gameplay...I dont know I need to run the numbers. The server is down and I dont remember what the damage stored number is on live. However, in a 4-man if your healer is running this you can surely expect to reach max damage potential, anyway lets look at those numbers! So, 21.2k x whatever your crit damage multiplier is. lets say 1.6 bc that is probably the lowest you will have as a templar with an Aedric Spear ability on your bar...34K! quite a good increase for a skill that also has a bit of utility in PvE. I will see quite a bit higher than that as I run shadow and have CP to increase Crit damage. Rough estimate is 1.9, and i'm probably short changing it, so let's see.... Oh Yeah!! 40.2K very nice! what a lovely DPS buff! In solo play I cant expect to see that reliably but for sure if I cast that prior to dropping a meteor! Not to mention that it is no longer effected by the passive enduring rays, so it will hit sooner! This might be the single biggest DPS buff for the Templar this patch.

Bonus 4th one I remembered....the Aedric Spear Ultimate DPS morph supposedly got a damage buff it went from 33% more damage against enemies in front of you to 66% more damage...considerable increase, forgive me I have never taken this morph, I may now though...it is really cheap.

These are 4 buffs to magic spec Templars, and while fact checking I found 1 or 2 more:

Nova benefits from the same duration increase in the enduring rays passive buff and the damage from the synergy was increased by 16%

I know eclipse is a sensitive topic but from last patch to this patch, it received a buff. Unstable core can now be cast on multiple targets and the damage of the explosion was increased by 50%.

That's 6 Templar specific DPS buff this patch! IMO this should put Magic spec Templar dps in a pretty good spot. Or at least I think we can all agree that mathematically it will be better than before without even considering the improved dps via the CP changes. Those of us running meteor should see big gains on this skill and if you are running destro you will see gains on your weaving dps as well! So as far as I can tell, Templars did get some love this update, at least if you play a Magic Spec. No love for stamplars...but i'm not taking it personal stamina in general didnt receive any love this go around.


Cheers!

ub17_ESO

Baconlad wrote: »

I don't understand the changes...ther is no reason to use barrage because we have blazing spear...12% increase wasn't needed. There is so much more... biggest disappointment I think I have read from a "major class balance act". Its like they had one dude who loves dks another who loves magic sorcs, and both of them in charge of "fixing" Templar... they both hate us I cannot describe my disappointment... be surprised if I log in this next week... is there any point? The pointless Nerf coming downrange

You must not have read the same patch notes...I counted 6 Templar specific DPS Buffs.

ub17_ESO

Hymzir wrote: »

Utterly predictable failure from ZOS - instead of fixing the Templar, they made, as people predicted, few token concessions, meaningless changes and nerfed BoL to appease the ganking QQ crowd.

Here's what I gotta say about these changes

Aedric Spear:
- Blazing Spear (Spear Shards morph): This morph now displays a hostile red telegraph if it is cast from enemy Templars.

Oh brilliant, it's already slow as hell and people have been dodging it all the time, supposing that you actually manage to predict where they will run so as to even have a chanve of hitting someone with it. Obviously it needed (along with the slew of past nerfs on damage) to be made more obvious so that poor sneaking NB's can avoid it more easily.

Focused Charge: This ability and its morphs are now more responsive, and will no longer cause you to become stuck in the charge animation.

Yeah, I kinda want to see that in practice before believing this one. Since after all it is exactly the same thing ZOS has said several times before. And note that the way it's worded "more responsive" as compared to what? How it was before, but still less so than other gap closers?

Piercing Javelin: Increased the range of this ability and its morphs to 28 meters from 20 meters.

Well at least it might reach an enemy every now and then. Was funny since wrecking blow, a melee hit seemed to have 15 meter range, that a ranged one would have 20 meter. 28 meters is much better, but it's still a pointless skill since it costs a ton and is fairly weak

Puncturing Strikes: This ability and its morphs no longer knockback and apply crowd control immunity to the nearest enemy on the final hit; instead, they now snare that enemy by 70% for two seconds.

