Official Feedback Thread for Templars
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Nick1620✭✭
With bash to break them from channeling for example. But we cant bash, because they are cc immune thanks to our jabs!
reducing speed is better option. I would still prefer some flat damage increase with no cc here...or adding some executioner feature, like it had 70% crit for low health before, but it is still better.
But other changes, and especially, lack of necessary fixes and feedback to templar problems is irritating.
Templars are and even more continue to be the weakest class in the game. Especially PVP-wise. No damage, no control, no mobility, only healing which yet gets nerfed. Logic.
what do u think about immobilization function of biting jabs? like bow skill - affected enemies are also immobilized for 2-3 secs and reduces speed by 40-50% for 8 secs. Also remake Explosive Charge- ability now scales off weapon damage and max stamina and stuns enemy for 5-6 secsEdited by Nick1620 on February 10, 2016 5:13PM0 -
Nick1620✭✭
With bash to break them from channeling for example. But we cant bash, because they are cc immune thanks to our jabs!
reducing speed is better option. I would still prefer some flat damage increase with no cc here...or adding some executioner feature, like it had 70% crit for low health before, but it is still better.
But other changes, and especially, lack of necessary fixes and feedback to templar problems is irritating.
Templars are and even more continue to be the weakest class in the game. Especially PVP-wise. No damage, no control, no mobility, only healing which yet gets nerfed. Logic.Edited by Nick1620 on February 10, 2016 5:13PM0 -
Wreuntzylla✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭I feel like the points of why people don't use Vampire's Bane and Healing Ritual are being missed.
Heals in this game can't have cast times, especially if we are slowed while casting. It's useless. I have any number of spells that can do a better job than Healing Ritual.
Vampire's Bane simply makes the DoT last longer. If I'm doing my job, anything outside of a dungeon or trial shouldn't live long enough to tick the extended time from this spell. In dungeons, only bosses would be ideal targets for this. I suppose it frees up a few seconds to cast other spells, but I'd rather have the multi-target attack and just work it into the rotation a bit more often. The up-front damage makes up for the lost DoT, anyway.
The nerf to Breath of Life seems entirely pointless.
In a game that often comes down to mobility, Rune Focus and its morphs shouldn't plant themselves on the ground.
I still see no reason to use Radiant Aura.
Unstable Core is still absolutely useless.
The other changes, I either like or can't really comment on.
When I read the patch notes I assumed this was a PvP change. Specifically, I thought it was meant to synergize with the change to NB cloak.0 -
Alorier✭✭✭✭So does this mean Npcs will now be rocking inner light in PvE only fair as breath of life is affected in PvE as well0
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TRoclodyte✭✭✭timidobserver wrote: »timidobserver wrote: »ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »Hello everyone!
[*] Templars: We’ve been reading your feedback across the forums. We understand your frustration, and do appreciate you taking the time to let us know about your pain points. We have some additional changes going in for you in the next patch including increasing the duration of the damage reduction from Empowering Sweep, increasing the bonus to the initial hit from Crescent Sweep, and adjusting the buffs from Rune Focus to stay on you for 8 seconds after leaving the rune.
[/list]
Okay! I don't care much for empowering sweep, but if they're true to their word and ALL buffs stay on Rune Focus for the 8 seconds, I will stomach the other nerfs.....
I'LL TAKE IT!!!
Edit: If this is the best they will give us I will take it. Would still prefer a 20 second armor buff though.
I don't understand what you are" taking." The buffs granted directly by base skill Rune Focus already stay on you for 8 seconds after leaving the circle. If they apply this "buff" to the morphs it would be a massive nerf to Channeled Focus and a slight buff to Restoring Focus.
Honestly speaking, the in-game tooltip for Channeled Focus right now says that you regen Magicka while within the rune focus. The fact that you continued to receive the regen while leaving the focus was likely unintended. I was actually suprised to know that this hasn't been the case and I'm sure other Templars were, too.
So..if they are meaning to allow the morphs to last 8 seconds after leaving the rune the same as the buffs to physical and magical resistances, I am very, very happy. Sure...I would love for this to last 10-20 seconds. But compared to the first patch notes that required us to stay in the focus for the morphs, I see this as a buff. It is a really, really cheap spell. And this at least, allows a bit more mobility.
I still don't understand. The first patch notes, if you read them, were nothing but a tooltip change/clarification. Nothing mechanical changed about Channeled Focus on the pts. Compared to how Channeled Focus works on live and on the pts, you are celebrating an effective massive nerf.
I'm not sure why you don't undersand. Regen Magicka while within the rune focus means you only regen Magicka while within it, not outside it. That's what the tooltip says now. So I and every other unknowing Templar have been standing inside our foucus to regen Magicka. And we have been continually placing these down whenever we moved to a new spot.
I mean..I sorta feel stupid not knowing that I could just cast the spell and just happily run away...and get the Magicka regen ticking. Seems that I have been benefiting from it without knowing it. But I do use Rune Focus in pvp for the physical and magical resistance. And I know to run back over it after 8 seconds to pick up the buff again. And when I can't, I recast it in my new location. I would happily take a longer buff, though.
How it works on the pts and how it has worked until now is not what the Tooltip says. So I can see where many Templars see this as a nerf. But I don't think this is or was intended. So I see it as a buff. And I'm almost tempted to pick up the other Morph for group play. Gonna be a hard choice to make.
This is a picture from live. The tooltip has NEVER said that the magicka regen would not follow you out of the rune. It has always mentionned that The Effects dissipate after 8 seconds. I don't see why you would think the magicka regen is not an effect.
That aside, I don't even know if I want to ask any buffs to the templars anymore. ZOS seems too happy to keep beating that dead class. I've been playing my templar since shortly after launch, and with over 14,000 achievment points, including some achievments that I won't get again, like Emperor!, it's not true that I'll reroll another class to painfully level to VR16. Yet I just can't have fun with my templar anymore and then I see more nerfs incoming. All I do nowadays is log on, do an easy pledge to waste some enlightenment, check my sales and log off.
At this point, can templars just get a class change and stop suffering? I'd rather heal with a sorcerer or a dragonknight than keep going with my templar.
Edited by TRoclodyte on February 10, 2016 5:49PM9 -
Alorier✭✭✭✭The one thing in eso I loved they broke it please no more nerfs I don't think I can take it0
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KennanTheCold✭✭✭I've been a Templar for a VERY long time, an I like to think i'm pretty good at it an know the class inside an out. There are a lot of things that can an should be changed to improve Templars, mostly passives and overall class synergy. I sincerely doubt any in depth rework of templars is going to happen, an if it does I doubt many current templars will approve of the changes. For the sake of simplicity I just recommend that ZOS replaces eclipse with blinding flashes (flashes could be toned down a bit for balance), and that all buffs from rune focus/morphs apply outside the rune for a maximum of 12 secs.
Could and should more be done? yes, but it's doubtful that will ever happen.Edited by KennanTheCold on February 10, 2016 9:27PMKennan Freesword
Adielle Freesword
Kennan Freesword Jr
Noble Freesword
Tara Freesword
Bruce Freesword1 -
maxjapank✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭TRoclodyte wrote: »timidobserver wrote: »timidobserver wrote: »ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »Hello everyone!
[*] Templars: We’ve been reading your feedback across the forums. We understand your frustration, and do appreciate you taking the time to let us know about your pain points. We have some additional changes going in for you in the next patch including increasing the duration of the damage reduction from Empowering Sweep, increasing the bonus to the initial hit from Crescent Sweep, and adjusting the buffs from Rune Focus to stay on you for 8 seconds after leaving the rune.
[/list]
Okay! I don't care much for empowering sweep, but if they're true to their word and ALL buffs stay on Rune Focus for the 8 seconds, I will stomach the other nerfs.....
I'LL TAKE IT!!!
Edit: If this is the best they will give us I will take it. Would still prefer a 20 second armor buff though.
I don't understand what you are" taking." The buffs granted directly by base skill Rune Focus already stay on you for 8 seconds after leaving the circle. If they apply this "buff" to the morphs it would be a massive nerf to Channeled Focus and a slight buff to Restoring Focus.
Honestly speaking, the in-game tooltip for Channeled Focus right now says that you regen Magicka while within the rune focus. The fact that you continued to receive the regen while leaving the focus was likely unintended. I was actually suprised to know that this hasn't been the case and I'm sure other Templars were, too.
So..if they are meaning to allow the morphs to last 8 seconds after leaving the rune the same as the buffs to physical and magical resistances, I am very, very happy. Sure...I would love for this to last 10-20 seconds. But compared to the first patch notes that required us to stay in the focus for the morphs, I see this as a buff. It is a really, really cheap spell. And this at least, allows a bit more mobility.
I still don't understand. The first patch notes, if you read them, were nothing but a tooltip change/clarification. Nothing mechanical changed about Channeled Focus on the pts. Compared to how Channeled Focus works on live and on the pts, you are celebrating an effective massive nerf.
I'm not sure why you don't undersand. Regen Magicka while within the rune focus means you only regen Magicka while within it, not outside it. That's what the tooltip says now. So I and every other unknowing Templar have been standing inside our foucus to regen Magicka. And we have been continually placing these down whenever we moved to a new spot.
I mean..I sorta feel stupid not knowing that I could just cast the spell and just happily run away...and get the Magicka regen ticking. Seems that I have been benefiting from it without knowing it. But I do use Rune Focus in pvp for the physical and magical resistance. And I know to run back over it after 8 seconds to pick up the buff again. And when I can't, I recast it in my new location. I would happily take a longer buff, though.
How it works on the pts and how it has worked until now is not what the Tooltip says. So I can see where many Templars see this as a nerf. But I don't think this is or was intended. So I see it as a buff. And I'm almost tempted to pick up the other Morph for group play. Gonna be a hard choice to make.
This is a picture from live. The tooltip has NEVER said that the magicka regen would not follow you out of the rune. It has always mentionned that The Effects dissipate after 8 seconds. I don't see why you would think the magicka regen is not an effect.
That aside, I don't even know if I want to ask any buffs to the templars anymore. ZOS seems too happy to keep beating that dead class. I've been playing my templar since shortly after launch, and with over 14,000 achievment points, including some achievments that I won't get again, like Emperor!, it's not true that I'll reroll another class to painfully level to VR16. Yet I just can't have fun with my templar anymore and then I see more nerfs incoming. All I do nowadays is log on, do an easy pledge to waste some enlightenment, check my sales and log off.
At this point, can templars just get a class change and stop suffering? I'd rather heal with a sorcerer or a dragonknight than keep going with my templar.
Good god. Read the tooltip. While within the rune, you also recover 120 Magicka every 0.5 seconds. The effects are referring to the physical and spell resistance. But I'm sure this is exactly why the Devs re-wrote the tooltip. To make it more clear for those who don't understand the meaning of within.
But I'm tired of talking about what was. And I'm tired of people twisting the words. Be happy with the 8 seconds for all effects that we are supposedly going to get. And keep trying to convince them to up it to 10 or even 12 seconds.1 -
Hymzir✭✭✭✭✭
✭This is going to be long, really long. I have taken several hours thee past few days to put my thoughts on the Templar into words. I note that most of my suggestions come from the point of view of PVP, since that is what I do most of the time. I'm not the kind of player that enjoys repeating same content, and thus don't run daily pledges or trials. Some of my suggestions may thus not serve the PVE community, but I do believe that it is possible to serve both sides, by tuning some skills to work better in PVE while keeping others more relevant for PVP.
I have also read the many and various suggestions and ideas offered by people on the Forum, and want to say that that there are really good and inspiring ideas being proposed here. I find it rather shameful, that we, the players, can come up with so much better ideas than the people who are actually being paid to do the development work.
Furthermore, I will supply my reasoning and justification as to why I think the things I want to be changed should be changed. And what it is I am trying to achieve with those changes. This is something ZOS never does - it just changes things and never explains it's reasoning. I think this is a big mistake, and that ZOS should spend time and effort, perhaps via dev blogs or something, to explain why they are changing the things they are, and what it is they are hoping to achieve with those changes. But communication has never been something ZOS has done, at all. Even badly.
Finally, this will be my last take on this matter. I just can't afford to waste any more time and energy with a game, when it's developers keep spitting at my face. I also find it infuriating, that even with all the feedback we have provided, even though the general player base is in consensus that the Templar is the weakest class, and that it needs some major tweaks, ZOS ignores all of it, and instead just churns out utter incompetent garbage. If ZOS still refuses to hear us, the players, when we have made it so markedly clear that this crap will not fly, then so be it. I'm gonna move on, and spend my time playing something else.
Keep in mind, that for the two past years, ZOS has neglected Templars, ignored potentially 25% of their player base. We have been patient and endured, hoping that ZOS would fix these issues as they keep promising. But they never have, and the changes they came up with, pretty clearly show that they never will. So despite my lengthy post, and the suggestions that will follow, my real advice to all Templar players is to move on. Go play something else - ESO is a game that does not want us playing it. There are tons of other great games out there,, no point in trying to scrape by as a beggar in ESO.
Maybe, if they hire new devs or something and things actually change, we can check back at the end of the year to see if anything meaningful has happened. And if not, we can safely forget this game ever existed and just spend our time playing something else.
Okay with all that said and gotten out of the way let's get to business...
I am gonna go over the Templar skills one by one, each tree at a time, and note down my thoughts and suggestions on each skill. But before that, I want to try to encapsulate what it is that is actually wrong with the Templar class. And talk about two principles I think should guide the re-imagining of the class: Parity and Utility.
The issue with Templars, is not one of whether we can DPS or Tank or even one of mobility. We can do all of that, it just takes more effort to achieve result than it does with other classes. You can be fairly successful as a Templar, but it will take more effort and skill. The simple fact of the matter is that Templars are the least well designed class in the game. So fixing us will not be achieved by tweaking some underused morph a little, or giving one of our skills a boost. What we need is a sea change. A sweeping reform of the core principles of the class and it's underlining design philosophy.
So what exactly are those then? Well, in simplest terms, Templars are the anti-thesis of the Nightblade, it's polar opposite. Or at least that is how I see the Templar class. But that in itself is fairly ephemeral and meaningless. So how about thinking it terms of a square
Stand your ground Mobile
Magicka emphasis Templar Sorcerere Ranged Combat
Stamina emphasis Dragonknight NightBlade In your face fighting
Tank emphasis DPS emphasis
Now do mind, that this is bit simplistic, and does not cover all the design elements, and does not take into account the fact that you can have a Tanky Stamina based Sorcerer wielding a two handed sword. The game is after all supposed to support any build for any class in any role. The idea was that you could go against the grain and end up with something that was viable. Not perhaps the most optimal build, and more than likely something that required bit of extra effort to pull off, but still a perfectly valid choice - if it suited your personal play style. But some builds will obviously go against the core principles of their class. A ganking sneaky Templar is possible, but not the norm. And a tanky healer Nightblade is perfectly possible, but not something you'd expect. And sure Magicka DKs and Nightblades as well as Stamina based Sorcs and Templars are a thing. But I'm not talking about individual character builds, I'm talking about design principles. And the way I see it, when the game launched, both Sorc and Templar were, in my eye, more clearly aimed at using Magicka based skills, while the Nightblade and DK were designed to be using weapon skills - i.e. Stamina based abilities.
So when one looks at the Templar skills, it's obvious that we were intended to be inherently tanky, able to stand our ground and put up a fight. While at the same time we have ranged attack and support (i.e. heals) so we can serve as battle field monitors, applying damage and healing as it required. Sure, we can also go in your face with Jabs , but we do not have the same kind of damage output a Nightblade has, nor the inherent survivability that a Dragonkinight has in melee combat.
However, while that may have been the original design intent, none of that above is really true anymore. I think it was at launch (of course I do admit that this is pure speculation, since I was not part of the original design team, and thus not privy to what ever they were thinking), but all the sweeping changes and restructurings and reworking of base game concepts that have been introduced to the mix, have more or less invalidated all of that. Removal of Soft caps made hybrids pointless. CP just exaggerated the imbalance issues to a much higher degree. Various tweaks to core mechanics have made standing your ground a bad idea. And most of the new content demands high mobility, empowering those classes that have inbuilt mobility. And now even Dragonknights got their movement boost while Templars got tied down even tighter, standing still in their little circles while the other classes snipe them at leisure.
So to truly balance the classes, ZOS would need to re-balance the whole game, restructure all of the skills to match the new prevailing design of mobile burst emphasized combat, with reliable self heals for all and a way to get out of dodge when things go south. In fact, I believe, they should just take the game off line for a year and rework the mechanics into a coherent whole. A system with clear design principles and underlying philosophy. But that's not gonna happen, not when so many players are still willing to throw money at them.
But that is another matter, and not what we are here for, so no more on that issue then. Just keep in mind that that since the base premises on which these classes were originally based on, have changed so much, and so many ancillary systems have been bolted onto the wobbly core, that balancing it has become almost impossible. And in such an environment, it is not possible to fix the Templar class with just few simple tweaks.
So thus we come to a conclusion, that we should not be talking about Balance as the design principle here, but Parity. Templars need to be equal to the other classes. This can be achieved in many ways. You could try to make each class unique and different, with incomparable but equal abilities. But that is hard. And with all the changes go core play, it has become a nightmare to try to keep everything more or less on the same equal level.
Broken combinations and builds that place you well ahead or behind the curve are fairly common in the current meta of the game, and parity is becoming ever increasingly difficult to gauge between all the different elements that the game has. As such, it is time to simplify the basics: Give each class comparable, if slightly different set of baseline abilities. Each class needs an execute, each class needs resource management. Each class needs a mobility buff. Each class needs a self heal of some sort and so on.
This still leaves room for differences between the classes, but makes balancing them somewhat more feasible. There would still be a need to tweak numbers in future patches and reign in combinations that broke too far ahead of the curve, but at least it would be possible.
By coming up with a clear set of basic abilities and buffs that each class should have access to, will not only achieve Parity but would also help us achieve Utility. This concept, is one of being able to perform the various things that the meta of the game tells us we need to be able to do, in order to be competitive. The current meta of the game is one of mobility, and places emphasis on burst damage. Templars are not strong in either of these. And while you can achieve both, and you need to achieve both if you want to be competitive, it is a lot harder as a Templar. (I myself go through tons of potions just to keep up with the requirements of mobility.)