I'd be happy about this if this was not something we have been telling ZOS for over a year now! And after all this time of them claiming it was fine, they finally realized just how stupid it was. Still... no changes about it's aiming, which sucks, the fact that it's a channel which sucks, and the fact that Both Piercing Spears and Burning Light passives are useless against shields... Yeah... not gonna be celebrating about this one either.

Radial Sweep: Increased the radius of this ability and its morphs to 6 meters from 5 meters.

WOW! What an utterly meaningless change. This has gotta be the most pointless change in all of the Patch notes. (Or so I thought, not yet having read the other Templar changes...)It makes a completely useless Ultimate to be still completely useless ability! WOW! The ineptitude just keeps growing.

Radiant Ward (Sun Shield morph): Increased the shield strength bonus from this morph’s shield to 6% per enemy hit from 5%.

And it keeps getting better! WOW - a whole 1 percent more! For the morph most people won't use anyway. No change in it's duration, no change in it's strength, great job of fixing nothing!

And no changes on any of the passives... yeah. A string of expletives on that.

At the very least you should've given Balanced warrior a Spell damage buff - hell the Sorc got Weapon damage buff to go with their spell damage passive many moons ago. At the very least you should've done the same to Templar. Ditch the spell resistance bonus if you have to, it is weak and meaningless anyway. The meta of this game is focused around damage and Spell and weapon Damage are kings in all all considerations. And Templars need a Spell damage buff passive to be on any kind of equal footing with Sorcs as a caster class.

Okay on to Dawns Wrath...
Backlash: Increased the maximum damage limit for this ability and its morphs by 25%, but decreased their damage stored amount by 66%. In addition, this ability and its morphs can no longer be reflected.

I suppose this has some meaning in PVE, but is meaningless thing in PVP. But not all skills need to be useful in PVP, as long as some are and vice versa. And also LOL wut? Increased it's damage by 25% but decreased it's damage by66%? What?

Eclipse: bunch of stuff

Still mostly useless in PVP and vastly less useful than Wings. Besides anyone who is even remotely familiar with it just purges or breaks it, so it's not really useful as such. Except against some PVE targets...

Even so, I would be happy to leave these things for their niche uses, even though they are some of the most over engineered skills in the game only situationally useful, if the rest of dawns wrath was rock solid. Unfortunately it's not. There is only one skill of any meaningful value in the whole tree and it's jeezusbeam, and it too has been nerfed almost to the ground. All the other dawns wrath skills, including the Ultimate, are tricksy, slow, weak and way too costly to actually use.
Enduring Rays:

This passive ability now only increases the duration of the Sun Fire, Eclipse, and Nova abilities.
Increased this passive ability’s bonus to 15/30% more duration at Ranks I/II from 10/20%.

Cool! Another Templar passive that I have no reason what so ever to invest skill points in. There is close to zero point in using any of those skills, so why then use the passive either? You could have put some sort of resource management boost here, like having a Dawns wrath ability slotted gives you resource management buff. The kinda passive all the other classes seem to have...

Nova:

Reduced the effects and visual light intensity for this ability and its morphs.
Increased the damage from the Supernova and Gravity Crush synergies by 16%.
Increased the activation range for the Supernova and Gravity Crush synergies to 3.5 meters from 2.5 meters.

The reduced glare is welcome - too bad it's the only meaningful hanges. Increasing synergy damage? Really? The number one point of most Templars is that how much they suck as anything else but pocket healers, and what you decide to do in your game where every class was supposed to be able to fill every role? You increase Templars stamp of indentured servitude by boosting their group support skills.

Even, with the boost, it's still far too costly for what it brings to the table, and in PVP, only situationally useful in covering breaches. Meteor still serves the same purpose for less cost and with better passives to boot.

Radiant Destruction: Fixed an issue where the execute bonus damage from this ability would not apply if multiple Templars were channeling these abilities on the same target.

The only meaningful change for the whole tree, and it's not even a buff or a tweak but a fix. And it's something that should've been patched up a long time ago. But since Templars aren't Sorcs - who cares about it when our skills are bugged.

Solar Flare: Increased the damage for this ability and the Dark Flare morph by 12%. The damage of the Solar Barrage morph remains unchanged.