Another facet of Utility is synergy between class skills and the various builds it encourages. Some classes have more and some have less. For example - 90% of all the Sorcs I've come across have the exact same skills taking up 9 of their 12 slots. There is minor variation between all of them, but the variation is very minor. Nigntblades, on the other hand seem to come in several flavors.
Perhaps the upcoming changes, which seemed to buff underused morphs and skills will bring more build Variety for DKs, Sorcs, and Nightblades. I would not know, since i do not have extensive experience playing those classes.
I do have that as a Templar though, and one of the key things I know about Templars is that the more successful Templars invariably only slot 3 to 5 class skills. And we all slot the same skills. There are few good Templar skills supporting couple of different base builds, but for the majority of all Templar builds you need to go with Weapon, Guild, Alliance or Vamp/werewolf skills if you actually want to be a meaningful actor on the battlefield. And the proposed changes do not really change that at all.
There is no synergy, no real incentive to go with Templar skills. Templar passives do not encourage you to use actual Templar skills. I slot mostly Mages Guild skills since those at least give me access to Resource management passives. Another example is that lots of Templars would rather Slot Purge than Cleaning Ritual - and that is one of the better Templar skills, one that people actually use - because Alliance War Support Skills come with better passives, and Purge is also a much better group purge. (And with the efficient Purge morph, it's not even all that more expensive.)
There has to be meaningful utility in the Templar skill trees. Abilities that enable us to do the things that the meta demands from us, and meaningful synergy that foster variety of different builds.
So with these two principles in mind here are my suggestions to the various Tmeplar skills...
Aedric Spear - The warrior tree for the Templar. It should cater more to Stamplars than Magplars. As such, these skills should default to Stamina and weapon damage. Maybe also switch base damage to physical, but not sure about that one. Would need some testing to see how it works with the new CP system. I would also give every skill a Magicka morph doing magic damage for Magplars to have a chance to benefit fully from these skill. But the key thing to keep in mind is that the tree is mostly aimed at Stamplars.
Radial Sweep and its morphs - This skill needs a redisgn. Ask yourself:"Who is going to use it? For who is it designed?" It's fairly obvious that this is a tanking skill. DPS based Stamplars can always opt to go with Dawnbreaker. Just make sure the damage, and AoE, is on-par with Dawnbreaker. The key difference being that this is a 360 degree skill where as Dawnbreaker is a cone. You can increase the cost of this Ultimate to 100 to compensate for the damage and AoE increase.
Empowering Sweeps - Make sure that the defensive buff it gives is comparable to the Weapon Damage increase of Flawless Dawnbreaker, otherwise everyone will just slot that and keep ignoring this one.
Crescent sweeps - This morph should have some other cool effect. It should not try to compete with Dawnbreaker as a DPS Ultimate. The skill should be targeted for Tanks. Maybe a self heal -would certainly fit the general design principle of Templar skills, even if it is a bit lazy design.
Puncturing Sweeps and its morphs - The removal of the half a second knockback is okay. I would have kept that, since it works as an interrupt, but would've removed the automatic 5 second CC immunity it applied to the target. That was silly.
Adding a short snare is also okay as an alternative, but it really should apply on the first hit and not the last, since that would go a long way to assuage the wonky targeting this skill has. It's a fairly difficult skill to use in PVP with constantly moving targets.
Puncturing Sweeps - The nerf to healing done by this skill was uncalled for. The idea was to buff Templars, not keep them on the same level. While the occasional advantage of having Major Mending buff on while jab-spamming, will lead to increased heals, there was no need to nerf the heal.
Biting jabs - The morph needs some extra attention - perhaps give them back the 170% damage on first target. Also, instead of giving it a Major Savagery, I would give it Major Maim since crits don't work on shields anyway, and most of us have ungodly crit ratings already as is. But I defer to judgement of actual Stamplar players as to what should be done to this skill.
I'd even go so far as give this skill Major Brutality (would free a lot of Templars from relying on 2 handed weapons) since we as a class lack access to this critical buff.
Piercing Spear and its morphs - The range increase is a very good buff, now this skill might sometimes actually reach ones target. It is still a lackluster skill and way too expensive for what it does. Adding Major Breach to it would be a good start and would actually give it meaningful synergy with other skills. Ranged single target CC that gives a meaningful debuff? That sound fairly usable.
Aurora Javelin -This morph needs a complete remake, the skill has absolutely no use for a Magplar as it now stands. The damage, even at max range with the 40% extra is insignificant when compared to what kind of single target DPS you can pump out with other ranged option. Piercing Spear is supposed to be single target CC skill, so give the Magicka morph a CC upgrade and not a DPS one.
Binding Javeling - This morph was one of my fav skills before it got converted to stamina. AS a Magplar I can no longer really use it. But for Stamplars it is okay, albeit expensive option. Adding Major Breach to the base skill along with the range increase will make it a viable choice for many Stamplars.
Focused Charge and its morphs - Talking about this skill is pointless until it's working properly. The skill has been unusable for such a long time, that I have no idea how it actually stacks performance wise. So fix it first and then we can talk about what tweaks it needs in the next update.
Spear Shards and its morphs - The support skill of the Aedric Spear tree. The recent changes to the way DoTs work, and thus the decreased changes for Burning Light procs, dictate that the base damage of this skill and it's dots need to go up. 10-15% is enough. If you are going to add a red circle to make this thing even easier to avoid, you gotta do something about it's flight time. It's too slow to actually hit a moving target (which is basically everyone in PVP.)
My suggestion is to simply remove the targeting step for the spell and just have it hit where ever you are pointing your targeting reticle. I would also move the Blazing Spear damage AoE effect to the base skill. since the base skill is really weak, and the AoE damage makes it a no brainer as to which morph to pick.
As for the morphs of this skill... well one supports Stamina players and the other Magicka Players. Give Magicka support to Stamplars and Stamina support for Magplars and make the thing work the same for both in all other respects. That way it would still be a CC skill that does some AoE damage, but is mostly meant to support your group members and not yourself.
Sun shield and its morphs - This needs two things 1. Increase in its up time, 6 seconds is a joke. 2. a major power increase in Cyrodiil! The skill has been rendered so useless, that beyond that it is quite hard to give meaningful feedback.
Fix the first by giving it at least 12 second up time (along with a toned down SFX - the current is too distracting) Fix the second issue by exempting it from Battle Spirit.
Shields in general need a serious make over. Maybe having them all tied to Health would be a good first move and making them crittable a decent second step. But anyway, until this skill becomes even remotely useful in Cyrodiil, it is impossible to give meaningful feedback on it's performance.
Piercing Spears - Basically a good passive, except for the fact that criticals are useless against shields, and thus this skill is useless fairly often. But to really fix it you'd need to make shields crittable.
Spear wall - This one should be a blanket buff to all blockin not just melee attacks. As it stands now, it's simply too weak a passive when compared to other passives. I mean do you really think this is as good as similar level defensive passives for other classes? DK Burning Heart - Increase healing by 6%/12% while Draconic ability is activated. Which is basically always since the Draconic defense buff has a duration of 20 seconds. Or the Sorc passive Blood Magic which heals for 4%/8% max health when hitting a foe with Dark Magic abilities - i.e. crystal Frags. And Nightblades have Shadow barrier that gives them huge defense buffs for spamming one of their most spammed attacks (at least according to death reports) i.e. Surprise Attack.
So giving Templars added block against melee attacks at similar skill ranks is laughable. If this passive affected all attacks, it would at least give us some use in blocking all those Snipes bow users target us with as as we are sitting in our self provided targeting reticles...
Burning Light - this thing needs to proc on shields. I'd also look at the cool down it has, but would need more detailed numbers to say anything meaningful about that. But based on what people who have done such analysis have posted, a tweak might be in order here. In any case, since the damage of Aedric spear tree abilities has been balanced with this proc in mind, it is imperative that we actually get that proc in actual combat. Far too often we fight a shielded foe and lose a major source of our expected damage output.
Balanced Warrior - This is the biggest and most important change in the whole tree. This thing needs to add the same amount to Spell Damage that it adds to Weapon Damage. Just doing this would go a long way to rectifying the fact that Magplar DPS is behind other Magicka classes. There is no need to give Dark Flare a damage boost in order to give Templars more DPS. Giving us more Spell Damage would do it on it's own, and would give us some parity with other Magicka based Classes. The Spell resistance this adds is insignificant and can be removed for all I care, as long as we get the Spell Damage buff.
Dawn's wrath - The Magplars primary attack tree. As such, it should cater mostly to Magicka users. A few Stamina morphs are okay, but not necessary for all skills, since Stamina users have a wide variety of weapon skills to draw on for offense. But for the Magicka Templar, this tree is it.
Nova - What this skill needed was for a reason to slot it over Meteor, not an extra buff to its group play synergy. My suggestion is to lower its cost to 200 and give us a passive that gives us an extra benefit for having it slotted. Meteor is superior to Nova in almost all ways. It's cheaper, yet hits hard, has nice ancillary effects and comes with passives that boost Max Magicka and Magicka regen. In the proposed changes it no longer can't be reflected making it even more attractive choice. Those are some massive advantages over Nova, so for Nova to compete, it needs to have similar features.
Sun fire and its morphs - The Basic ranged attack of the Templar. Too bad it sucks. Now I know some people like the DoT aspect of this skill, but personally I detest it. I see no use for it. It's slow and inefficient way to deal damage and in PVP and it often just gets purged. I'd be happy to have a dot if I had couple of more ability slots to fill, but on the fairly limited bars ESO has, I simply don't have room for such a weak and inefficient ability. Due to the fast paced combat of ESO, burst damage emphasis, and animation cancelling, I can out DPS this skill with simple Crushing Shock Light attacks spam. Adding Sunfire into the rotation will not make a meaningful difference and requires me to waste an extra slot that could have been filled with something more useful- The only thing the dot is useful for is against PVE Bosses and even in those cases, I'd rather just go with constant Dark Flare Spam than waste a slot for this skill.
I am aware, that there are some players who like to run with DoT builds, and want to have long DoTs. But this is the basic ranged attack of the Templar, and the meta of the game requires for such an ability to be spammable. As a DoT. it's inherently unspammable. At the moment it fails it's role as a main attack since 2/3 of it's damage comes form the DoT. As such I am much better served by slotting Force Shock and doing light attack weaves. Those attacks are unpurgeable, give constant damage wit instant flight time. Slotting DoT with a slow projectile to be used every three rotations of your main attack combo would be a reasonable choice if we had 8 or 9 slots on each bar, but in this game, we simply do not have the luxury of slotting a skill we use every three rotations. Especially one as weak as this.
Whet I would do is to amp the initial damage by a considerable amount. The ideal ratio is 2/3rds on initial hit 1/3 as a DoT. Make the DoT a short and sweet and efficient 4 seconds. Thus purging it would be a tough choice for the defender too - to purge would require plenty of resources, and would only avoid third of the damage. At the moment, purging it is the obvious choice. You avoid two thirds of the damage by doing so.
The Major prophecy buff this skill gives is a cool extra, but far too often a meaningless one. For PVP the same is provided by just slotting Mage Light, no activation needed, and slotting it is required protection against gankers anyway. You also gave the DK skill Inferno crit buff bonuses just by having it slotted. Why not do the same for Sunfire? Then I would have a reason to slot it over Mage Light in PVE and work its DoT into my rotation.
Or better yet, replace this one with Major Sorcery. It's a crucial skill in the current meta and one that Templars have no class access to. Giving it to the first skill of the line might be bit excessive, but giving it to one of the latter skills would be far too OP. If the buff was granted by Sunfire then slotting it would become a meaningful choice.
Reflective Light - Just keep the skill as it is in it's base form and add two ancillary projectiles for some extra group damage. It's good for gringin mobs in PVE.
Vampires bane - I would make this the same as the base skill, it would just hit a lot harder. Extending it's DoT is meaningless. It needs to hit harder. Basically the extra damage the additional projectiles of Reflective light need to be added as damage to Vampires Bane. And most of it as initial impact. 9 second DoT is utterly useless in this game.
Solar flare and its morphs - The only skill to get an straight buff in the update. Too bad it's a really bad idea. The problems with Solar Flare has never been damage. In fact many a times when this was suggested, it has been countered by ZOS on the grounds that its already the hardest hitting skill in the game. So I find it really baffling that in the end they decided to do just that.
But you were right ZOS, it hits hard enough as is, and it does not need a damage increase. When it crits as an empowered version with high Spell Power, it can one shot other players as is. Adding damage to it will not fix it and will only make for bad game play.
The only style of play the buff serves is that of ganking, and I can already see people getting themselves Cunning Alchemist gear, while running already a high Spell Power build. Then by jugging a Spell Power potion for a major increase in Spell Power along with Major Sorcery buff. All they have to do then, is to start casting Dark Flare on an unsuspecting target, and immediately recast Dark Flare when the first one is on it's way. When the second launches they then move to finishing the target with Radiant Oppression. The second Dark Flare of the combo will hit as Empowered, with the Cunning Alchemist Spell Power buff and both Minor and Major Sorcery buffs. And if it crits, which is most of the time, since most DPS builds crit more often than not, that second one is going to hit for ridiculous amounts of damage. And after having cast those two Dark Flares the target is finished with Radiant Oppression. It too will be Empowered, and you will have Cunning Alchemist Spell Power Buff, Both minor And major Sorcery Buffs, and most likely the high Magicka Buff from Radiant, and the target is most certainly in execute range. And even if they immediately start to self heal, the Major Defile from Dark Flare will make that difficult as well. There is very little you can do to survive that kind of spike damage. I guarantee that we will be seeing people crying for nerfing OP Templars on the forums.
The problem with this scenario for the Templar is, of course, the fact that they still have no mobility or meaningful stealth. Perhaps by going vampire they can work an escape system into their bar and happily gank away. 'Cause if the combo fails, and the target manages to dodge in time, the Templar is screwed. But if it does connect... I really cannot see any way anyone would survive that. The second dark flare, if it crits, would hit for well over 20k damage alone. And that is not what the game needs - introducing even more ridiculous damage spikes. And it will not fix the real issues the skill has.
The problem with Dark Flare and the reason why so few slot it, is not damage. It is utility and ease of use. Compared to the Sorc counter Part Crystal Fragment, Dark Flare is clearly the inferior skill. The instant proc chance of Frags is crazy good. There is even a forum thread "What do you do when you catch your DPS hard casting Crystak Frags..." Everyone knows how bad idea that is, and how inefficient it is, compared to just spamming something else until the skill procs. Veteran Sorcs note to beginners that they should keep Hardened Ward on the same bar as Frags, so that if you are on the defensive, you can just keep spamming Ward until Frag procs and then instantly retaliate with a frag to the face and CC your foe. You then have a chance to either Execute, or Bolt away to rebuild your defenses and resources and stack all your shields once more.
Crystal frags is an amazing skill. It hits hard, offers real CC has synergy with both offensive and defensive play and with Sorc passives, and when it procs can be cast as an instant for reduced cost and increased effect. And it's not like the proc chance is particularly low or anything. It only takes 3 casts to get a crystal proc going on average.
Compared to all that, Dark Flare fails miserable. It's slow as hell, has a lengthy cast time, it's obvious as hell, leaving the target with ample time to put up defenses (casting shields, or a reflect ability, or just dodging away) and it's only really useful for offense. What this skill needs is more utility, and ease of use.
As a single target DPS skill it's never more desirable to slot than Radiant Oppression. Even if you slot iust to use against PVE bosses, you would still slot Radiant Oppression as well. Radiant is an amazing skill - it's powerful and comes with ton of utility. And it also hits fairly reliably and can't be reflected or even dodged.
We have a limited bar of skills, and we need to think carefully what we slot and why and what utility it brings with itself. Radiant is a very powerful execute, possibly the strongest in the game. It also has the potential to do obscene amount of damage. However the damage portion of the skill is just one part of it's utility, it does so much more than just kill targets. What it does, is work like a marker light. It's a giant finger of light pointing at a target and telling everyone in your team to kill it. Now!
In a game with powerful burst heals, it serves as a constant grinding finisher just waiting for you to dip into execute range, to be a fraction of a second late with a self heal. All the other players need to do is to get the target to less than 30% and the Radiant will most likely finish the target with it's next tick.
Even when it is hitting a target at full health, it still applies a constant distracting pressure. And many a times you can disrupt an archer spamming Snipe on the parapets by hitting them with Radiant. Most experienced players would rather retreat than stand in the light of Radiant Destruction. While you wont kill them with that attack you will stop them from spamming Snipe at your team, which in turn lowers their teams DPS. And if some noob chooses to stand in the beam... well all it takes is for one Snipe from your team to hit it and the Radiant will execute them for some easy AP.
It also works against tanks. When a group of players is trying to finish a particularly tough tank, you can eat away at their stamina fairly fast by just keeping the pinned down with Radiant Destruction. No stam regen while blocking after all.
It also follows the target no matter where they go. It keeps the group aware where the target is going. A common tactic in ESO is to suddenly reverse your movement vector and maybe dodge roll or bolt escape through your pursuers. But the Radiant beam keeps locked on the target telling everyone where they went, thus making the tactic less reliable.
It's also really good at lighting up those sneaky Nightblades. When I spot a Nightblade skulking about, I just light them up with Radiant thus preventing them frpm disappearing again and alerting my team mates to their presence, leading most of the time to a dead Nightblade.
All in all, Radiant Destruction is so much more versatile and useful skill that there is no reason to slot Dark Flare instead of it. It also plays well in combos - Many a times I have killed a squishy target, like a Nightblade that failed to gank, by using Degeneration to get Major Sorcery and the Empowerment buff, then hitting them with Meteor (which is prepped and ready more often than not due to its relatively low cost) and then starting Radiant Oppression as soon as the Meteor is on it's way. Radiant prevents them from vanishing and then the Empowered Meteor hits putting them into execute range and the next radiant tick finishes them off. That is not something I could reliably achieve with Dark Flare. It's just too slow and cumbersome to use in actual combat.
So first of all, keep the damage as is, no need to buff it more. The game does not need more high swinging attacks that crit for insane amounts of damage with spell power buffs. That road only leads to QQ on the forums about OP Templars.