So.. let me get this right... after months of us arguing this one needed a buff, and having heard for months how it's damage was in line with other skills and didn't need any change. You suddenly decide it needs a damage buff? Well, thanks for that I suppose. Not that it makes a licking difference, since there is still no reason to slot it. It is too slow to cast, too slow to reach the target and tends just to be reflected back to you if it hits anyone with a shield or who happens to be a DK. (And with your planned changes to nerf reflects, you no longer can re-reflet the reflected attack... whoopdie doo.)

Also, Sorcs just refresh Harness Magicka and thank you for the magicka, while Night Blades dodge it or vanish. So yeah... What this skill would have needed was less obvious animation, and faster flight time, or some sort of proc to compete with crystal frags. I mean a sorc can be on defensive and spam shields and then suddenly retaliate with an instant frag to the face that stuns. and then either bolt away or execute your ass. That is a versatile and powerful ability. The damage increase is nice, and welcome indeed, but the skill is still just too weak, and fails miserably to the versatility provided by it's Sorc counterpart.

Vampire’s Bane (Sun Fire morph): Increased the damage over time duration for this morph to 9 seconds from 7 seconds.

AT this point the seizures of laughter are starting to get really painful... The useless morph of a useless skill gets a useless tweak. WOW. That one sure required an all new low of missing the point!

9 second DoT in this game is meaningless. With animation cancelling and the kind of spamming the good skills enable, you can finish a rotation of 4 skills twice during that time and still have time to spare. You can execute some of the attack, skill, bash combos over three times while that thing is burning. If there were 12 slotted abilities on each bar, then yeah maybe, but we only have 5 + 1 Ultimate. And there is no way in hell I am going to waste a slot on a skill that has a DoT time of 9 seconds while doing measly damage I can out DPS with a simple Crushing Shock light attack spam. And once again with much better passives to boot.

And that is in PVE. In PVP it is even less useful. No one is going to let it burn for 9 seconds. That thing is gonna get purged immediately. And it's till slow and the initial hit is about as impactful as a throwing shredded tissue paper at someone with your off hand.

And I have tried to use it - a lot. In many different combinations. But the bottom line is always the same - It's not as useful as basic spammable than just about any other option. Even when not going with a Destro staff, the undaunted skill Trapping Web is more useful ability to slot than this. The only use for the skill is in it's Reflective light form and that in grinding mobs while doing PVE leveling.

And this coming from a guy who really wanted to like this skill. *** used ti long into the Veteran levels because it fit my character so well. And als olooked cool. The Major prophecy it grants seemed like a no-brainer. A basic spammable, thematic to my Templar with a nice snare and a powerful buff? What's not to like. Well, it's weak as a skill can be, useless in PVP, the ancillary effects of other skills are much better than the snare it provides, and since Cyrodiil is such a ganker haven swarming with stealthed Night Blades, I consider it suicidal to venture beyond walls of a keep without having Mage light on. And with that, goes the last reason to use Sun Fire or any of it's morphs.

And let me just end this section by noting that Restoring Spirit needs a buff. It is in no way comparable to the resource management passives other classes have. And since most Templar skills are hideously expensive as is, it only manages to get our casting cost a tad closer to the base line. It was a high time for you guys to address this issue and buff Restoring Spirit, but... you blew it. Again. As usual.

And the tragedy continues with Restoring light...

Breath of Life (Rushed Ceremony morph): This morph now only fires one additional secondary heal, previously two heals.

Are you out of your frigging minds!?!? So the only thing that we templars had, you decided to nerf? Well, I suppose it could have been worse you could have reduced it's power, which you no doubt will eventually do since NB gankers will keep QQ about it until you cave in.

If you are going to cut 25% of it's healing power then at least cut it's price down by 20%. It's expensive as hell already, and nothing annoys quite like when NB players QQ about your OP self heal and the you go to Cyrodiil and die because the Smart Targetting of the skill decided to heal other players and not you...

This nerf is a deal breaker for me. BoL is the bread and butter of the class, and beyond stooping down to mutagen spam, the most consistent way to get AP in Cyrodiil, since we sure as hell can't kill anything. At least we were able to keep others propped up and thus get them to kill our enemies for us. But no... You really are doing everything you can to drive out Templar players from the game.