Instead of the damage buff, give the skill a new animation. Instead of launching it in the air with a high arc, let it fly straight towards the target. Just copy the basic parameters from Crystal Frag skill. Projectile speed, cast time, flight trajectory. Just replace the hand waving and projectile with new graphics. That takes care of it's obvious and clunky nature to cast.
AS for utility, give it a proc chance for something. It doesn't have to be an instant cast like Frags. Perhaps it could proc spontaneous damage shields when damaged or something. Just give it more synergy and utility. It will still be hard pressed to be as useful as Radiant, but giving it extra ancillary features would at least force people to think what they slot and why.
I'd even give up the Empowerment ability on this skill if there was a proc chance for something more versatile. All Empowerment brings to the table is an incentive to keep spamming and spamming the same skill over and over. If you want Empowerment you can always get it from using a Mages guild skill, and that at least would mean that you'd have to come up with a combo instead of just re-spamming the same attack.
Solar barrage - I like this skill personally but haven't used it for over a year now. It just that useless. I ran with it for a long time while still leveling, but eventually gave it up since Dark Flare is much better skill. In the end, I don't use either of them. I might slot Dark Flare every now and then for giggles and stuff. But I would never choose Solar Barrage morph for any reason at all.
Just look at your data, I'm sure that if you check, no-one running a vet level Templar uses this skill. People might use it while still leveling, since they don't yet know how bad it is, or simply because they want to max out all class skills and morphs. But in actual veteran stage combat? No one uses it. At least I sometimes come across someone who is trying to get Dark Flare to work (and usually failing at that), but Solar Barrage? I can't even remember when I last saw it.
At this point it might be prudent to just remove the morph all together. It was a cool idea, but not one that really worked or even fitted the Templar skill tree anyway. And those who need that sort of AoE will always have Impulse or Steel Tornado, both of which are superior skills.
AS such, I would just replace this morph with a AoE variation of Dark Flare. Make it hit for less damage but give it a small AoE and a 6 target cap. If it hit 6 targets for 66% of damage that Dark Flare does to one target, I bet lot's of people would start slotting this a lot.
Backlash and its morphs - I never use this skill. It's far too gimmicky and gludky to use. It might have some role in PVE but since that is not my forte can't really say much about it. Apart from noting that most people. who have experience with this skill, bluntly state out that it sucks. So maybe listen to to them and do what they suggest about fixing it.
Eclipse and its morphs - This thing has never worked well. Conceptually it is reversed DK reflect with some Sorc bits thrown into the mix. The simple reason that it's easily CC breakable makes it mostly useless. I never slot it since it never works.
Having a dependable class reflect would however be a game changer. If Templars had something similar to Reflecting Scales I, and no doubt many others, would be all over that skill. But the idea of placing a reflecting bubble on target just does not work in a dynamic and fluid multiplayer environment.
Radiant Oppression - Another skill I have fairly little to say about, beyond that it works fairly well. It has been toned down from it's earlier incarnations and is in a good spot at the time. It is strong, but has it's set of drawbacks. My only real issue with is that it's perhaps the least responsive Templar skill in Cyro during lag. Many a times I have spotted a low health target and hit Radiant and ended up with my character just standing there not doing anything. I even get helpful hints on my UI that tell me to "Execute now!" And yet my character just stands there and does nothing. Then two or three seconds later he decides to fire of Radiant into nothingness. The target having moved on a long time ago and no doubt no longer in execution range either. Using Radiant during lag is really annoying.
I would also consider removing Radiant Glory and replacing it with a Stamina Morph just so that Stamplars would have a class execute. However... since stacking weapon damage is lot easier than stacking Spell Damage, I would reduce it's strength by a fair bit. How much I can't say since I do not have the raw numbers, but balancing the Stamina morph would undoubtedly take few incremental tweaks to get right.
Enduring Rays - I would replace this with something else, perhaps a straight simple +3%/+5% to Dawns Wrath damage. I mean, look for example at the Sorc Lightning skill tree - three of the four passives there increase damage the Sorc is putting out. There is a straight increase to the damage of the Lightning skills, an increase to the Sorcs Spell Damage stat, and a passive that gives a proc chance for extra damage.
So rename this as Scorching Rays and give it a small proc chance to make the enemy burn. That'd be cool. Or you could add some sort of mechanism that is tied to the number of Dawns Wrath abilities slotted perhaps and thus increase Spell Damage. Would give us a reason to slot more Dawn's wrath skills and maybe even opt to go with Nova instead of Meteor.
Prism - I suppose it's okay as is. It's different from other class passives so it's harder to accurately rate, but I find it useful. So I suppose this one is okay as is.
Illuminate - Comparable, yet slightly different, than the Minor style Buffs Sorc and DK passives give (Even though the DK one comes with an extra buff for some reason.) This one is fine as is.
Restoring Spirit - this one needs a buff. Sorcs Get a stronger version of this at lower skill level, with the caveat that it doesn't touch Ultimate, but then again, Sorcs get an even stronger version for Ultimate. Sorcs can get -5% for Stamina and Magicka skills and -10% to ultimate. So buff this one up! - I'd say -3%/ -6% would be okay. Maybe even -4%/-8% since Templar skills are fairly expensive, and would make going full heavy armor so much more viable, and Templar was after all, envisioned as being a heavy armor using class. At the moment, it's really hard to go Heavy armor as a Templar because you are so dependent on armor passives for resource management.
Restoring Light - The Support tree of the Templar class. This tree should be usable by both Stamplars and Magplars. It should give us Self Heals, Self Buffs and resource management to supplement what ever play style we choose to pursue.
Rite of Passage and its morphs - this is a useless Ultimate. Barrier, even with the nerfs is still better that this . I really can't say much about it. Maybe if it didn't make us sitting ducks it might have some use. But I don't know... I like the idea of having a Healing Ultimate, but I can't come up with any idea that would make this thing work.
Rushed Ceremony and its morphs - Add a check into this skill - If the caster is below 40% health it should automatically target the caster. A dead caster heals no one. This simple change would make the skill an actual self heal.
Honor the Dead - No changes needed - as long as the self heal clause form the base skill would carry on to the morph.
Breath of life - Oh dear... this is going to be a long entry...
Okay, on a certain principal level, I agree that this skill needs to be toned down. However, the way ZOS decided to do this is a really bad idea. All it does is remove the great utility this skill has while doing nothing to correct the actual problems it presents. It's frankly speaking a lazy cop out from the devs, and show their utter lack of willingness to actually do their job.
The issue at hand is that not only is there no real reason to opt using Honor the Dead instead of BoL, it is downright dangerous to not use BoL. Placing a self heal clause into the base skill would go a long way in balancing these two skills.
There have been several times when I have died, even while spamming BoL simply because there were other players with less health within range of the spell. A self heal that doesn't heal yourself when you are in danger is not a true self heal. With Bol you at least had three times the chance of having at least one of the heals land on you and not on other players. With Honor the Dead, and group fight situations, the chances of there being someone nearby with less health than you are just too high to even think about using Honor the Dead. Te desing should encourage people to pick Honor the Dead as a dedicated self hel and BoL as a group heal. But at the time, BoL is better choice for both. And even with the nerf, it still is.
Also note that the upcoming nerf to Bol will in no way appeases the people who are crying for nerfs to the skill. The primary heal of BoL will hit just as strong as it always has, and with the more readily available Major Mending buff for Templars, it's going to heal even more. So when a situation happens, where you have three or four DPS character swarming a solitary target, that is being supported by couple of healers from the safety of keep walls or the heart of a zerg, the DPS players will be even more frustrated by their inability to kill their solitary target.
But you know... in my view that is okay. BoL is expensive to cast. And you have no control over where the heal actually goes, so there is a certain amount off unreliability in using it. And I think that if you have a situation where 4 guys are trying to kill one target that is healed by 3 healers then yeah... they should have hard time killing that one target. If you try to gank someone who is being healed by someone up on a keep wall, then yeah - killing that target should be hard. You are basically fighting two people.
Now, having said all that I still think that BoL does need a nerf, but a nerf that serves a purpose, solidifies the actual intended use for the spell, reduces spike healing and gives both morphs clearly different profiles, and retains the utility of BoL in 4 man groups.
My suggestions is to have BoL heal 3 targets as before, but heal them all for the same amount. That way it will be clearly meant as a group panic heal, where as Honor the Dead will be a stronger single target panic heal. This creates a strong difference and a tough choice between the two morphs. (And will still give BoL an edge over Sorc Matriarch pet heals...)
If BoL is healing for, let's say 10k on primary and 5k on the secondaries, I would have it heal for 6k on all three targets. That is still a 10% nerf on total heals. Furthermore it would make heal stacking less useful. Even if you have three guys on the keep wall propping up a solitary player fighting several foes, it doesn't matter that each of the casters is generating three heals, since each caster could only target one of the heals on the player they are supporting. Thus the three healers would generate 18k of heals with all of them casting Bol, where as now, and wiht the upcoming nerf to Bol those three casters would be generating 30k of healing to the target since all the strong heals would go to the one target that is not at full health.
That would make a meaningful difference in having people support others through keep walls and rocks and trees and what not, while still keeping the classic group panic heal feature intact.
If you want to have as powerful heal as possible then you would slot Honor the Dead. But since that is only one target heal, it's not as useful in supporting others as BoL.
Consider a situation where you have two fighters supported by two healers. Casting Bol would mean that each of the fighter would get 1 strong heal and 1 weak heal, thus both would gain 15k heals. With Honor the Dead each would only get one strong heal for 10k heals. With my proposed change to Bol both would gain 12k heals. Adding a third healer would mean that with Honor the Dead, one target would get 20k heals and the other 10k heals. With the upcoming changes to BoL one target would get 25k heals and the other 20k heals. With my proposed change to Bol both would gain 18k heals.
So I at least come to the conclusion that while toning down BoL is needed, the proper way is to keep the three target nature of the spell and just make the heals similar in size and smaller than the one target heal offered by Honor the Dead. It would also make pure healers lot more squishy since Spamming BoL to save their own skin would heal themselves for significantly lower amounts. Tanks and solo players could opt to go with Honor the dead and retain that strong self preservation capability at the expense of being far worse group support healers.
Healing Ritual and its morphs - This skill has always been useless and it is still useless. The healing it offers is too slow and way too strong to be efficient. It overheals far too often, so why waste the time and Magicka casting this when you get result faster and cheaper with other options. Remove this skill and come up with some sort of general buff spell. The game has plenty of healing options already, so having yet another crappy group heal cluttering the Templar tree is pointless. You can't slot all the heals on your bars anyway. So replace this skill with something useful.
That is all I really have to say about this one. Rushed Ceremnoy is better as a panic heal, even with the nerf, and Resto Staff offers better group heals. So this is basically an open slot in the skill tree to add something new. Like a replacement for the self defense we lost, when you took Blinding Flashes away form us! Just make sure it has both Magicka and Stamina morphs.
Restoring Aura and its morph - This skill is mostly garbage except for the Repentance morph, and that is really only useful for few select builds. It is atrocious that Templars need to slot an active ability to get Resource management. I get the requirement of slotting an ability from the tree to get access to the trees passives, but the need to slot a skill that is basically a passive for all the other classes is an insult to the people playing Templars. Add furthermore, that the active effect replicates the buff you get from potions is even more inane. Templars need a real resource management passive and it is part of my proposed changes. More about that in the section dealing with Restoring Light passives.
With a real resource management passive build into the tree, slotting this ability would then become a meaningful choice. Slot it for dedicated resource management build at the expense of losing one of your active slots.
I would also change the active ability of this skill and instead of giving the same major buffs potions give, I would simply let it give the player Major Expedition for 4 seconds. Just activate this skill and sprint to safety. Templars need a source for this vital buff, and this is the place I think it would fit the best, and be of equal benefit to both Stamplars and Magplars.
Radiant Aura - As an extra ability for this morph, I would give the Templar a minor purge. Activating this ability would remove one negative effect from you. It would thus become a possible alternative for Cleansing Ritual, with the caveat that it would only purge yourself. It would certainly be a solid option for solo players.
Repentance - This skill is really good for those who have build around it. But it is fairly limited and circumstantial. I don't really use it all that much so I can't comment on it, more than that. It ca be amazingly effective when running with a large group and hitting it after having killed several opponents, but since the base skill is so crappy it still sees only limited use.
Cleansing Ritual and its morphs - This one needs a buff. Not a huge one mind you, but one that would make it better than Purge. Everyone can slot Purge so this one should be slightly better than Purge since it is a class skill. The unintended ability to cleanse incoming attacks was such a thing. But now that it's gone, this one no longer holds candle to the generic Purge.
Especially since the other reason to slot this over Purge is also gone - Healing people in its AoE used to be 30% more effective. Previously you cast this on keep wall breach and then retreated to safety while healing the people manning the breach for extra strong heals. No you just cast Rune behind the safety or the walls and heal people in the breach with your Major Mending backed heals. Since now you just get Major Mending if you stand in a Rune (which you have to for resource management) l, there is no longer any reason keep this on slotted. Efficient Purge is lot better as a group purge.
What this skill needs to be first and foremost a cleanse, not an AoE heal, and thus it needs an automatic cleanse of one bad effect from all allies in it's range when cast. Keep the synergy for an additional cleanse and heal as is.
Purifying Ritual - This is the morph everyone takes since it is so much better. If the skill had automatic purge of one effect built into the base skill then this morph would be fairly okay. Efficient Purge would still be better cleanse, but this one would come with extra healing so there would be a meaningful choice between the two.
Extended Ritual - no one in their right mind would pick this over Purifying, and since that is now less useful than just taking Efficient Purge... This one needs pretty heavy buffs to be useful. Just keep in mind that this is supposed to be a cleanse, not an AoE heal, so make the cleanse part the main component not the healing it does.
Rune focus and its morphs - This skill needs more mobility. Tying us down is not only stupid but suicidal. Make it fully mobile buff, just like similar buffs for every other class in the game! Stop forcing Templars to be sitting ducks that cast convenient target reticles for our enemies, signalling that "I'm here! Hit me! I'm the healer! I'm your first priority target! I'll even make it easy for you and wont move, so just come here and kill me already!"
If you absolutely have to keep us confined then make the following changes: Rune focus gives it's buffs to you as long as you remain in the rune. If you step outside you will lose the buffs after 8 seconds. Returning to the rune will reset the counter. Since the duration of the rune is 15 seconds that means you can cast it and keep moving. You just need to return to the circle before 8 seconds lapse, or lose the buffs. When you reenter the circle the counter resets and you get another 8 seconds of buffs from it. The maximum benefit you could get from the rune would be 23 seconds up time, if you manged to stay all that time in the rune, or returned it before the last second of it's duration ticked by.
This would limit Templars mobility to the area where you cast your Rune and would be a meaningful drawback, but would not be crippling restriction.
But this only works as long as all the benefits, including the Magicka Regen from Channeled Focus, must stay active when you leave the rune. Also switch Restoring Focus to give similar Stamina gains as Channeled Focus gives to Magicka. This would make the skill a quite desired ability to Tanks and Stamplars in general, and would provide them with an excellent Magicka dumb skill. And make Templar Tanks much more self-reliant than other Tanks. A nice class distinction if you ask me. DK tanks would still be hardier and come with better mitigation, but Templar Tanks would have better sustain.
Mending - Templars are supposed to be the best Healers. We have a healing tree in our class after all. So please let us actually be the best healers in the game. This can be done fairly simply by just Changing the Mending Passive to affect all healing, not just Restoring Light abilities. Most Templars would still use Restoring Light skills for most of their heals, but would open up interesting synergy with healing from other sources. Would also help Stamplars a bit since it would now also affect Stamina heals for Vigor and Rally.
Focused Healing - I am on a fence about the upcoming changes to this passive. As someone who uses Resto staff fairly often, even though I do not use any of its skills, the Magicka return from heavy attacks is vital to my poor resource management. So leeching Magicka with heavy attacks is normal operation for me, and thus I will be receiving the Major Mending buff fairly constantly from that.
On the other hand, if Templars were to get meaningful resource management buffs in our passives, I could ditch the Resto staff and still have access to Major Mending if I got it from casting Channeled Focus. But it would require that Templars had actual resource management passives.
The increased healing done in Cleansing Ritual circles was also a fairly nice thing. It certainly came handy in sieges while defending. I can see how in PVE it is much harder to herd your teammates into the circle, but in PVP those situations rise up naturally. No herding needed. Like when defending or taking a flag. And for those situations I would really like to have both Major Mending and the old Focused Healing buff active at the same time. But that might be tad OP.
So after lot of thought and lots of different ideas I've finally come to the conclusion that the change to Focused healing is okay, as long as you also implement meaningful resource management buffs into the Templar skill trees and thus let us finally stop relying on the Resto Staff for our Magicka regen.
Light Weaver - As it is now, it's a completely useless passive. I don't even have points allocated to it since it has no impact whatsoever on my character. Even if I use Restoring Aura, I invariably use Repentance so the 10% extra duration no longer applies. I would never under any circumstances use Healing Ritual because I am not suicidal, and even If I was... Granting 1 or 2 Ultimate to those under 60% is meaningless! It would have to grant at least 10 and 20 Ultimate to even register. The buffs for Rite of Passage are only meaningful to those who have not yet gained access to Barrier and are still stuck using a clearly inferior Ultimate. Besides the buffs this passive gives to Rite of Passage should be inbuilt to the skill as standard. Using Rite without this passive is just not feasible! And the idea that you need to have a passive in order for your Class Ultimate to be usable is fairly sickening.
Thus my suggestion is to simply remove the passive and replace it with a better one. Not like anyone will really miss this one. Just move the buffs it gives to Rite as basic qualities of the Ultimate and replace this with a better one.
My idea is to make it similar to the Sorc passive Expert Mage, but instead of damage increase it would instead give us resource increases. Kinda like the Mages Guild passive Magicka Controller but wihtout the regen buffs. My suggestion is to give us +1%/+2% Stamina and Magicka per each Templar skill slotted. With all 6 skills filled with Templar skills and 2 points in the passive we would thus get 12& increase in the stats. A major, but not an OP bonus, since we would also sacrifice a lot by having to use only Templar skills. And we would need to balance both bars with equal number of Templar skills to keep the buff constant. Every choice of using a non Templar skill would now become a significant question. You would think hard and long about what to slot and why.
Master Ritualist - This passive needs to go away. Rezzing others is far too quick as it is and there is no real drawback to dying. I know this from personal experience, since I currently run around with Kagrenacs Set and the rez buff that one gives, along with those fron CP trees and alliance wars and the Templar passive makes me an almost instant rezzing machine.
Furthermore, as a Templar I have never bought a single Grand Soul gem - the ones I find in chests and get from Enchanting crafting writs and from Rewards of the Worthy are more than enough to keep me supplied since with Master Ritualist I have a 50% chance on not using one when rezzing others. I can go rezzing all day long. With Kagre equipped I see my fellow dead team mates as alternative Magicka potions I rez them simply for the Magicka gain.
Battlefield rezzing is fine, and should be in the game, but death should mean something too, and when you manage to kill one of the enemies, they should not just pop up back up in 1 second with full health. Having passives that make rezzing easier and more efficient are also okay, but they should be universal and thus restricted to the Alliance war trees and CP passives. And that one bit of gear.
The reintroduction of Forward camps will lessen the need for battlefield rezzing. And with that in mind I find it detestable that another facet of supposedly unique Templar traits is cheapened with a consumable bit of gear.
That's why Master Ritualist needs to be replaced with something, and I would slot in it's place something useful for both Magplars and Stamplars, something the class as a whole needs desperately. A simple +5%/+10% percent increase to Stam and Mag regeneration would be a much better idea than the one we have now. And would bring our baseline resource management to comparable level with other classes.
And that about does it - this is what I would want to do with the Templar. But chances are that ZOS will not do any of that and instead just give me a reason to move on and spend my time playing something else.22 -
Endenium✭✭✭Breath of Life - It does not need nerfed. It is THE standard for healing abilities. If the goal is class balance for healers, all other classes should be buffed to the standard that Templars set. Don't tear Templars down to make them balanced with other classes. Instead, build other classes up. Its a smarter approach. We know that Templar healers work. People love them. Dont mess with that. Try to get other classes to the standard that Templars set.6
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Endenium✭✭✭Templar DPS self heals + Major Sorcery from Entropy - Buffing Dark Flare is nice. Sure. But Im concerned about Templar survivability if it becomes the main spammable ability. Classes like Sorx get Crit Surge to heal them for % of damage done. If Templars are no longer using Sweeps the same way, then they are no longer getting self heals from their DPS. I think this is a potential problem.
The only source of Major Sorcery and self heals while DPSing that Templars have now is Entropy - and that requires a target to grant the buff. So I would like to see Entropy changed into something like Crit Surge - maybe healing for % damage done instead of % of crit damage done or something. Also, make Entropy castable without a target being required. It should be castable before starting combat like literally every single other class in the game. I honestly cant think of one other that requires a target to get their major 20% damage buff.
So magicka Templar DPS need self heals if Sweeps is no longer the DPS meta + need a source of Major Sorcery that does not require a target to cast. Considering the buff that DKs got to Molten Armaments, which is a great decision, Templars need something comparable aside from the Minor Sorcery passive.Edited by Endenium on February 10, 2016 11:31PM1 -
timidobserver✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭TRoclodyte wrote: »timidobserver wrote: »timidobserver wrote: »ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »Hello everyone!
[*] Templars: We’ve been reading your feedback across the forums. We understand your frustration, and do appreciate you taking the time to let us know about your pain points. We have some additional changes going in for you in the next patch including increasing the duration of the damage reduction from Empowering Sweep, increasing the bonus to the initial hit from Crescent Sweep, and adjusting the buffs from Rune Focus to stay on you for 8 seconds after leaving the rune.
[/list]
Okay! I don't care much for empowering sweep, but if they're true to their word and ALL buffs stay on Rune Focus for the 8 seconds, I will stomach the other nerfs.....
I'LL TAKE IT!!!
Edit: If this is the best they will give us I will take it. Would still prefer a 20 second armor buff though.
I don't understand what you are" taking." The buffs granted directly by base skill Rune Focus already stay on you for 8 seconds after leaving the circle. If they apply this "buff" to the morphs it would be a massive nerf to Channeled Focus and a slight buff to Restoring Focus.
Honestly speaking, the in-game tooltip for Channeled Focus right now says that you regen Magicka while within the rune focus. The fact that you continued to receive the regen while leaving the focus was likely unintended. I was actually suprised to know that this hasn't been the case and I'm sure other Templars were, too.
So..if they are meaning to allow the morphs to last 8 seconds after leaving the rune the same as the buffs to physical and magical resistances, I am very, very happy. Sure...I would love for this to last 10-20 seconds. But compared to the first patch notes that required us to stay in the focus for the morphs, I see this as a buff. It is a really, really cheap spell. And this at least, allows a bit more mobility.
I still don't understand. The first patch notes, if you read them, were nothing but a tooltip change/clarification. Nothing mechanical changed about Channeled Focus on the pts. Compared to how Channeled Focus works on live and on the pts, you are celebrating an effective massive nerf.
I'm not sure why you don't undersand. Regen Magicka while within the rune focus means you only regen Magicka while within it, not outside it. That's what the tooltip says now. So I and every other unknowing Templar have been standing inside our foucus to regen Magicka. And we have been continually placing these down whenever we moved to a new spot.
I mean..I sorta feel stupid not knowing that I could just cast the spell and just happily run away...and get the Magicka regen ticking. Seems that I have been benefiting from it without knowing it. But I do use Rune Focus in pvp for the physical and magical resistance. And I know to run back over it after 8 seconds to pick up the buff again. And when I can't, I recast it in my new location. I would happily take a longer buff, though.
How it works on the pts and how it has worked until now is not what the Tooltip says. So I can see where many Templars see this as a nerf. But I don't think this is or was intended. So I see it as a buff. And I'm almost tempted to pick up the other Morph for group play. Gonna be a hard choice to make.
This is a picture from live. The tooltip has NEVER said that the magicka regen would not follow you out of the rune. It has always mentionned that The Effects dissipate after 8 seconds. I don't see why you would think the magicka regen is not an effect.
That aside, I don't even know if I want to ask any buffs to the templars anymore. ZOS seems too happy to keep beating that dead class. I've been playing my templar since shortly after launch, and with over 14,000 achievment points, including some achievments that I won't get again, like Emperor!, it's not true that I'll reroll another class to painfully level to VR16. Yet I just can't have fun with my templar anymore and then I see more nerfs incoming. All I do nowadays is log on, do an easy pledge to waste some enlightenment, check my sales and log off.
At this point, can templars just get a class change and stop suffering? I'd rather heal with a sorcerer or a dragonknight than keep going with my templar.
Good god. Read the tooltip. While within the rune, you also recover 120 Magicka every 0.5 seconds. The effects are referring to the physical and spell resistance. But I'm sure this is exactly why the Devs re-wrote the tooltip. To make it more clear for those who don't understand the meaning of within.
But I'm tired of talking about what was. And I'm tired of people twisting the words. Be happy with the 8 seconds for all effects that we are supposedly going to get. And keep trying to convince them to up it to 10 or even 12 seconds.
If your ignorance of the fact that ZOS tooltips are regularly inaccurate or vague allows you to find happiness in this potential nerf so be it, but you shouldn't insist that others share that happiness. It is one thing to immerse yourself in your ignorance, but it is another to ask others to jump in with you.Edited by timidobserver on February 10, 2016 11:25PMV16 Uriel Stormblessed EP Magicka Templar(main)
V16 Derelict Vagabond EP Stamina DK
V16 Redacted Ep Stam Sorc
V16 Insolent EP Magicka Sorc(retired)
V16 Jed I Nyte EP Stamina NB(retired)2 -
Endenium✭✭✭Aedric Spears Ultimate - Radial Sweep has been a trash ultimate since launch. Adding 1 meter to the range is not going to change a damn thing. I dont want to come off as whiney, but come on. Its frustrating to see that kind of stupidity. It seems to be obvious to every player except the developers. Make it physical damage and return stamina or something like that. Stamplars need a physical damage ultimate and could use a bit more stamina sustain as well.0
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AfkNinja✭✭✭✭✭
✭This is going to be long, really long. I have taken several hours thee past few days to put my thoughts on the Templar into words. I note that most of my suggestions come from the point of view of PVP, since that is what I do most of the time. I'm not the kind of player that enjoys repeating same content, and thus don't run daily pledges or trials. Some of my suggestions may thus not serve the PVE community, but I do believe that it is possible to serve both sides, by tuning some skills to work better in PVE while keeping others more relevant for PVP.
I have also read the many and various suggestions and ideas offered by people on the Forum, and want to say that that there are really good and inspiring ideas being proposed here. I find it rather shameful, that we, the players, can come up with so much better ideas than the people who are actually being paid to do the development work.
Furthermore, I will supply my reasoning and justification as to why I think the things I want to be changed should be changed. And what it is I am trying to achieve with those changes. This is something ZOS never does - it just changes things and never explains it's reasoning. I think this is a big mistake, and that ZOS should spend time and effort, perhaps via dev blogs or something, to explain why they are changing the things they are, and what it is they are hoping to achieve with those changes. But communication has never been something ZOS has done, at all. Even badly.
Finally, this will be my last take on this matter. I just can't afford to waste any more time and energy with a game, when it's developers keep spitting at my face. I also find it infuriating, that even with all the feedback we have provided, even though the general player base is in consensus that the Templar is the weakest class, and that it needs some major tweaks, ZOS ignores all of it, and instead just churns out utter incompetent garbage. If ZOS still refuses to hear us, the players, when we have made it so markedly clear that this crap will not fly, then so be it. I'm gonna move on, and spend my time playing something else.
Keep in mind, that for the two past years, ZOS has neglected Templars, ignored potentially 25% of their player base. We have been patient and endured, hoping that ZOS would fix these issues as they keep promising. But they never have, and the changes they came up with, pretty clearly show that they never will. So despite my lengthy post, and the suggestions that will follow, my real advice to all Templar players is to move on. Go play something else - ESO is a game that does not want us playing it. There are tons of other great games out there,, no point in trying to scrape by as a beggar in ESO.
Maybe, if they hire new devs or something and things actually change, we can check back at the end of the year to see if anything meaningful has happened. And if not, we can safely forget this game ever existed and just spend our time playing something else.
Okay with all that said and gotten out of the way let's get to business...
I am gonna go over the Templar skills one by one, each tree at a time, and note down my thoughts and suggestions on each skill. But before that, I want to try to encapsulate what it is that is actually wrong with the Templar class. And talk about two principles I think should guide the re-imagining of the class: Parity and Utility.
The issue with Templars, is not one of whether we can DPS or Tank or even one of mobility. We can do all of that, it just takes more effort to achieve result than it does with other classes. You can be fairly successful as a Templar, but it will take more effort and skill. The simple fact of the matter is that Templars are the least well designed class in the game. So fixing us will not be achieved by tweaking some underused morph a little, or giving one of our skills a boost. What we need is a sea change. A sweeping reform of the core principles of the class and it's underlining design philosophy.
So what exactly are those then? Well, in simplest terms, Templars are the anti-thesis of the Nightblade, it's polar opposite. Or at least that is how I see the Templar class. But that in itself is fairly ephemeral and meaningless. So how about thinking it terms of a square
Stand your ground Mobile
Magicka emphasis Templar Sorcerere Ranged Combat
Stamina emphasis Dragonknight NightBlade In your face fighting
Tank emphasis DPS emphasis
Now do mind, that this is bit simplistic, and does not cover all the design elements, and does not take into account the fact that you can have a Tanky Stamina based Sorcerer wielding a two handed sword. The game is after all supposed to support any build for any class in any role. The idea was that you could go against the grain and end up with something that was viable. Not perhaps the most optimal build, and more than likely something that required bit of extra effort to pull off, but still a perfectly valid choice - if it suited your personal play style. But some builds will obviously go against the core principles of their class. A ganking sneaky Templar is possible, but not the norm. And a tanky healer Nightblade is perfectly possible, but not something you'd expect. And sure Magicka DKs and Nightblades as well as Stamina based Sorcs and Templars are a thing. But I'm not talking about individual character builds, I'm talking about design principles. And the way I see it, when the game launched, both Sorc and Templar were, in my eye, more clearly aimed at using Magicka based skills, while the Nightblade and DK were designed to be using weapon skills - i.e. Stamina based abilities.
So when one looks at the Templar skills, it's obvious that we were intended to be inherently tanky, able to stand our ground and put up a fight. While at the same time we have ranged attack and support (i.e. heals) so we can serve as battle field monitors, applying damage and healing as it required. Sure, we can also go in your face with Jabs , but we do not have the same kind of damage output a Nightblade has, nor the inherent survivability that a Dragonkinight has in melee combat.
However, while that may have been the original design intent, none of that above is really true anymore. I think it was at launch (of course I do admit that this is pure speculation, since I was not part of the original design team, and thus not privy to what ever they were thinking), but all the sweeping changes and restructurings and reworking of base game concepts that have been introduced to the mix, have more or less invalidated all of that. Removal of Soft caps made hybrids pointless. CP just exaggerated the imbalance issues to a much higher degree. Various tweaks to core mechanics have made standing your ground a bad idea. And most of the new content demands high mobility, empowering those classes that have inbuilt mobility. And now even Dragonknights got their movement boost while Templars got tied down even tighter, standing still in their little circles while the other classes snipe them at leisure.
So to truly balance the classes, ZOS would need to re-balance the whole game, restructure all of the skills to match the new prevailing design of mobile burst emphasized combat, with reliable self heals for all and a way to get out of dodge when things go south. In fact, I believe, they should just take the game off line for a year and rework the mechanics into a coherent whole. A system with clear design principles and underlying philosophy. But that's not gonna happen, not when so many players are still willing to throw money at them.
But that is another matter, and not what we are here for, so no more on that issue then. Just keep in mind that that since the base premises on which these classes were originally based on, have changed so much, and so many ancillary systems have been bolted onto the wobbly core, that balancing it has become almost impossible. And in such an environment, it is not possible to fix the Templar class with just few simple tweaks.
So thus we come to a conclusion, that we should not be talking about Balance as the design principle here, but Parity. Templars need to be equal to the other classes. This can be achieved in many ways. You could try to make each class unique and different, with incomparable but equal abilities. But that is hard. And with all the changes go core play, it has become a nightmare to try to keep everything more or less on the same equal level.
Broken combinations and builds that place you well ahead or behind the curve are fairly common in the current meta of the game, and parity is becoming ever increasingly difficult to gauge between all the different elements that the game has. As such, it is time to simplify the basics: Give each class comparable, if slightly different set of baseline abilities. Each class needs an execute, each class needs resource management. Each class needs a mobility buff. Each class needs a self heal of some sort and so on.
This still leaves room for differences between the classes, but makes balancing them somewhat more feasible. There would still be a need to tweak numbers in future patches and reign in combinations that broke too far ahead of the curve, but at least it would be possible.
By coming up with a clear set of basic abilities and buffs that each class should have access to, will not only achieve Parity but would also help us achieve Utility. This concept, is one of being able to perform the various things that the meta of the game tells us we need to be able to do, in order to be competitive. The current meta of the game is one of mobility, and places emphasis on burst damage. Templars are not strong in either of these. And while you can achieve both, and you need to achieve both if you want to be competitive, it is a lot harder as a Templar. (I myself go through tons of potions just to keep up with the requirements of mobility.)
Another facet of Utility is synergy between class skills and the various builds it encourages. Some classes have more and some have less. For example - 90% of all the Sorcs I've come across have the exact same skills taking up 9 of their 12 slots. There is minor variation between all of them, but the variation is very minor. Nigntblades, on the other hand seem to come in several flavors.
Perhaps the upcoming changes, which seemed to buff underused morphs and skills will bring more build Variety for DKs, Sorcs, and Nightblades. I would not know, since i do not have extensive experience playing those classes.
I do have that as a Templar though, and one of the key things I know about Templars is that the more successful Templars invariably only slot 3 to 5 class skills. And we all slot the same skills. There are few good Templar skills supporting couple of different base builds, but for the majority of all Templar builds you need to go with Weapon, Guild, Alliance or Vamp/werewolf skills if you actually want to be a meaningful actor on the battlefield. And the proposed changes do not really change that at all.
There is no synergy, no real incentive to go with Templar skills. Templar passives do not encourage you to use actual Templar skills. I slot mostly Mages Guild skills since those at least give me access to Resource management passives. Another example is that lots of Templars would rather Slot Purge than Cleaning Ritual - and that is one of the better Templar skills, one that people actually use - because Alliance War Support Skills come with better passives, and Purge is also a much better group purge. (And with the efficient Purge morph, it's not even all that more expensive.)
There has to be meaningful utility in the Templar skill trees. Abilities that enable us to do the things that the meta demands from us, and meaningful synergy that foster variety of different builds.
So with these two principles in mind here are my suggestions to the various Tmeplar skills...
Aedric Spear - The warrior tree for the Templar. It should cater more to Stamplars than Magplars. As such, these skills should default to Stamina and weapon damage. Maybe also switch base damage to physical, but not sure about that one. Would need some testing to see how it works with the new CP system. I would also give every skill a Magicka morph doing magic damage for Magplars to have a chance to benefit fully from these skill. But the key thing to keep in mind is that the tree is mostly aimed at Stamplars.
Radial Sweep and its morphs - This skill needs a redisgn. Ask yourself:"Who is going to use it? For who is it designed?" It's fairly obvious that this is a tanking skill. DPS based Stamplars can always opt to go with Dawnbreaker. Just make sure the damage, and AoE, is on-par with Dawnbreaker. The key difference being that this is a 360 degree skill where as Dawnbreaker is a cone. You can increase the cost of this Ultimate to 100 to compensate for the damage and AoE increase.
Empowering Sweeps - Make sure that the defensive buff it gives is comparable to the Weapon Damage increase of Flawless Dawnbreaker, otherwise everyone will just slot that and keep ignoring this one.
Crescent sweeps - This morph should have some other cool effect. It should not try to compete with Dawnbreaker as a DPS Ultimate. The skill should be targeted for Tanks. Maybe a self heal -would certainly fit the general design principle of Templar skills, even if it is a bit lazy design.
Puncturing Sweeps and its morphs - The removal of the half a second knockback is okay. I would have kept that, since it works as an interrupt, but would've removed the automatic 5 second CC immunity it applied to the target. That was silly.