Cleansing Ritual:

Increased the healing from the Purify synergy from this ability and its morphs by 12%.
Fixed an issue where this ability and its morphs could be used to cleanse projectiles that were mid-flight. It now matches the behavior of the Purge ability.

Why? I get the last one, since that is a bug. Put what on earth for are you buffing this one of all skills? I suppose it makes for longer sieges, and easier breach defenses but, I fail to see how this skill really needed anything done to it. It's jsut the kind of random meaningless change that you are notorious for. You snuffle the deck for no real reason, changing things in arbitrary fashion and end up with just a new set of issues.

Focused Healing: This passive ability now grants you the Major Mending buff while standing in your own Cleansing Ritual, Rune Focus, or Rite of Passage area effects and for up to 2/4 seconds after leaving them at Ranks I/II, instead of granting you 15/30% more healing to allies standing in your own Cleansing Ritual, Rune Focus, or Rite of Passage.

Another example of these arbitrary changes the results of which are hard to predict. On one hand it's cool we finally get Major Mending, after all it was tad daft that the "best healers" in the game didn't have access to this buff. But then you take away the non typed healing bonus for healing people standing in your Cleansing Ritual, which has been a key part of good Templar healing play from the launch of the game. We also lose potential synergy since this is now replaced with a typed bonus, so wont' stack with other sources of said bonus.

You also make us even more sitting ducks by forcing as to sit in our circles of power or lose the buff in a flash. And this change, when a key thing we as a class wanted was more mobility, you make us ever more rooted in place. I guess the poor NB's QQ too much about having to chase us down. So thanks ZOS ,such a good idea to make us even more static. I'm sure they are happy about this change.

Healing Ritual: Reduced the cast time for this ability and its morphs by 25%, and reduced the healing done by 25%.

Yet another meaningless change. A crappy skill with a way too long cast time is still a crappy skill even if you marginally lower it's cast time while also lowering it's power. No one will still use it.

Radiant Aura (Restoring Aura morph): This morph now grants you and your allies the Major Intellect buff upon activation, as well as having an increased radius as a morph effect.

Another change that completely misses it's mark. A pointless buff is pointless if no one ever uses the skill. Compared to Repentance this one is so weak. And gaining major Intellect is meaningless since Templar resource management sucks anyway, and we are constantly drinking potions and have the buff up pretty much constantly as is. But I suppose the classes that are not dependent on potions for resource management are happy to get all the major buffs for free... From their Templar Servants. And besides, other classes get comparable boosts to their resource management via passives, and Templars need to slot an active ability just to compete? Oh yeah, that is so balanced design that it dazzles with brilliance.

Restoring Focus (Rune Focus morph): This morph now grants you the Minor Protection buff, in addition to granting the Minor Vitality buff as a morph effect.

And the trend of meaningless changes continues it's triumphant procession! Minor Protection is such an insignificant buff to a skill no-one in their right mind is going to use anyway, that it borders on insanity. Stamplars have no need for the skil on their limited bars, and no Magplar can take a pass on Rune Focus since our resource management sucks so much. So buffing an already a weak morph with a really weak effect and thinking it matters is just ludicrous.

Rune Focus: Revised the tooltips for this ability and its morphs to indicate that the Major Ward and Major Resolve buffs will stick to you for 8 seconds after leaving the rune, while the morph effects of Channeled Focus and Restoring Focus require you to remain in the rune at all times.

Speaking of which... There was no reason to limit the morph effect to be only applicable when standing still and asking for enemies to come perforate our lateral orifices. This ability was just fine the way it was way back when it still used to be cool. With this update you should've finally made the thing move with the caster. The fact that the effects wore off after 8 seconds of leaving the rune was a big enough a drawback. Other classes get self buffs that last 20 seconds, and they can zap and zip about the battlefield as they want. The fact that rune focus gave you meaningful magicking regen on the run was one of the few saving graces of the class. But no... that would have meant we were not the red headed step childs of ESO that the other classes can use as a punching back. So that had to go.