Adding a short snare is also okay as an alternative, but it really should apply on the first hit and not the last, since that would go a long way to assuage the wonky targeting this skill has. It's a fairly difficult skill to use in PVP with constantly moving targets.
Puncturing Sweeps - The nerf to healing done by this skill was uncalled for. The idea was to buff Templars, not keep them on the same level. While the occasional advantage of having Major Mending buff on while jab-spamming, will lead to increased heals, there was no need to nerf the heal.
Biting jabs - The morph needs some extra attention - perhaps give them back the 170% damage on first target. Also, instead of giving it a Major Savagery, I would give it Major Maim since crits don't work on shields anyway, and most of us have ungodly crit ratings already as is. But I defer to judgement of actual Stamplar players as to what should be done to this skill.
I'd even go so far as give this skill Major Brutality (would free a lot of Templars from relying on 2 handed weapons) since we as a class lack access to this critical buff.
Piercing Spear and its morphs - The range increase is a very good buff, now this skill might sometimes actually reach ones target. It is still a lackluster skill and way too expensive for what it does. Adding Major Breach to it would be a good start and would actually give it meaningful synergy with other skills. Ranged single target CC that gives a meaningful debuff? That sound fairly usable.
Aurora Javelin -This morph needs a complete remake, the skill has absolutely no use for a Magplar as it now stands. The damage, even at max range with the 40% extra is insignificant when compared to what kind of single target DPS you can pump out with other ranged option. Piercing Spear is supposed to be single target CC skill, so give the Magicka morph a CC upgrade and not a DPS one.
Binding Javeling - This morph was one of my fav skills before it got converted to stamina. AS a Magplar I can no longer really use it. But for Stamplars it is okay, albeit expensive option. Adding Major Breach to the base skill along with the range increase will make it a viable choice for many Stamplars.
Focused Charge and its morphs - Talking about this skill is pointless until it's working properly. The skill has been unusable for such a long time, that I have no idea how it actually stacks performance wise. So fix it first and then we can talk about what tweaks it needs in the next update.
Spear Shards and its morphs - The support skill of the Aedric Spear tree. The recent changes to the way DoTs work, and thus the decreased changes for Burning Light procs, dictate that the base damage of this skill and it's dots need to go up. 10-15% is enough. If you are going to add a red circle to make this thing even easier to avoid, you gotta do something about it's flight time. It's too slow to actually hit a moving target (which is basically everyone in PVP.)
My suggestion is to simply remove the targeting step for the spell and just have it hit where ever you are pointing your targeting reticle. I would also move the Blazing Spear damage AoE effect to the base skill. since the base skill is really weak, and the AoE damage makes it a no brainer as to which morph to pick.
As for the morphs of this skill... well one supports Stamina players and the other Magicka Players. Give Magicka support to Stamplars and Stamina support for Magplars and make the thing work the same for both in all other respects. That way it would still be a CC skill that does some AoE damage, but is mostly meant to support your group members and not yourself.
Sun shield and its morphs - This needs two things 1. Increase in its up time, 6 seconds is a joke. 2. a major power increase in Cyrodiil! The skill has been rendered so useless, that beyond that it is quite hard to give meaningful feedback.
Fix the first by giving it at least 12 second up time (along with a toned down SFX - the current is too distracting) Fix the second issue by exempting it from Battle Spirit.
Shields in general need a serious make over. Maybe having them all tied to Health would be a good first move and making them crittable a decent second step. But anyway, until this skill becomes even remotely useful in Cyrodiil, it is impossible to give meaningful feedback on it's performance.
Piercing Spears - Basically a good passive, except for the fact that criticals are useless against shields, and thus this skill is useless fairly often. But to really fix it you'd need to make shields crittable.
Spear wall - This one should be a blanket buff to all blockin not just melee attacks. As it stands now, it's simply too weak a passive when compared to other passives. I mean do you really think this is as good as similar level defensive passives for other classes? DK Burning Heart - Increase healing by 6%/12% while Draconic ability is activated. Which is basically always since the Draconic defense buff has a duration of 20 seconds. Or the Sorc passive Blood Magic which heals for 4%/8% max health when hitting a foe with Dark Magic abilities - i.e. crystal Frags. And Nightblades have Shadow barrier that gives them huge defense buffs for spamming one of their most spammed attacks (at least according to death reports) i.e. Surprise Attack.
So giving Templars added block against melee attacks at similar skill ranks is laughable. If this passive affected all attacks, it would at least give us some use in blocking all those Snipes bow users target us with as as we are sitting in our self provided targeting reticles...
Burning Light - this thing needs to proc on shields. I'd also look at the cool down it has, but would need more detailed numbers to say anything meaningful about that. But based on what people who have done such analysis have posted, a tweak might be in order here. In any case, since the damage of Aedric spear tree abilities has been balanced with this proc in mind, it is imperative that we actually get that proc in actual combat. Far too often we fight a shielded foe and lose a major source of our expected damage output.
Balanced Warrior - This is the biggest and most important change in the whole tree. This thing needs to add the same amount to Spell Damage that it adds to Weapon Damage. Just doing this would go a long way to rectifying the fact that Magplar DPS is behind other Magicka classes. There is no need to give Dark Flare a damage boost in order to give Templars more DPS. Giving us more Spell Damage would do it on it's own, and would give us some parity with other Magicka based Classes. The Spell resistance this adds is insignificant and can be removed for all I care, as long as we get the Spell Damage buff.
Dawn's wrath - The Magplars primary attack tree. As such, it should cater mostly to Magicka users. A few Stamina morphs are okay, but not necessary for all skills, since Stamina users have a wide variety of weapon skills to draw on for offense. But for the Magicka Templar, this tree is it.
Nova - What this skill needed was for a reason to slot it over Meteor, not an extra buff to its group play synergy. My suggestion is to lower its cost to 200 and give us a passive that gives us an extra benefit for having it slotted. Meteor is superior to Nova in almost all ways. It's cheaper, yet hits hard, has nice ancillary effects and comes with passives that boost Max Magicka and Magicka regen. In the proposed changes it no longer can't be reflected making it even more attractive choice. Those are some massive advantages over Nova, so for Nova to compete, it needs to have similar features.
Sun fire and its morphs - The Basic ranged attack of the Templar. Too bad it sucks. Now I know some people like the DoT aspect of this skill, but personally I detest it. I see no use for it. It's slow and inefficient way to deal damage and in PVP and it often just gets purged. I'd be happy to have a dot if I had couple of more ability slots to fill, but on the fairly limited bars ESO has, I simply don't have room for such a weak and inefficient ability. Due to the fast paced combat of ESO, burst damage emphasis, and animation cancelling, I can out DPS this skill with simple Crushing Shock Light attacks spam. Adding Sunfire into the rotation will not make a meaningful difference and requires me to waste an extra slot that could have been filled with something more useful- The only thing the dot is useful for is against PVE Bosses and even in those cases, I'd rather just go with constant Dark Flare Spam than waste a slot for this skill.
I am aware, that there are some players who like to run with DoT builds, and want to have long DoTs. But this is the basic ranged attack of the Templar, and the meta of the game requires for such an ability to be spammable. As a DoT. it's inherently unspammable. At the moment it fails it's role as a main attack since 2/3 of it's damage comes form the DoT. As such I am much better served by slotting Force Shock and doing light attack weaves. Those attacks are unpurgeable, give constant damage wit instant flight time. Slotting DoT with a slow projectile to be used every three rotations of your main attack combo would be a reasonable choice if we had 8 or 9 slots on each bar, but in this game, we simply do not have the luxury of slotting a skill we use every three rotations. Especially one as weak as this.
Whet I would do is to amp the initial damage by a considerable amount. The ideal ratio is 2/3rds on initial hit 1/3 as a DoT. Make the DoT a short and sweet and efficient 4 seconds. Thus purging it would be a tough choice for the defender too - to purge would require plenty of resources, and would only avoid third of the damage. At the moment, purging it is the obvious choice. You avoid two thirds of the damage by doing so.
The Major prophecy buff this skill gives is a cool extra, but far too often a meaningless one. For PVP the same is provided by just slotting Mage Light, no activation needed, and slotting it is required protection against gankers anyway. You also gave the DK skill Inferno crit buff bonuses just by having it slotted. Why not do the same for Sunfire? Then I would have a reason to slot it over Mage Light in PVE and work its DoT into my rotation.
Or better yet, replace this one with Major Sorcery. It's a crucial skill in the current meta and one that Templars have no class access to. Giving it to the first skill of the line might be bit excessive, but giving it to one of the latter skills would be far too OP. If the buff was granted by Sunfire then slotting it would become a meaningful choice.
Reflective Light - Just keep the skill as it is in it's base form and add two ancillary projectiles for some extra group damage. It's good for gringin mobs in PVE.
Vampires bane - I would make this the same as the base skill, it would just hit a lot harder. Extending it's DoT is meaningless. It needs to hit harder. Basically the extra damage the additional projectiles of Reflective light need to be added as damage to Vampires Bane. And most of it as initial impact. 9 second DoT is utterly useless in this game.
Solar flare and its morphs - The only skill to get an straight buff in the update. Too bad it's a really bad idea. The problems with Solar Flare has never been damage. In fact many a times when this was suggested, it has been countered by ZOS on the grounds that its already the hardest hitting skill in the game. So I find it really baffling that in the end they decided to do just that.
But you were right ZOS, it hits hard enough as is, and it does not need a damage increase. When it crits as an empowered version with high Spell Power, it can one shot other players as is. Adding damage to it will not fix it and will only make for bad game play.
The only style of play the buff serves is that of ganking, and I can already see people getting themselves Cunning Alchemist gear, while running already a high Spell Power build. Then by jugging a Spell Power potion for a major increase in Spell Power along with Major Sorcery buff. All they have to do then, is to start casting Dark Flare on an unsuspecting target, and immediately recast Dark Flare when the first one is on it's way. When the second launches they then move to finishing the target with Radiant Oppression. The second Dark Flare of the combo will hit as Empowered, with the Cunning Alchemist Spell Power buff and both Minor and Major Sorcery buffs. And if it crits, which is most of the time, since most DPS builds crit more often than not, that second one is going to hit for ridiculous amounts of damage. And after having cast those two Dark Flares the target is finished with Radiant Oppression. It too will be Empowered, and you will have Cunning Alchemist Spell Power Buff, Both minor And major Sorcery Buffs, and most likely the high Magicka Buff from Radiant, and the target is most certainly in execute range. And even if they immediately start to self heal, the Major Defile from Dark Flare will make that difficult as well. There is very little you can do to survive that kind of spike damage. I guarantee that we will be seeing people crying for nerfing OP Templars on the forums.
The problem with this scenario for the Templar is, of course, the fact that they still have no mobility or meaningful stealth. Perhaps by going vampire they can work an escape system into their bar and happily gank away. 'Cause if the combo fails, and the target manages to dodge in time, the Templar is screwed. But if it does connect... I really cannot see any way anyone would survive that. The second dark flare, if it crits, would hit for well over 20k damage alone. And that is not what the game needs - introducing even more ridiculous damage spikes. And it will not fix the real issues the skill has.
The problem with Dark Flare and the reason why so few slot it, is not damage. It is utility and ease of use. Compared to the Sorc counter Part Crystal Fragment, Dark Flare is clearly the inferior skill. The instant proc chance of Frags is crazy good. There is even a forum thread "What do you do when you catch your DPS hard casting Crystak Frags..." Everyone knows how bad idea that is, and how inefficient it is, compared to just spamming something else until the skill procs. Veteran Sorcs note to beginners that they should keep Hardened Ward on the same bar as Frags, so that if you are on the defensive, you can just keep spamming Ward until Frag procs and then instantly retaliate with a frag to the face and CC your foe. You then have a chance to either Execute, or Bolt away to rebuild your defenses and resources and stack all your shields once more.
Crystal frags is an amazing skill. It hits hard, offers real CC has synergy with both offensive and defensive play and with Sorc passives, and when it procs can be cast as an instant for reduced cost and increased effect. And it's not like the proc chance is particularly low or anything. It only takes 3 casts to get a crystal proc going on average.
Compared to all that, Dark Flare fails miserable. It's slow as hell, has a lengthy cast time, it's obvious as hell, leaving the target with ample time to put up defenses (casting shields, or a reflect ability, or just dodging away) and it's only really useful for offense. What this skill needs is more utility, and ease of use.
As a single target DPS skill it's never more desirable to slot than Radiant Oppression. Even if you slot iust to use against PVE bosses, you would still slot Radiant Oppression as well. Radiant is an amazing skill - it's powerful and comes with ton of utility. And it also hits fairly reliably and can't be reflected or even dodged.
We have a limited bar of skills, and we need to think carefully what we slot and why and what utility it brings with itself. Radiant is a very powerful execute, possibly the strongest in the game. It also has the potential to do obscene amount of damage. However the damage portion of the skill is just one part of it's utility, it does so much more than just kill targets. What it does, is work like a marker light. It's a giant finger of light pointing at a target and telling everyone in your team to kill it. Now!
In a game with powerful burst heals, it serves as a constant grinding finisher just waiting for you to dip into execute range, to be a fraction of a second late with a self heal. All the other players need to do is to get the target to less than 30% and the Radiant will most likely finish the target with it's next tick.
Even when it is hitting a target at full health, it still applies a constant distracting pressure. And many a times you can disrupt an archer spamming Snipe on the parapets by hitting them with Radiant. Most experienced players would rather retreat than stand in the light of Radiant Destruction. While you wont kill them with that attack you will stop them from spamming Snipe at your team, which in turn lowers their teams DPS. And if some noob chooses to stand in the beam... well all it takes is for one Snipe from your team to hit it and the Radiant will execute them for some easy AP.
It also works against tanks. When a group of players is trying to finish a particularly tough tank, you can eat away at their stamina fairly fast by just keeping the pinned down with Radiant Destruction. No stam regen while blocking after all.
It also follows the target no matter where they go. It keeps the group aware where the target is going. A common tactic in ESO is to suddenly reverse your movement vector and maybe dodge roll or bolt escape through your pursuers. But the Radiant beam keeps locked on the target telling everyone where they went, thus making the tactic less reliable.
It's also really good at lighting up those sneaky Nightblades. When I spot a Nightblade skulking about, I just light them up with Radiant thus preventing them frpm disappearing again and alerting my team mates to their presence, leading most of the time to a dead Nightblade.
All in all, Radiant Destruction is so much more versatile and useful skill that there is no reason to slot Dark Flare instead of it. It also plays well in combos - Many a times I have killed a squishy target, like a Nightblade that failed to gank, by using Degeneration to get Major Sorcery and the Empowerment buff, then hitting them with Meteor (which is prepped and ready more often than not due to its relatively low cost) and then starting Radiant Oppression as soon as the Meteor is on it's way. Radiant prevents them from vanishing and then the Empowered Meteor hits putting them into execute range and the next radiant tick finishes them off. That is not something I could reliably achieve with Dark Flare. It's just too slow and cumbersome to use in actual combat.
So first of all, keep the damage as is, no need to buff it more. The game does not need more high swinging attacks that crit for insane amounts of damage with spell power buffs. That road only leads to QQ on the forums about OP Templars.
Instead of the damage buff, give the skill a new animation. Instead of launching it in the air with a high arc, let it fly straight towards the target. Just copy the basic parameters from Crystal Frag skill. Projectile speed, cast time, flight trajectory. Just replace the hand waving and projectile with new graphics. That takes care of it's obvious and clunky nature to cast.
AS for utility, give it a proc chance for something. It doesn't have to be an instant cast like Frags. Perhaps it could proc spontaneous damage shields when damaged or something. Just give it more synergy and utility. It will still be hard pressed to be as useful as Radiant, but giving it extra ancillary features would at least force people to think what they slot and why.
I'd even give up the Empowerment ability on this skill if there was a proc chance for something more versatile. All Empowerment brings to the table is an incentive to keep spamming and spamming the same skill over and over. If you want Empowerment you can always get it from using a Mages guild skill, and that at least would mean that you'd have to come up with a combo instead of just re-spamming the same attack.
Solar barrage - I like this skill personally but haven't used it for over a year now. It just that useless. I ran with it for a long time while still leveling, but eventually gave it up since Dark Flare is much better skill. In the end, I don't use either of them. I might slot Dark Flare every now and then for giggles and stuff. But I would never choose Solar Barrage morph for any reason at all.
Just look at your data, I'm sure that if you check, no-one running a vet level Templar uses this skill. People might use it while still leveling, since they don't yet know how bad it is, or simply because they want to max out all class skills and morphs. But in actual veteran stage combat? No one uses it. At least I sometimes come across someone who is trying to get Dark Flare to work (and usually failing at that), but Solar Barrage? I can't even remember when I last saw it.
At this point it might be prudent to just remove the morph all together. It was a cool idea, but not one that really worked or even fitted the Templar skill tree anyway. And those who need that sort of AoE will always have Impulse or Steel Tornado, both of which are superior skills.
AS such, I would just replace this morph with a AoE variation of Dark Flare. Make it hit for less damage but give it a small AoE and a 6 target cap. If it hit 6 targets for 66% of damage that Dark Flare does to one target, I bet lot's of people would start slotting this a lot.
Backlash and its morphs - I never use this skill. It's far too gimmicky and gludky to use. It might have some role in PVE but since that is not my forte can't really say much about it. Apart from noting that most people. who have experience with this skill, bluntly state out that it sucks. So maybe listen to to them and do what they suggest about fixing it.
Eclipse and its morphs - This thing has never worked well. Conceptually it is reversed DK reflect with some Sorc bits thrown into the mix. The simple reason that it's easily CC breakable makes it mostly useless. I never slot it since it never works.
Having a dependable class reflect would however be a game changer. If Templars had something similar to Reflecting Scales I, and no doubt many others, would be all over that skill. But the idea of placing a reflecting bubble on target just does not work in a dynamic and fluid multiplayer environment.
Radiant Oppression - Another skill I have fairly little to say about, beyond that it works fairly well. It has been toned down from it's earlier incarnations and is in a good spot at the time. It is strong, but has it's set of drawbacks. My only real issue with is that it's perhaps the least responsive Templar skill in Cyro during lag. Many a times I have spotted a low health target and hit Radiant and ended up with my character just standing there not doing anything. I even get helpful hints on my UI that tell me to "Execute now!" And yet my character just stands there and does nothing. Then two or three seconds later he decides to fire of Radiant into nothingness. The target having moved on a long time ago and no doubt no longer in execution range either. Using Radiant during lag is really annoying.