All in all... So an utter failure. Not only did you not listen to the the people who play Templars, you appeased those who do not by nerfing us, and failed to make any meaningful change. And you did not deliver on teh two biggest key issues - movement and meaningful synergy. The Templar class has no synergy at all. And crappy resource management. So after months and months of constructive suggestions, hundreds of posts offering feedback on dozens of threads, you manage to come up with nothing. At all.

So, thinking about all those hugely touted big improvements you had planned for the Templar, and the promises of delivering class balance, all I can think of is hearing Gordon Ramsay say:

You have a couple good points like the 1% buffs are lol!! But I think you missed the real gems for templars. Dark Flare will hit very hard and VB will benefit not only from longer duration but also from the CP changes. IMO Backlash is the biggest Gem if what I'm hearing is correct and it can now crit. By my math the damage potential of this capability has more than doubled and is now extremely strong in group PvE and potentially even solo PvE. It definitely has a spot on my bar.

IMO things are looking up for magic spec templars. Mobility is still a big issue, but there are some ways to work around that.

Cheers

Destruent

ub17_ESO wrote: »

Hymzir wrote: »

Utterly predictable failure from ZOS - instead of fixing the Templar, they made, as people predicted, few token concessions, meaningless changes and nerfed BoL to appease the ganking QQ crowd.

Here's what I gotta say about these changes

Aedric Spear:
- Blazing Spear (Spear Shards morph): This morph now displays a hostile red telegraph if it is cast from enemy Templars.

Oh brilliant, it's already slow as hell and people have been dodging it all the time, supposing that you actually manage to predict where they will run so as to even have a chanve of hitting someone with it. Obviously it needed (along with the slew of past nerfs on damage) to be made more obvious so that poor sneaking NB's can avoid it more easily.

Focused Charge: This ability and its morphs are now more responsive, and will no longer cause you to become stuck in the charge animation.

Yeah, I kinda want to see that in practice before believing this one. Since after all it is exactly the same thing ZOS has said several times before. And note that the way it's worded "more responsive" as compared to what? How it was before, but still less so than other gap closers?

Piercing Javelin: Increased the range of this ability and its morphs to 28 meters from 20 meters.

Well at least it might reach an enemy every now and then. Was funny since wrecking blow, a melee hit seemed to have 15 meter range, that a ranged one would have 20 meter. 28 meters is much better, but it's still a pointless skill since it costs a ton and is fairly weak

Puncturing Strikes: This ability and its morphs no longer knockback and apply crowd control immunity to the nearest enemy on the final hit; instead, they now snare that enemy by 70% for two seconds.

I'd be happy about this if this was not something we have been telling ZOS for over a year now! And after all this time of them claiming it was fine, they finally realized just how stupid it was. Still... no changes about it's aiming, which sucks, the fact that it's a channel which sucks, and the fact that Both Piercing Spears and Burning Light passives are useless against shields... Yeah... not gonna be celebrating about this one either.

Radial Sweep: Increased the radius of this ability and its morphs to 6 meters from 5 meters.

WOW! What an utterly meaningless change. This has gotta be the most pointless change in all of the Patch notes. (Or so I thought, not yet having read the other Templar changes...)It makes a completely useless Ultimate to be still completely useless ability! WOW! The ineptitude just keeps growing.

Radiant Ward (Sun Shield morph): Increased the shield strength bonus from this morph’s shield to 6% per enemy hit from 5%.

And it keeps getting better! WOW - a whole 1 percent more! For the morph most people won't use anyway. No change in it's duration, no change in it's strength, great job of fixing nothing!

And no changes on any of the passives... yeah. A string of expletives on that.

At the very least you should've given Balanced warrior a Spell damage buff - hell the Sorc got Weapon damage buff to go with their spell damage passive many moons ago. At the very least you should've done the same to Templar. Ditch the spell resistance bonus if you have to, it is weak and meaningless anyway. The meta of this game is focused around damage and Spell and weapon Damage are kings in all all considerations. And Templars need a Spell damage buff passive to be on any kind of equal footing with Sorcs as a caster class.

Okay on to Dawns Wrath...
Backlash: Increased the maximum damage limit for this ability and its morphs by 25%, but decreased their damage stored amount by 66%. In addition, this ability and its morphs can no longer be reflected.

I suppose this has some meaning in PVE, but is meaningless thing in PVP. But not all skills need to be useful in PVP, as long as some are and vice versa. And also LOL wut? Increased it's damage by 25% but decreased it's damage by66%? What?

Eclipse: bunch of stuff

Still mostly useless in PVP and vastly less useful than Wings. Besides anyone who is even remotely familiar with it just purges or breaks it, so it's not really useful as such. Except against some PVE targets...

Even so, I would be happy to leave these things for their niche uses, even though they are some of the most over engineered skills in the game only situationally useful, if the rest of dawns wrath was rock solid. Unfortunately it's not. There is only one skill of any meaningful value in the whole tree and it's jeezusbeam, and it too has been nerfed almost to the ground. All the other dawns wrath skills, including the Ultimate, are tricksy, slow, weak and way too costly to actually use.
Enduring Rays:

This passive ability now only increases the duration of the Sun Fire, Eclipse, and Nova abilities.
Increased this passive ability’s bonus to 15/30% more duration at Ranks I/II from 10/20%.

Cool! Another Templar passive that I have no reason what so ever to invest skill points in. There is close to zero point in using any of those skills, so why then use the passive either? You could have put some sort of resource management boost here, like having a Dawns wrath ability slotted gives you resource management buff. The kinda passive all the other classes seem to have...

Nova:

Reduced the effects and visual light intensity for this ability and its morphs.
Increased the damage from the Supernova and Gravity Crush synergies by 16%.
Increased the activation range for the Supernova and Gravity Crush synergies to 3.5 meters from 2.5 meters.

The reduced glare is welcome - too bad it's the only meaningful hanges. Increasing synergy damage? Really? The number one point of most Templars is that how much they suck as anything else but pocket healers, and what you decide to do in your game where every class was supposed to be able to fill every role? You increase Templars stamp of indentured servitude by boosting their group support skills.

Even, with the boost, it's still far too costly for what it brings to the table, and in PVP, only situationally useful in covering breaches. Meteor still serves the same purpose for less cost and with better passives to boot.

Radiant Destruction: Fixed an issue where the execute bonus damage from this ability would not apply if multiple Templars were channeling these abilities on the same target.

The only meaningful change for the whole tree, and it's not even a buff or a tweak but a fix. And it's something that should've been patched up a long time ago. But since Templars aren't Sorcs - who cares about it when our skills are bugged.

Solar Flare: Increased the damage for this ability and the Dark Flare morph by 12%. The damage of the Solar Barrage morph remains unchanged.

So.. let me get this right... after months of us arguing this one needed a buff, and having heard for months how it's damage was in line with other skills and didn't need any change. You suddenly decide it needs a damage buff? Well, thanks for that I suppose. Not that it makes a licking difference, since there is still no reason to slot it. It is too slow to cast, too slow to reach the target and tends just to be reflected back to you if it hits anyone with a shield or who happens to be a DK. (And with your planned changes to nerf reflects, you no longer can re-reflet the reflected attack... whoopdie doo.)

Also, Sorcs just refresh Harness Magicka and thank you for the magicka, while Night Blades dodge it or vanish. So yeah... What this skill would have needed was less obvious animation, and faster flight time, or some sort of proc to compete with crystal frags. I mean a sorc can be on defensive and spam shields and then suddenly retaliate with an instant frag to the face that stuns. and then either bolt away or execute your ass. That is a versatile and powerful ability. The damage increase is nice, and welcome indeed, but the skill is still just too weak, and fails miserably to the versatility provided by it's Sorc counterpart.

Vampire’s Bane (Sun Fire morph): Increased the damage over time duration for this morph to 9 seconds from 7 seconds.

AT this point the seizures of laughter are starting to get really painful... The useless morph of a useless skill gets a useless tweak. WOW. That one sure required an all new low of missing the point!