I would also consider removing Radiant Glory and replacing it with a Stamina Morph just so that Stamplars would have a class execute. However... since stacking weapon damage is lot easier than stacking Spell Damage, I would reduce it's strength by a fair bit. How much I can't say since I do not have the raw numbers, but balancing the Stamina morph would undoubtedly take few incremental tweaks to get right.
Enduring Rays - I would replace this with something else, perhaps a straight simple +3%/+5% to Dawns Wrath damage. I mean, look for example at the Sorc Lightning skill tree - three of the four passives there increase damage the Sorc is putting out. There is a straight increase to the damage of the Lightning skills, an increase to the Sorcs Spell Damage stat, and a passive that gives a proc chance for extra damage.
So rename this as Scorching Rays and give it a small proc chance to make the enemy burn. That'd be cool. Or you could add some sort of mechanism that is tied to the number of Dawns Wrath abilities slotted perhaps and thus increase Spell Damage. Would give us a reason to slot more Dawn's wrath skills and maybe even opt to go with Nova instead of Meteor.
Prism - I suppose it's okay as is. It's different from other class passives so it's harder to accurately rate, but I find it useful. So I suppose this one is okay as is.
Illuminate - Comparable, yet slightly different, than the Minor style Buffs Sorc and DK passives give (Even though the DK one comes with an extra buff for some reason.) This one is fine as is.
Restoring Spirit - this one needs a buff. Sorcs Get a stronger version of this at lower skill level, with the caveat that it doesn't touch Ultimate, but then again, Sorcs get an even stronger version for Ultimate. Sorcs can get -5% for Stamina and Magicka skills and -10% to ultimate. So buff this one up! - I'd say -3%/ -6% would be okay. Maybe even -4%/-8% since Templar skills are fairly expensive, and would make going full heavy armor so much more viable, and Templar was after all, envisioned as being a heavy armor using class. At the moment, it's really hard to go Heavy armor as a Templar because you are so dependent on armor passives for resource management.
Restoring Light - The Support tree of the Templar class. This tree should be usable by both Stamplars and Magplars. It should give us Self Heals, Self Buffs and resource management to supplement what ever play style we choose to pursue.
Rite of Passage and its morphs - this is a useless Ultimate. Barrier, even with the nerfs is still better that this . I really can't say much about it. Maybe if it didn't make us sitting ducks it might have some use. But I don't know... I like the idea of having a Healing Ultimate, but I can't come up with any idea that would make this thing work.
Rushed Ceremony and its morphs - Add a check into this skill - If the caster is below 40% health it should automatically target the caster. A dead caster heals no one. This simple change would make the skill an actual self heal.
Honor the Dead - No changes needed - as long as the self heal clause form the base skill would carry on to the morph.
Breath of life - Oh dear... this is going to be a long entry...
Okay, on a certain principal level, I agree that this skill needs to be toned down. However, the way ZOS decided to do this is a really bad idea. All it does is remove the great utility this skill has while doing nothing to correct the actual problems it presents. It's frankly speaking a lazy cop out from the devs, and show their utter lack of willingness to actually do their job.
The issue at hand is that not only is there no real reason to opt using Honor the Dead instead of BoL, it is downright dangerous to not use BoL. Placing a self heal clause into the base skill would go a long way in balancing these two skills.
There have been several times when I have died, even while spamming BoL simply because there were other players with less health within range of the spell. A self heal that doesn't heal yourself when you are in danger is not a true self heal. With Bol you at least had three times the chance of having at least one of the heals land on you and not on other players. With Honor the Dead, and group fight situations, the chances of there being someone nearby with less health than you are just too high to even think about using Honor the Dead. Te desing should encourage people to pick Honor the Dead as a dedicated self hel and BoL as a group heal. But at the time, BoL is better choice for both. And even with the nerf, it still is.
Also note that the upcoming nerf to Bol will in no way appeases the people who are crying for nerfs to the skill. The primary heal of BoL will hit just as strong as it always has, and with the more readily available Major Mending buff for Templars, it's going to heal even more. So when a situation happens, where you have three or four DPS character swarming a solitary target, that is being supported by couple of healers from the safety of keep walls or the heart of a zerg, the DPS players will be even more frustrated by their inability to kill their solitary target.
But you know... in my view that is okay. BoL is expensive to cast. And you have no control over where the heal actually goes, so there is a certain amount off unreliability in using it. And I think that if you have a situation where 4 guys are trying to kill one target that is healed by 3 healers then yeah... they should have hard time killing that one target. If you try to gank someone who is being healed by someone up on a keep wall, then yeah - killing that target should be hard. You are basically fighting two people.
Now, having said all that I still think that BoL does need a nerf, but a nerf that serves a purpose, solidifies the actual intended use for the spell, reduces spike healing and gives both morphs clearly different profiles, and retains the utility of BoL in 4 man groups.
My suggestions is to have BoL heal 3 targets as before, but heal them all for the same amount. That way it will be clearly meant as a group panic heal, where as Honor the Dead will be a stronger single target panic heal. This creates a strong difference and a tough choice between the two morphs. (And will still give BoL an edge over Sorc Matriarch pet heals...)
If BoL is healing for, let's say 10k on primary and 5k on the secondaries, I would have it heal for 6k on all three targets. That is still a 10% nerf on total heals. Furthermore it would make heal stacking less useful. Even if you have three guys on the keep wall propping up a solitary player fighting several foes, it doesn't matter that each of the casters is generating three heals, since each caster could only target one of the heals on the player they are supporting. Thus the three healers would generate 18k of heals with all of them casting Bol, where as now, and wiht the upcoming nerf to Bol those three casters would be generating 30k of healing to the target since all the strong heals would go to the one target that is not at full health.
That would make a meaningful difference in having people support others through keep walls and rocks and trees and what not, while still keeping the classic group panic heal feature intact.
If you want to have as powerful heal as possible then you would slot Honor the Dead. But since that is only one target heal, it's not as useful in supporting others as BoL.
Consider a situation where you have two fighters supported by two healers. Casting Bol would mean that each of the fighter would get 1 strong heal and 1 weak heal, thus both would gain 15k heals. With Honor the Dead each would only get one strong heal for 10k heals. With my proposed change to Bol both would gain 12k heals. Adding a third healer would mean that with Honor the Dead, one target would get 20k heals and the other 10k heals. With the upcoming changes to BoL one target would get 25k heals and the other 20k heals. With my proposed change to Bol both would gain 18k heals.
So I at least come to the conclusion that while toning down BoL is needed, the proper way is to keep the three target nature of the spell and just make the heals similar in size and smaller than the one target heal offered by Honor the Dead. It would also make pure healers lot more squishy since Spamming BoL to save their own skin would heal themselves for significantly lower amounts. Tanks and solo players could opt to go with Honor the dead and retain that strong self preservation capability at the expense of being far worse group support healers.
Healing Ritual and its morphs - This skill has always been useless and it is still useless. The healing it offers is too slow and way too strong to be efficient. It overheals far too often, so why waste the time and Magicka casting this when you get result faster and cheaper with other options. Remove this skill and come up with some sort of general buff spell. The game has plenty of healing options already, so having yet another crappy group heal cluttering the Templar tree is pointless. You can't slot all the heals on your bars anyway. So replace this skill with something useful.
That is all I really have to say about this one. Rushed Ceremnoy is better as a panic heal, even with the nerf, and Resto Staff offers better group heals. So this is basically an open slot in the skill tree to add something new. Like a replacement for the self defense we lost, when you took Blinding Flashes away form us! Just make sure it has both Magicka and Stamina morphs.
Restoring Aura and its morph - This skill is mostly garbage except for the Repentance morph, and that is really only useful for few select builds. It is atrocious that Templars need to slot an active ability to get Resource management. I get the requirement of slotting an ability from the tree to get access to the trees passives, but the need to slot a skill that is basically a passive for all the other classes is an insult to the people playing Templars. Add furthermore, that the active effect replicates the buff you get from potions is even more inane. Templars need a real resource management passive and it is part of my proposed changes. More about that in the section dealing with Restoring Light passives.
With a real resource management passive build into the tree, slotting this ability would then become a meaningful choice. Slot it for dedicated resource management build at the expense of losing one of your active slots.
I would also change the active ability of this skill and instead of giving the same major buffs potions give, I would simply let it give the player Major Expedition for 4 seconds. Just activate this skill and sprint to safety. Templars need a source for this vital buff, and this is the place I think it would fit the best, and be of equal benefit to both Stamplars and Magplars.
Radiant Aura - As an extra ability for this morph, I would give the Templar a minor purge. Activating this ability would remove one negative effect from you. It would thus become a possible alternative for Cleansing Ritual, with the caveat that it would only purge yourself. It would certainly be a solid option for solo players.
Repentance - This skill is really good for those who have build around it. But it is fairly limited and circumstantial. I don't really use it all that much so I can't comment on it, more than that. It ca be amazingly effective when running with a large group and hitting it after having killed several opponents, but since the base skill is so crappy it still sees only limited use.
Cleansing Ritual and its morphs - This one needs a buff. Not a huge one mind you, but one that would make it better than Purge. Everyone can slot Purge so this one should be slightly better than Purge since it is a class skill. The unintended ability to cleanse incoming attacks was such a thing. But now that it's gone, this one no longer holds candle to the generic Purge.
Especially since the other reason to slot this over Purge is also gone - Healing people in its AoE used to be 30% more effective. Previously you cast this on keep wall breach and then retreated to safety while healing the people manning the breach for extra strong heals. No you just cast Rune behind the safety or the walls and heal people in the breach with your Major Mending backed heals. Since now you just get Major Mending if you stand in a Rune (which you have to for resource management) l, there is no longer any reason keep this on slotted. Efficient Purge is lot better as a group purge.
What this skill needs to be first and foremost a cleanse, not an AoE heal, and thus it needs an automatic cleanse of one bad effect from all allies in it's range when cast. Keep the synergy for an additional cleanse and heal as is.
Purifying Ritual - This is the morph everyone takes since it is so much better. If the skill had automatic purge of one effect built into the base skill then this morph would be fairly okay. Efficient Purge would still be better cleanse, but this one would come with extra healing so there would be a meaningful choice between the two.
Extended Ritual - no one in their right mind would pick this over Purifying, and since that is now less useful than just taking Efficient Purge... This one needs pretty heavy buffs to be useful. Just keep in mind that this is supposed to be a cleanse, not an AoE heal, so make the cleanse part the main component not the healing it does.
Rune focus and its morphs - This skill needs more mobility. Tying us down is not only stupid but suicidal. Make it fully mobile buff, just like similar buffs for every other class in the game! Stop forcing Templars to be sitting ducks that cast convenient target reticles for our enemies, signalling that "I'm here! Hit me! I'm the healer! I'm your first priority target! I'll even make it easy for you and wont move, so just come here and kill me already!"
If you absolutely have to keep us confined then make the following changes: Rune focus gives it's buffs to you as long as you remain in the rune. If you step outside you will lose the buffs after 8 seconds. Returning to the rune will reset the counter. Since the duration of the rune is 15 seconds that means you can cast it and keep moving. You just need to return to the circle before 8 seconds lapse, or lose the buffs. When you reenter the circle the counter resets and you get another 8 seconds of buffs from it. The maximum benefit you could get from the rune would be 23 seconds up time, if you manged to stay all that time in the rune, or returned it before the last second of it's duration ticked by.
This would limit Templars mobility to the area where you cast your Rune and would be a meaningful drawback, but would not be crippling restriction.
But this only works as long as all the benefits, including the Magicka Regen from Channeled Focus, must stay active when you leave the rune. Also switch Restoring Focus to give similar Stamina gains as Channeled Focus gives to Magicka. This would make the skill a quite desired ability to Tanks and Stamplars in general, and would provide them with an excellent Magicka dumb skill. And make Templar Tanks much more self-reliant than other Tanks. A nice class distinction if you ask me. DK tanks would still be hardier and come with better mitigation, but Templar Tanks would have better sustain.
Mending - Templars are supposed to be the best Healers. We have a healing tree in our class after all. So please let us actually be the best healers in the game. This can be done fairly simply by just Changing the Mending Passive to affect all healing, not just Restoring Light abilities. Most Templars would still use Restoring Light skills for most of their heals, but would open up interesting synergy with healing from other sources. Would also help Stamplars a bit since it would now also affect Stamina heals for Vigor and Rally.
Focused Healing - I am on a fence about the upcoming changes to this passive. As someone who uses Resto staff fairly often, even though I do not use any of its skills, the Magicka return from heavy attacks is vital to my poor resource management. So leeching Magicka with heavy attacks is normal operation for me, and thus I will be receiving the Major Mending buff fairly constantly from that.
On the other hand, if Templars were to get meaningful resource management buffs in our passives, I could ditch the Resto staff and still have access to Major Mending if I got it from casting Channeled Focus. But it would require that Templars had actual resource management passives.
The increased healing done in Cleansing Ritual circles was also a fairly nice thing. It certainly came handy in sieges while defending. I can see how in PVE it is much harder to herd your teammates into the circle, but in PVP those situations rise up naturally. No herding needed. Like when defending or taking a flag. And for those situations I would really like to have both Major Mending and the old Focused Healing buff active at the same time. But that might be tad OP.
So after lot of thought and lots of different ideas I've finally come to the conclusion that the change to Focused healing is okay, as long as you also implement meaningful resource management buffs into the Templar skill trees and thus let us finally stop relying on the Resto Staff for our Magicka regen.
Light Weaver - As it is now, it's a completely useless passive. I don't even have points allocated to it since it has no impact whatsoever on my character. Even if I use Restoring Aura, I invariably use Repentance so the 10% extra duration no longer applies. I would never under any circumstances use Healing Ritual because I am not suicidal, and even If I was... Granting 1 or 2 Ultimate to those under 60% is meaningless! It would have to grant at least 10 and 20 Ultimate to even register. The buffs for Rite of Passage are only meaningful to those who have not yet gained access to Barrier and are still stuck using a clearly inferior Ultimate. Besides the buffs this passive gives to Rite of Passage should be inbuilt to the skill as standard. Using Rite without this passive is just not feasible! And the idea that you need to have a passive in order for your Class Ultimate to be usable is fairly sickening.
Thus my suggestion is to simply remove the passive and replace it with a better one. Not like anyone will really miss this one. Just move the buffs it gives to Rite as basic qualities of the Ultimate and replace this with a better one.
My idea is to make it similar to the Sorc passive Expert Mage, but instead of damage increase it would instead give us resource increases. Kinda like the Mages Guild passive Magicka Controller but wihtout the regen buffs. My suggestion is to give us +1%/+2% Stamina and Magicka per each Templar skill slotted. With all 6 skills filled with Templar skills and 2 points in the passive we would thus get 12& increase in the stats. A major, but not an OP bonus, since we would also sacrifice a lot by having to use only Templar skills. And we would need to balance both bars with equal number of Templar skills to keep the buff constant. Every choice of using a non Templar skill would now become a significant question. You would think hard and long about what to slot and why.
Master Ritualist - This passive needs to go away. Rezzing others is far too quick as it is and there is no real drawback to dying. I know this from personal experience, since I currently run around with Kagrenacs Set and the rez buff that one gives, along with those fron CP trees and alliance wars and the Templar passive makes me an almost instant rezzing machine.
Furthermore, as a Templar I have never bought a single Grand Soul gem - the ones I find in chests and get from Enchanting crafting writs and from Rewards of the Worthy are more than enough to keep me supplied since with Master Ritualist I have a 50% chance on not using one when rezzing others. I can go rezzing all day long. With Kagre equipped I see my fellow dead team mates as alternative Magicka potions I rez them simply for the Magicka gain.
Battlefield rezzing is fine, and should be in the game, but death should mean something too, and when you manage to kill one of the enemies, they should not just pop up back up in 1 second with full health. Having passives that make rezzing easier and more efficient are also okay, but they should be universal and thus restricted to the Alliance war trees and CP passives. And that one bit of gear.
The reintroduction of Forward camps will lessen the need for battlefield rezzing. And with that in mind I find it detestable that another facet of supposedly unique Templar traits is cheapened with a consumable bit of gear.
That's why Master Ritualist needs to be replaced with something, and I would slot in it's place something useful for both Magplars and Stamplars, something the class as a whole needs desperately. A simple +5%/+10% percent increase to Stam and Mag regeneration would be a much better idea than the one we have now. And would bring our baseline resource management to comparable level with other classes.
And that about does it - this is what I would want to do with the Templar. But chances are that ZOS will not do any of that and instead just give me a reason to move on and spend my time playing something else.
Wall of text critically hits you for over 9000 damage!!!
I really really really tried to read that....it's just too long sorry. I can't read a novel here, maybe in the future try to narrow it down a little bit more.
Edit: We appreciate your feedback however.Edited by AfkNinja on February 10, 2016 11:55PM6 -
TheM0rganism✭✭✭Aedric Spears Ultimate - Radial Sweep has been a trash ultimate since launch. Adding 1 meter to the range is not going to change a damn thing. I dont want to come off as whiney, but come on. Its frustrating to see that kind of stupidity. It seems to be obvious to every player except the developers. Make it physical damage and return stamina or something like that. Stamplars need a physical damage ultimate and could use a bit more stamina sustain as well.
RADIAL SWEEP
Radius: 9 Meters
Cost: 75 Ultimate
Swing your Aedric spear around with holy vengeance, dealing 3200 Magic Damage to all nearby enemies and an additional 1600 Magic Damage every 2 seconds for 6 seconds. You also restore 15% of your maximum health per enemy hit, up to a maximum of 5 enemies.
Crescent Sweep
Enemies in a cone in front of you now receive 66% more damage from the attack, are slowed by 70% and inflicted with Major defile for its duration.
Empowering Sweep
Also reduces damage dealt to you by 10% for 20 seconds, plus an additional 5% for each enemy hit. You also restore 15% of your maximum Stamina and Magika per enemy hit, up to a maximum of 5 enemies.
Now stamplars AND tankplars have two extremely viable Ultimates from this Tree that cater to their needs.PS4 DC Stamina Templar Tank/DPS...because I ALWAYS play on hard mode
#2233 - Never Forget5 -
dodgehopper_ESO✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭@Hymzir I think you make a lot of good points. It is lucky I was on hold all this time, and actually had the opportunity to read all of that. I would say that I agree with almost everything you said except for Solar Barrage. Solar Barrage I really want to like, and I think I know how it can be done. What if the defile effect also applied to Barrage as well? This would be a great offset to Dark Flare because it can offer a near instant debuff, at the cost of needing to be in the thick of combat. I think it could use a little bit in the way of a damage boost as well, and get rid of the empower element of it. Voila, it'd be an actually interesting skill. I think so anyway.
Your points about Efficient Purge and Cleansing Ritual really hit home for me. I've been on the fence about this ability for a while because on the one hand in order to use our class passives and heal properly we're asked to use the Ritual, but on the other hand its horrible at purging compared to Efficient Purge. You can really feel the difference. Unlike Obsidian Shield as well (DK Skill) it has a longer duration Mending effect as long as you're in it, but Obsidian shield also is applying a shield to yourself and all your comrades. All in all I definitely think the element of Synergy on Cleansing Ritual really shortchanges that skill, particularly when it is clearly a class-defining skill. This is what really upsets me. All of the Templar skills, particularly the ones that are 'class defining' are fairly easy for anyone to pick up and duplicate. The only skill I can think of that can't be duplicated is Breath of Life. When I hear about people in other classes complaining about their 'defining skills' being broken, I just laugh. I actually played all 4 classes quite a lot, and while I like the theme and style and art of Templar, its definitely not my favorite based on design and playability.
On the issue of toppling charge, I know it has been said over and over now, but I really think if they could give us the Trinimac cultist aedric leap skill, that would be great. Call it the 'Golden Ambush' for lack of a better term, but at least it would work. Ambush certainly does. We need a reason to use our class skills, rather than have the feeling that we're better off loading our bars with out of class ones.US/AD - Dodge Hopper - Vet Imperial Templar | US/AD - Goj-ei-Raj - Vet Argonian Nightblade
US/AD - Arondonimo - Vet Altmer Sorcerer | US/AD - Azumarax - Vet Dunmer Dragon Knight
US/AD - Barkan al-Sheharesh - Vet Redguard Dragon Knight | US/AD - Aelus Vortavoriil - Vet Altmer Templar
US/AD - Shirari Qa'Dar - Vet Khajiit Nightblade | US/AD - Ndvari Mzunchvolenthumz - Vet Bosmer Nightblade
US/EP - Yngmar - Vet Nord Dragon Knight | US/EP - Reloth Ur Fyr - Vet Dunmer Sorcerer
US/DC - Muiredeach - Vet Breton Sorcerer | US/DC - Nachtrabe - Vet Orc Nightblade
EU/DC - Dragol gro-Unglak - Vet Orc Dragon Knight | EU/DC - Targan al-Barkan - Vet Redguard Templar
EU/DC - Wuthmir - Vet Nord Sorcerer | EU/DC - Kosh Ragotoro - Vet Khajiit Nightblade
<And plenty more>2 -
Essiaga✭✭✭✭The other half of the Healing Ritual issue is the game is moving further and further from when this skill was potentially useful. The thing everyone leaves out is that damage mitigation is DEAD in this game. When players contributed to their own survival there was the potentially time for a slower burst heal.
In the beginning of the game a good player didn't just put out xxx,xxx dps. They DPS, self healed, AND mitigated damage. Now they avoid red circles and hit the same buttons in the same way over and over. Its lame tbh. Healing is powerful enough that you don't worry about mitigation or self healing. Just your "rotation". Much of this is due to game mechanics that are scripted and therefore anticipated. The game needs to be more random and chaotic rather then "scrub, rinse, repeat." In a chaotic word of personal responsibility healing, damage, mitigation all balance them selves out and min/maxing is not possible. You can't max out put if you have to react to incoming damage, therefore builds are less one dimensional and therefore more balanced. Currently ZOS balances for min/max DPS and healing in dungeons. They're increasing healing from all non-healing classes, while not reducing other aspects of the class.
If your class didn't have mitigation in 1.6 you're never getting it. Power creep due to uncapped stats, CP, and poor design (battle spirit=ZOS stinks as balancing pve and pvp) I state over and over that templar doesn't need more dps, we need more mitigation to get us out from the constant fight to stay alive VS the BOL haters that helped to get the skill nerfed yet again but can care less if we ever get a balance because they have NO desire to play healers.
The classes that do well are those that have a means to survive. Cloak, ward, reflect, CC, Debuffs, etc. Templar simply has BOL in Class. The stam classes that excell get utility out of there classes, even if they cost magicka. Stamplar enjoys Battle Spirit shield nerf and lack luster BOL that God-like power is based on stacking of stats that don't include Stamina and health. Stam sorcs have some similar issues but simply get more from class passives and skills then the stamplar does. Streak and lightning form help. But all stam builds are the same aside from NB. There are plenty of useless morphs that can go stamina in all classes. There are also plenty of useless skill in the templar class that need balanced to provide utility and options for both magicka and stamina builds.
Balance mitigation and you'll have a MUCH easier time balancing the classes. Instead we're heading toward a more cookie cutter dps driven future. There's such a lack of diversity in this game and tanks are all but obsolete. Soon Templars healing will be too. Especially with the buffs other class continuously get to their healing while templars get nerfs and no other ability to survive.BOL should be powerful enough that Templars don't need to equip 3 class heals, and 3 resto heals, or simply go resto becaue they're class heals are inferior. Healing Ritual is a burst heal ... It stinks compared to BOL. It even stink compared to Blessing of Restoration. It's a stupid, poorly thought out skill that ZOS continues to push with insignificant buffs to it while nerfing BOL. Templars should be able to do nearly every thing the Resto staff does with out the resto staff. Why else would you have an ENTIRE tree dedicated to healing?
Yes I used HR at times. I've spammed it while a non-templar spammed healing springs in IC boss fights. That's the only way to make the skill effective as you can do NOTHING else while using the skill. It must be constantly spammed so that its pulse healing. There is no entertainment value in literally spam healing using one button due to its cast time and root. Its just plain awful and will not be used by those who want to PLAY ESO rather then watch other people play. I want to react to whats happening. I would rather my party struggle through content then to use this ability. If there were no other heal in the game I'd still not use it. Have i used the word trash yet?
BOL can be spammed, but its expensive. It's become less expensive due to power creep as well. You could not spam BOL at launch. You would be OOM in seconds. though back then mitigating damage was a thing and the templar had viable shields, Blinding Flashes, etc in addition to BOL to keep them selves up.
Using other skills also adds to the power of BOL. healing springs and Regeneration add healing over time that can be kept up to keep magaicka for when a burst heal is needed, but when its needed, its not needed when HR finally goes off. It's needed instantly. Replace the skill with something else that benefits the templar and his party members that doesn't have a cast time. NO ONE WANTS TO USE SPELLS WITH CAST TIMES. Cast times equal death. Either to the character, party, or just o the enjoyment value of the game.
In short unlimited potential is a recipe for an unbalanced game. Useless skills will not become more useful by nerfing other skills. Balance is not achieved simply by adding DPS while removing healing and mitigation.dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »PhantomSpaceCop wrote: »Razorback174 wrote: »...Some of us are just people looking to have fun in the game, in dungeons, quests, etc. Isn't balance supposed to occur in small tweaks, not heavy-handed nerfs? I'm still bitter about the stamina regen and blocking nerf that got pushed through without so much as a second thought to PUGs when IC came about. I think I recall them saying "Oh, the content is still DOABLE." Tanking=nerfed and now templar healing=nerfed. Really explains why I see "V16 DPS lfg pledge" ad infinitum.
I'd like to give them a chance to get things balanced out, but I've been here since beta and most of what I've seen is nerf after nerf after nerf. And now my V16 templar healer main, who I've healed everything from level 13 Spindle to VDSA on, looks destined to become nothing more than a liability in ANY type of content. I guess it's appropriate this expansion is called Thieves Guild.
TG. Pretty much stands for "Templar Gutting"...
/end rant
From the perspective of a wholly insignificant player but avid Templar fan, this whole thread, and following (to the best of my ability) the patch updates makes me vaguely nervous about getting to Vet levels honestly, lmao. All I read are people at those levels and beyond complaining about the Templar class and BoL and nerfs. Which makes it seem like the game gets....worse for this class SPECIFICALLY as we go up in level/skill? That's my takeaway.
For whatever it's worth, right now as a PvE and veeeery casual PvP player, I'm still having a great time playing the game. Heals and heal support is decent, punching is great, no one's yelled at me verbally yet, it's all fab. I tried out an NB toon because I heard so many awesome things about the class, and ended up deleting that build and going with another Templar, then a DK. The lack of a true heal checked me right out. I know there's a learning curve to be had with other classes, and whatever this says about the Templar class, they're the easiest to play (for me).
I will freely admit that I've only been following the issues on these Templar threads on this site for about a month 1/2, so I'm sure there are a lot of fine details I still don't have a grasp on. All I know is for now, regardless of the behind the scenes nerfing and such, I'm still loving how my Templars play and can't imagine playing any other class as efficiently (as I may think I do, lol). Plus a Templar always has a place in a fight, no matter what people who get super elitist about their classes say. An opinion, obvs.
That noted, the Templar class has the potential to be one of the most powerful classes in the game, and for whatever reason, the GMs are definitely holding out. Maybe there's some kind of stigma on the class based in ancient MMO dev lore that I have no idea about because this is only the second MMO I've ever gotten involved in? Who Knows™. Whatever the case, don't hold out, ZoS, it's okay to let the divine knights rule the world.
#NightbladesSuck (just kidding, some are alright)
Look at the very least, its a fun class to run the story content with, and you can still use it in dungeons and the like. Don't let us get you down. I actually believe that they'll eventually get around to fixing some of these core problems - they just have to.
Most of my complaints are about the templar are pvp based. Its hard for mobs to kill a templar. We do great in places like IC until another player shows up. Then we get ganked fast and wish we had some way to absorb the damage players could put out because BOL does work as well as being able to cloak out or refresh Ward, etc. I truly believe its a damage mitigation problem and its all started with 5 pc sets, buffs (brutality, etc) for ever class, removal of softcaps and miss chance, and addition of CP. Health and mitigation has no value in PVE when healers are expected and, for the most part, able to keep the party a live all by them selves. I'll continue this thought in another posting.
With CP pve is just easy. I've recently started MagNB decided not to spend my CP and to use only dropped gear and quest reward. So i don't have any set bonuses. It's a lot more challenging. Of course I'm also playing on a controller (though a PC) for the first time. I'll be taking him into PVP at some point but to be honest I don't find the desire to play ESO with the templar in the state that its in. We need something more then BOL spam to keep us alive and Battle Spirit (ZOS's lazy attempt at 'balancing' Hardened Ward in PVP) leaves the templar with out some much needed mitigation (and some damage) that would make a BOL/healing nerf easier to swallow. ZOS has been building towards dungeon damage and ignoring the effects its having in PVP.
Since i mentioned working only with drops/reward gear ... ZOS its time you make quest rewards rewarding. Give us some sets (maybe jewelry since we can't craft it) via quests so we have a reason not to grind toons to max level in Battle Leveled DLC and Cyro delves, etc.4 -
TRoclodyte✭✭✭TRoclodyte wrote: »timidobserver wrote: »timidobserver wrote: »ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »Hello everyone!
[*] Templars: We’ve been reading your feedback across the forums. We understand your frustration, and do appreciate you taking the time to let us know about your pain points. We have some additional changes going in for you in the next patch including increasing the duration of the damage reduction from Empowering Sweep, increasing the bonus to the initial hit from Crescent Sweep, and adjusting the buffs from Rune Focus to stay on you for 8 seconds after leaving the rune.
[/list]
Okay! I don't care much for empowering sweep, but if they're true to their word and ALL buffs stay on Rune Focus for the 8 seconds, I will stomach the other nerfs.....
I'LL TAKE IT!!!
Edit: If this is the best they will give us I will take it. Would still prefer a 20 second armor buff though.
I don't understand what you are" taking." The buffs granted directly by base skill Rune Focus already stay on you for 8 seconds after leaving the circle. If they apply this "buff" to the morphs it would be a massive nerf to Channeled Focus and a slight buff to Restoring Focus.
Honestly speaking, the in-game tooltip for Channeled Focus right now says that you regen Magicka while within the rune focus. The fact that you continued to receive the regen while leaving the focus was likely unintended. I was actually suprised to know that this hasn't been the case and I'm sure other Templars were, too.
So..if they are meaning to allow the morphs to last 8 seconds after leaving the rune the same as the buffs to physical and magical resistances, I am very, very happy. Sure...I would love for this to last 10-20 seconds. But compared to the first patch notes that required us to stay in the focus for the morphs, I see this as a buff. It is a really, really cheap spell. And this at least, allows a bit more mobility.
I still don't understand. The first patch notes, if you read them, were nothing but a tooltip change/clarification. Nothing mechanical changed about Channeled Focus on the pts. Compared to how Channeled Focus works on live and on the pts, you are celebrating an effective massive nerf.
I'm not sure why you don't undersand. Regen Magicka while within the rune focus means you only regen Magicka while within it, not outside it. That's what the tooltip says now. So I and every other unknowing Templar have been standing inside our foucus to regen Magicka. And we have been continually placing these down whenever we moved to a new spot.
I mean..I sorta feel stupid not knowing that I could just cast the spell and just happily run away...and get the Magicka regen ticking. Seems that I have been benefiting from it without knowing it. But I do use Rune Focus in pvp for the physical and magical resistance. And I know to run back over it after 8 seconds to pick up the buff again. And when I can't, I recast it in my new location. I would happily take a longer buff, though.
How it works on the pts and how it has worked until now is not what the Tooltip says. So I can see where many Templars see this as a nerf. But I don't think this is or was intended. So I see it as a buff. And I'm almost tempted to pick up the other Morph for group play. Gonna be a hard choice to make.
This is a picture from live. The tooltip has NEVER said that the magicka regen would not follow you out of the rune. It has always mentionned that The Effects dissipate after 8 seconds. I don't see why you would think the magicka regen is not an effect.
That aside, I don't even know if I want to ask any buffs to the templars anymore. ZOS seems too happy to keep beating that dead class. I've been playing my templar since shortly after launch, and with over 14,000 achievment points, including some achievments that I won't get again, like Emperor!, it's not true that I'll reroll another class to painfully level to VR16. Yet I just can't have fun with my templar anymore and then I see more nerfs incoming. All I do nowadays is log on, do an easy pledge to waste some enlightenment, check my sales and log off.
At this point, can templars just get a class change and stop suffering? I'd rather heal with a sorcerer or a dragonknight than keep going with my templar.
Good god. Read the tooltip. While within the rune, you also recover 120 Magicka every 0.5 seconds. The effects are referring to the physical and spell resistance. But I'm sure this is exactly why the Devs re-wrote the tooltip. To make it more clear for those who don't understand the meaning of within.
But I'm tired of talking about what was. And I'm tired of people twisting the words. Be happy with the 8 seconds for all effects that we are supposedly going to get. And keep trying to convince them to up it to 10 or even 12 seconds.
You're the one twisting the words. There's absolutely nothing in the tooltip that leads to believe that The effects don't include, in fact, all the effects. And considering that it has always granted the magicka regen for 8 seconds after leaving the rune, the tooltip is accurate.1 -
maxjapank✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭TRoclodyte wrote: »TRoclodyte wrote: »timidobserver wrote: »timidobserver wrote: »ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »Hello everyone!
[*] Templars: We’ve been reading your feedback across the forums. We understand your frustration, and do appreciate you taking the time to let us know about your pain points. We have some additional changes going in for you in the next patch including increasing the duration of the damage reduction from Empowering Sweep, increasing the bonus to the initial hit from Crescent Sweep, and adjusting the buffs from Rune Focus to stay on you for 8 seconds after leaving the rune.
[/list]
Okay! I don't care much for empowering sweep, but if they're true to their word and ALL buffs stay on Rune Focus for the 8 seconds, I will stomach the other nerfs.....
I'LL TAKE IT!!!
Edit: If this is the best they will give us I will take it. Would still prefer a 20 second armor buff though.
I don't understand what you are" taking." The buffs granted directly by base skill Rune Focus already stay on you for 8 seconds after leaving the circle. If they apply this "buff" to the morphs it would be a massive nerf to Channeled Focus and a slight buff to Restoring Focus.
Honestly speaking, the in-game tooltip for Channeled Focus right now says that you regen Magicka while within the rune focus. The fact that you continued to receive the regen while leaving the focus was likely unintended. I was actually suprised to know that this hasn't been the case and I'm sure other Templars were, too.
So..if they are meaning to allow the morphs to last 8 seconds after leaving the rune the same as the buffs to physical and magical resistances, I am very, very happy. Sure...I would love for this to last 10-20 seconds. But compared to the first patch notes that required us to stay in the focus for the morphs, I see this as a buff. It is a really, really cheap spell. And this at least, allows a bit more mobility.
I still don't understand. The first patch notes, if you read them, were nothing but a tooltip change/clarification. Nothing mechanical changed about Channeled Focus on the pts. Compared to how Channeled Focus works on live and on the pts, you are celebrating an effective massive nerf.
I'm not sure why you don't undersand. Regen Magicka while within the rune focus means you only regen Magicka while within it, not outside it. That's what the tooltip says now. So I and every other unknowing Templar have been standing inside our foucus to regen Magicka. And we have been continually placing these down whenever we moved to a new spot.
I mean..I sorta feel stupid not knowing that I could just cast the spell and just happily run away...and get the Magicka regen ticking. Seems that I have been benefiting from it without knowing it. But I do use Rune Focus in pvp for the physical and magical resistance. And I know to run back over it after 8 seconds to pick up the buff again. And when I can't, I recast it in my new location. I would happily take a longer buff, though.
How it works on the pts and how it has worked until now is not what the Tooltip says. So I can see where many Templars see this as a nerf. But I don't think this is or was intended. So I see it as a buff. And I'm almost tempted to pick up the other Morph for group play. Gonna be a hard choice to make.
This is a picture from live. The tooltip has NEVER said that the magicka regen would not follow you out of the rune. It has always mentionned that The Effects dissipate after 8 seconds. I don't see why you would think the magicka regen is not an effect.