9 second DoT in this game is meaningless. With animation cancelling and the kind of spamming the good skills enable, you can finish a rotation of 4 skills twice during that time and still have time to spare. You can execute some of the attack, skill, bash combos over three times while that thing is burning. If there were 12 slotted abilities on each bar, then yeah maybe, but we only have 5 + 1 Ultimate. And there is no way in hell I am going to waste a slot on a skill that has a DoT time of 9 seconds while doing measly damage I can out DPS with a simple Crushing Shock light attack spam. And once again with much better passives to boot.

And that is in PVE. In PVP it is even less useful. No one is going to let it burn for 9 seconds. That thing is gonna get purged immediately. And it's till slow and the initial hit is about as impactful as a throwing shredded tissue paper at someone with your off hand.

And I have tried to use it - a lot. In many different combinations. But the bottom line is always the same - It's not as useful as basic spammable than just about any other option. Even when not going with a Destro staff, the undaunted skill Trapping Web is more useful ability to slot than this. The only use for the skill is in it's Reflective light form and that in grinding mobs while doing PVE leveling.

And this coming from a guy who really wanted to like this skill. *** used ti long into the Veteran levels because it fit my character so well. And als olooked cool. The Major prophecy it grants seemed like a no-brainer. A basic spammable, thematic to my Templar with a nice snare and a powerful buff? What's not to like. Well, it's weak as a skill can be, useless in PVP, the ancillary effects of other skills are much better than the snare it provides, and since Cyrodiil is such a ganker haven swarming with stealthed Night Blades, I consider it suicidal to venture beyond walls of a keep without having Mage light on. And with that, goes the last reason to use Sun Fire or any of it's morphs.

And let me just end this section by noting that Restoring Spirit needs a buff. It is in no way comparable to the resource management passives other classes have. And since most Templar skills are hideously expensive as is, it only manages to get our casting cost a tad closer to the base line. It was a high time for you guys to address this issue and buff Restoring Spirit, but... you blew it. Again. As usual.

And the tragedy continues with Restoring light...

Breath of Life (Rushed Ceremony morph): This morph now only fires one additional secondary heal, previously two heals.

Are you out of your frigging minds!?!? So the only thing that we templars had, you decided to nerf? Well, I suppose it could have been worse you could have reduced it's power, which you no doubt will eventually do since NB gankers will keep QQ about it until you cave in.

If you are going to cut 25% of it's healing power then at least cut it's price down by 20%. It's expensive as hell already, and nothing annoys quite like when NB players QQ about your OP self heal and the you go to Cyrodiil and die because the Smart Targetting of the skill decided to heal other players and not you...

This nerf is a deal breaker for me. BoL is the bread and butter of the class, and beyond stooping down to mutagen spam, the most consistent way to get AP in Cyrodiil, since we sure as hell can't kill anything. At least we were able to keep others propped up and thus get them to kill our enemies for us. But no... You really are doing everything you can to drive out Templar players from the game.

Cleansing Ritual:

Increased the healing from the Purify synergy from this ability and its morphs by 12%.
Fixed an issue where this ability and its morphs could be used to cleanse projectiles that were mid-flight. It now matches the behavior of the Purge ability.

Why? I get the last one, since that is a bug. Put what on earth for are you buffing this one of all skills? I suppose it makes for longer sieges, and easier breach defenses but, I fail to see how this skill really needed anything done to it. It's jsut the kind of random meaningless change that you are notorious for. You snuffle the deck for no real reason, changing things in arbitrary fashion and end up with just a new set of issues.

Focused Healing: This passive ability now grants you the Major Mending buff while standing in your own Cleansing Ritual, Rune Focus, or Rite of Passage area effects and for up to 2/4 seconds after leaving them at Ranks I/II, instead of granting you 15/30% more healing to allies standing in your own Cleansing Ritual, Rune Focus, or Rite of Passage.

Another example of these arbitrary changes the results of which are hard to predict. On one hand it's cool we finally get Major Mending, after all it was tad daft that the "best healers" in the game didn't have access to this buff. But then you take away the non typed healing bonus for healing people standing in your Cleansing Ritual, which has been a key part of good Templar healing play from the launch of the game. We also lose potential synergy since this is now replaced with a typed bonus, so wont' stack with other sources of said bonus.

You also make us even more sitting ducks by forcing as to sit in our circles of power or lose the buff in a flash. And this change, when a key thing we as a class wanted was more mobility, you make us ever more rooted in place. I guess the poor NB's QQ too much about having to chase us down. So thanks ZOS ,such a good idea to make us even more static. I'm sure they are happy about this change.

Healing Ritual: Reduced the cast time for this ability and its morphs by 25%, and reduced the healing done by 25%.

Yet another meaningless change. A crappy skill with a way too long cast time is still a crappy skill even if you marginally lower it's cast time while also lowering it's power. No one will still use it.

Radiant Aura (Restoring Aura morph): This morph now grants you and your allies the Major Intellect buff upon activation, as well as having an increased radius as a morph effect.

Another change that completely misses it's mark. A pointless buff is pointless if no one ever uses the skill. Compared to Repentance this one is so weak. And gaining major Intellect is meaningless since Templar resource management sucks anyway, and we are constantly drinking potions and have the buff up pretty much constantly as is. But I suppose the classes that are not dependent on potions for resource management are happy to get all the major buffs for free... From their Templar Servants. And besides, other classes get comparable boosts to their resource management via passives, and Templars need to slot an active ability just to compete? Oh yeah, that is so balanced design that it dazzles with brilliance.

Restoring Focus (Rune Focus morph): This morph now grants you the Minor Protection buff, in addition to granting the Minor Vitality buff as a morph effect.

And the trend of meaningless changes continues it's triumphant procession! Minor Protection is such an insignificant buff to a skill no-one in their right mind is going to use anyway, that it borders on insanity. Stamplars have no need for the skil on their limited bars, and no Magplar can take a pass on Rune Focus since our resource management sucks so much. So buffing an already a weak morph with a really weak effect and thinking it matters is just ludicrous.

Rune Focus: Revised the tooltips for this ability and its morphs to indicate that the Major Ward and Major Resolve buffs will stick to you for 8 seconds after leaving the rune, while the morph effects of Channeled Focus and Restoring Focus require you to remain in the rune at all times.

Speaking of which... There was no reason to limit the morph effect to be only applicable when standing still and asking for enemies to come perforate our lateral orifices. This ability was just fine the way it was way back when it still used to be cool. With this update you should've finally made the thing move with the caster. The fact that the effects wore off after 8 seconds of leaving the rune was a big enough a drawback. Other classes get self buffs that last 20 seconds, and they can zap and zip about the battlefield as they want. The fact that rune focus gave you meaningful magicking regen on the run was one of the few saving graces of the class. But no... that would have meant we were not the red headed step childs of ESO that the other classes can use as a punching back. So that had to go.

All in all... So an utter failure. Not only did you not listen to the the people who play Templars, you appeased those who do not by nerfing us, and failed to make any meaningful change. And you did not deliver on teh two biggest key issues - movement and meaningful synergy. The Templar class has no synergy at all. And crappy resource management. So after months and months of constructive suggestions, hundreds of posts offering feedback on dozens of threads, you manage to come up with nothing. At all.

So, thinking about all those hugely touted big improvements you had planned for the Templar, and the promises of delivering class balance, all I can think of is hearing Gordon Ramsay say:

You have a couple good points like the 1% buffs are lol!! But I think you missed the real gems for templars. Dark Flare will hit very hard and VB will benefit not only from longer duration but also from the CP changes. IMO Backlash is the biggest Gem if what I'm hearing is correct and it can now crit. By my math the damage potential of this capability has more than doubled and is now extremely strong in group PvE and potentially even solo PvE. It definitely has a spot on my bar.

IMO things are looking up for magic spec templars. Mobility is still a big issue, but there are some ways to work around that.

Cheers

Backlash can only crit up to the tooltip, not above...they haven't changed anything about it. But anyways.25k+ dmg is nice to have in a rotation

deleted220701-004865

zomnomnombie wrote: »

I'm disappointed. I was hoping they would just delete templars and give us dragonknights already.

I've been practicing my wings in the mirror for the past 6 months...

Kicked right in the dreams, ZoS!