That aside, I don't even know if I want to ask any buffs to the templars anymore. ZOS seems too happy to keep beating that dead class. I've been playing my templar since shortly after launch, and with over 14,000 achievment points, including some achievments that I won't get again, like Emperor!, it's not true that I'll reroll another class to painfully level to VR16. Yet I just can't have fun with my templar anymore and then I see more nerfs incoming. All I do nowadays is log on, do an easy pledge to waste some enlightenment, check my sales and log off.
At this point, can templars just get a class change and stop suffering? I'd rather heal with a sorcerer or a dragonknight than keep going with my templar.
Good god. Read the tooltip. While within the rune, you also recover 120 Magicka every 0.5 seconds. The effects are referring to the physical and spell resistance. But I'm sure this is exactly why the Devs re-wrote the tooltip. To make it more clear for those who don't understand the meaning of within.
But I'm tired of talking about what was. And I'm tired of people twisting the words. Be happy with the 8 seconds for all effects that we are supposedly going to get. And keep trying to convince them to up it to 10 or even 12 seconds.
You're the one twisting the words. There's absolutely nothing in the tooltip that leads to believe that The effects don't include, in fact, all the effects. And considering that it has always granted the magicka regen for 8 seconds after leaving the rune, the tooltip is accurate.
Read the tooltip for Rune Focus, the base form. It says the physical and spell resistance lasts for 8 secs after leaving the rune. Those 8 secs are for those buffs. The morph adds Magicka regen while within the rune.0 -
technohic✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭I was going to rant about the state of templar some more but I figure enough has been said.
I was going to rant about infighting between templars on completely unimportant things, but then realized that would just add to the unimportant things.
All I will say is good luck to those who stick around. If I ever play again, it will be on the back of those who keep trying, so thanks.7 -
TRoclodyte✭✭✭TRoclodyte wrote: »TRoclodyte wrote: »timidobserver wrote: »timidobserver wrote: »ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »Hello everyone!
[*] Templars: We’ve been reading your feedback across the forums. We understand your frustration, and do appreciate you taking the time to let us know about your pain points. We have some additional changes going in for you in the next patch including increasing the duration of the damage reduction from Empowering Sweep, increasing the bonus to the initial hit from Crescent Sweep, and adjusting the buffs from Rune Focus to stay on you for 8 seconds after leaving the rune.
[/list]
Okay! I don't care much for empowering sweep, but if they're true to their word and ALL buffs stay on Rune Focus for the 8 seconds, I will stomach the other nerfs.....
I'LL TAKE IT!!!
Edit: If this is the best they will give us I will take it. Would still prefer a 20 second armor buff though.
I don't understand what you are" taking." The buffs granted directly by base skill Rune Focus already stay on you for 8 seconds after leaving the circle. If they apply this "buff" to the morphs it would be a massive nerf to Channeled Focus and a slight buff to Restoring Focus.
Honestly speaking, the in-game tooltip for Channeled Focus right now says that you regen Magicka while within the rune focus. The fact that you continued to receive the regen while leaving the focus was likely unintended. I was actually suprised to know that this hasn't been the case and I'm sure other Templars were, too.
So..if they are meaning to allow the morphs to last 8 seconds after leaving the rune the same as the buffs to physical and magical resistances, I am very, very happy. Sure...I would love for this to last 10-20 seconds. But compared to the first patch notes that required us to stay in the focus for the morphs, I see this as a buff. It is a really, really cheap spell. And this at least, allows a bit more mobility.
I still don't understand. The first patch notes, if you read them, were nothing but a tooltip change/clarification. Nothing mechanical changed about Channeled Focus on the pts. Compared to how Channeled Focus works on live and on the pts, you are celebrating an effective massive nerf.
I'm not sure why you don't undersand. Regen Magicka while within the rune focus means you only regen Magicka while within it, not outside it. That's what the tooltip says now. So I and every other unknowing Templar have been standing inside our foucus to regen Magicka. And we have been continually placing these down whenever we moved to a new spot.
I mean..I sorta feel stupid not knowing that I could just cast the spell and just happily run away...and get the Magicka regen ticking. Seems that I have been benefiting from it without knowing it. But I do use Rune Focus in pvp for the physical and magical resistance. And I know to run back over it after 8 seconds to pick up the buff again. And when I can't, I recast it in my new location. I would happily take a longer buff, though.
How it works on the pts and how it has worked until now is not what the Tooltip says. So I can see where many Templars see this as a nerf. But I don't think this is or was intended. So I see it as a buff. And I'm almost tempted to pick up the other Morph for group play. Gonna be a hard choice to make.
This is a picture from live. The tooltip has NEVER said that the magicka regen would not follow you out of the rune. It has always mentionned that The Effects dissipate after 8 seconds. I don't see why you would think the magicka regen is not an effect.
That aside, I don't even know if I want to ask any buffs to the templars anymore. ZOS seems too happy to keep beating that dead class. I've been playing my templar since shortly after launch, and with over 14,000 achievment points, including some achievments that I won't get again, like Emperor!, it's not true that I'll reroll another class to painfully level to VR16. Yet I just can't have fun with my templar anymore and then I see more nerfs incoming. All I do nowadays is log on, do an easy pledge to waste some enlightenment, check my sales and log off.
At this point, can templars just get a class change and stop suffering? I'd rather heal with a sorcerer or a dragonknight than keep going with my templar.
Good god. Read the tooltip. While within the rune, you also recover 120 Magicka every 0.5 seconds. The effects are referring to the physical and spell resistance. But I'm sure this is exactly why the Devs re-wrote the tooltip. To make it more clear for those who don't understand the meaning of within.
But I'm tired of talking about what was. And I'm tired of people twisting the words. Be happy with the 8 seconds for all effects that we are supposedly going to get. And keep trying to convince them to up it to 10 or even 12 seconds.
You're the one twisting the words. There's absolutely nothing in the tooltip that leads to believe that The effects don't include, in fact, all the effects. And considering that it has always granted the magicka regen for 8 seconds after leaving the rune, the tooltip is accurate.
Read the tooltip for Rune Focus, the base form. It says the physical and spell resistance lasts for 8 secs after leaving the rune. Those 8 secs are for those buffs. The morph adds Magicka regen while within the rune.
This isn't Rune Focus, this is Channeled focus, with one more effect added to the list of effects that effectively and have always effectively followed you for 8 seconds after leaving the rune, as said by the tooltip.0 -
maxjapank✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭TRoclodyte wrote: »TRoclodyte wrote: »TRoclodyte wrote: »timidobserver wrote: »timidobserver wrote: »ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »Hello everyone!
[*] Templars: We’ve been reading your feedback across the forums. We understand your frustration, and do appreciate you taking the time to let us know about your pain points. We have some additional changes going in for you in the next patch including increasing the duration of the damage reduction from Empowering Sweep, increasing the bonus to the initial hit from Crescent Sweep, and adjusting the buffs from Rune Focus to stay on you for 8 seconds after leaving the rune.
[/list]
Okay! I don't care much for empowering sweep, but if they're true to their word and ALL buffs stay on Rune Focus for the 8 seconds, I will stomach the other nerfs.....
I'LL TAKE IT!!!
Edit: If this is the best they will give us I will take it. Would still prefer a 20 second armor buff though.
I don't understand what you are" taking." The buffs granted directly by base skill Rune Focus already stay on you for 8 seconds after leaving the circle. If they apply this "buff" to the morphs it would be a massive nerf to Channeled Focus and a slight buff to Restoring Focus.
Honestly speaking, the in-game tooltip for Channeled Focus right now says that you regen Magicka while within the rune focus. The fact that you continued to receive the regen while leaving the focus was likely unintended. I was actually suprised to know that this hasn't been the case and I'm sure other Templars were, too.
So..if they are meaning to allow the morphs to last 8 seconds after leaving the rune the same as the buffs to physical and magical resistances, I am very, very happy. Sure...I would love for this to last 10-20 seconds. But compared to the first patch notes that required us to stay in the focus for the morphs, I see this as a buff. It is a really, really cheap spell. And this at least, allows a bit more mobility.
I still don't understand. The first patch notes, if you read them, were nothing but a tooltip change/clarification. Nothing mechanical changed about Channeled Focus on the pts. Compared to how Channeled Focus works on live and on the pts, you are celebrating an effective massive nerf.
I'm not sure why you don't undersand. Regen Magicka while within the rune focus means you only regen Magicka while within it, not outside it. That's what the tooltip says now. So I and every other unknowing Templar have been standing inside our foucus to regen Magicka. And we have been continually placing these down whenever we moved to a new spot.
I mean..I sorta feel stupid not knowing that I could just cast the spell and just happily run away...and get the Magicka regen ticking. Seems that I have been benefiting from it without knowing it. But I do use Rune Focus in pvp for the physical and magical resistance. And I know to run back over it after 8 seconds to pick up the buff again. And when I can't, I recast it in my new location. I would happily take a longer buff, though.
How it works on the pts and how it has worked until now is not what the Tooltip says. So I can see where many Templars see this as a nerf. But I don't think this is or was intended. So I see it as a buff. And I'm almost tempted to pick up the other Morph for group play. Gonna be a hard choice to make.
This is a picture from live. The tooltip has NEVER said that the magicka regen would not follow you out of the rune. It has always mentionned that The Effects dissipate after 8 seconds. I don't see why you would think the magicka regen is not an effect.
That aside, I don't even know if I want to ask any buffs to the templars anymore. ZOS seems too happy to keep beating that dead class. I've been playing my templar since shortly after launch, and with over 14,000 achievment points, including some achievments that I won't get again, like Emperor!, it's not true that I'll reroll another class to painfully level to VR16. Yet I just can't have fun with my templar anymore and then I see more nerfs incoming. All I do nowadays is log on, do an easy pledge to waste some enlightenment, check my sales and log off.
At this point, can templars just get a class change and stop suffering? I'd rather heal with a sorcerer or a dragonknight than keep going with my templar.
Good god. Read the tooltip. While within the rune, you also recover 120 Magicka every 0.5 seconds. The effects are referring to the physical and spell resistance. But I'm sure this is exactly why the Devs re-wrote the tooltip. To make it more clear for those who don't understand the meaning of within.
But I'm tired of talking about what was. And I'm tired of people twisting the words. Be happy with the 8 seconds for all effects that we are supposedly going to get. And keep trying to convince them to up it to 10 or even 12 seconds.
You're the one twisting the words. There's absolutely nothing in the tooltip that leads to believe that The effects don't include, in fact, all the effects. And considering that it has always granted the magicka regen for 8 seconds after leaving the rune, the tooltip is accurate.
Read the tooltip for Rune Focus, the base form. It says the physical and spell resistance lasts for 8 secs after leaving the rune. Those 8 secs are for those buffs. The morph adds Magicka regen while within the rune.
This isn't Rune Focus, this is Channeled focus, with one more effect added to the list of effects that effectively and have always effectively followed you for 8 seconds after leaving the rune, as said by the tooltip.
I give up.1 -
Ra'Shtar✭✭✭✭✭
✭Did you guys noticed that beyond being the only class that can't self buff with Major Expedition in any way or form we are also the only class that can't self buff with Major Savagery and Major Sorcery
. Some of my favorite screenshots
My opinions and posts are mostly on a PvE setting.6 -
Essiaga✭✭✭✭Guys come on.. You are over reacting on the breath of life nerfs. It's still quite possible to heal people with the new breath of life, even if they are not that good. I use honor the dead currently on live and it's quite enough to carry any PUGs I have the misfortune to pick up in Deshaan. I'm sorry to say this, but if you cannot heal a group effectively without breath of life, it is a L2P issue. How do you think the non-templar healers manage to heal baddies?
You know the majority of people don't care about 1 less target. Its about what Templars need and didn't get and still had more nerfs. A bunch more and more failed fixes. The class isn't balanced against it self let alone the other classes.
And L2P is not at all fair when you're talking healing. Healers are expected to make up for other peoples L2P issues. It will cause issues with PUGs and more casual players ... just like no block stam regen effected PUG tanks. Tanks were hard to find. Then became even harder. Those that run with regular groups will not have much worries. Healing can be super easy when others L2P.Reorx_Holybeard wrote: »ZOS_GinaBruno wrote:Breath of Life: We understand that many of you are frustrated with this change, but we found the ability was a little too powerful as a single ability (both as a single target and AoE healing ability). We’ve been watching a lot of livestreams, and Templars appear to still be very useful using this ability in conjunction with others. This includes using Focused Healing which now grants you the Major Mending buff, or Healing Ritual which has a decreased cast time. We don’t currently have any plans to change Breath of Life beyond what’s already been done.
I was thinking about this last night and I don't really understand how reducing the number of targets from 3 to 2 does in the supposed problem of being too powerful in PVP...
I'm wondering if this has to do with the number of checks it has to do before applying the heal in pvp. Seems to be a theme of how they've been trying to improve performance.
I agree with you 100% on HtD. I'd rather use it but can't because in PVP someone else is getting the heals I need to stay alive.2 -
Hymzir✭✭✭✭✭
✭
Wall of text critically hits you for over 9000 damage!!!
I really really really tried to read that....it's just too long sorry. I can't read a novel here, maybe in the future try to narrow it down a little bit more.
Edit: We appreciate your feedback however.
It is actually the edited and condensed version. It originally had plenty more stuff included to further illustrate the disparity between Templar class passives and all the wonderful synergy the other classes have. It also took me about 10 hours to produce and many more spend in thinking about it. It went through several revisions and plenty of trimming.
As such, I did not really write it for you, my fellow Templars. We all know these issues by heart. We know what is broken about the class and we know why. But it seems ZOS has absolutely no clue, so I wanted to make it crystal clear to them as well. And that's why I wanted to include all those lengthy explanations as to why a skill is good, how the various skills interact with other skills, what actually makes a skill desirable to slot in ones bar, and why most Templars use so little Templar skills.
Ultimately though, i wrote it because I care about this game, and if I wont take a stand here and now, at the watershed moment in this games development, I would grow to regret it in the future. I hope ZOS reads it as they keep telling us, but I don't really believe they read any of our feedback. And even if they do, they certainly don't hear anything we keep telling them.
So in a way, I wrote it to make peace with myself and to make peace with the game. I have mostly given up at this point. I just can't get exited about playing ESO anymore. Templars have serious issues with resources management and lack of synergy, and playing them has become an exercise in frustration. Ir's a bother and a drag and most of the fun has been drained away. I had hoped that they would've finally reworked the class and brought us to the same level as the other classes, and make us exited about playing as Templars once more. But they didn't, not even remotely.
So yeah, I've said my piece and made my peace with the game. What ever will be, will be, and if the future is what it seems to be looking towards it from this point in time, then I will no longer be an active member of the ESO community, and so be it. I still have some content to slog through in gold regions, so maybe I will play it every now and then for an hour or two. But it certainly seems this game no longer meant for me. Too bad, it was such a good one and had so much promise, but unfortunately the devs squandered all of it.6 -
tinythinker✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭This is going to be long, really long. I have taken several hours thee past few days to put my thoughts on the Templar into words. I note that most of my suggestions come from the point of view of PVP, since that is what I do most of the time. I'm not the kind of player that enjoys repeating same content, and thus don't run daily pledges or trials. Some of my suggestions may thus not serve the PVE community, but I do believe that it is possible to serve both sides, by tuning some skills to work better in PVE while keeping others more relevant for PVP.
I have also read the many and various suggestions and ideas offered by people on the Forum, and want to say that that there are really good and inspiring ideas being proposed here. I find it rather shameful, that we, the players, can come up with so much better ideas than the people who are actually being paid to do the development work.
Furthermore, I will supply my reasoning and justification as to why I think the things I want to be changed should be changed. And what it is I am trying to achieve with those changes. This is something ZOS never does - it just changes things and never explains it's reasoning. I think this is a big mistake, and that ZOS should spend time and effort, perhaps via dev blogs or something, to explain why they are changing the things they are, and what it is they are hoping to achieve with those changes. But communication has never been something ZOS has done, at all. Even badly.
Finally, this will be my last take on this matter. I just can't afford to waste any more time and energy with a game, when it's developers keep spitting at my face. I also find it infuriating, that even with all the feedback we have provided, even though the general player base is in consensus that the Templar is the weakest class, and that it needs some major tweaks, ZOS ignores all of it, and instead just churns out utter incompetent garbage. If ZOS still refuses to hear us, the players, when we have made it so markedly clear that this crap will not fly, then so be it. I'm gonna move on, and spend my time playing something else.
Keep in mind, that for the two past years, ZOS has neglected Templars, ignored potentially 25% of their player base. We have been patient and endured, hoping that ZOS would fix these issues as they keep promising. But they never have, and the changes they came up with, pretty clearly show that they never will. So despite my lengthy post, and the suggestions that will follow, my real advice to all Templar players is to move on. Go play something else - ESO is a game that does not want us playing it. There are tons of other great games out there,, no point in trying to scrape by as a beggar in ESO.
Maybe, if they hire new devs or something and things actually change, we can check back at the end of the year to see if anything meaningful has happened. And if not, we can safely forget this game ever existed and just spend our time playing something else.
Okay with all that said and gotten out of the way let's get to business...
I am gonna go over the Templar skills one by one, each tree at a time, and note down my thoughts and suggestions on each skill. But before that, I want to try to encapsulate what it is that is actually wrong with the Templar class. And talk about two principles I think should guide the re-imagining of the class: Parity and Utility.
The issue with Templars, is not one of whether we can DPS or Tank or even one of mobility. We can do all of that, it just takes more effort to achieve result than it does with other classes. You can be fairly successful as a Templar, but it will take more effort and skill. The simple fact of the matter is that Templars are the least well designed class in the game. So fixing us will not be achieved by tweaking some underused morph a little, or giving one of our skills a boost. What we need is a sea change. A sweeping reform of the core principles of the class and it's underlining design philosophy.
So what exactly are those then? Well, in simplest terms, Templars are the anti-thesis of the Nightblade, it's polar opposite. Or at least that is how I see the Templar class. But that in itself is fairly ephemeral and meaningless. So how about thinking it terms of a square
Stand your ground Mobile
Magicka emphasis Templar Sorcerere Ranged Combat
Stamina emphasis Dragonknight NightBlade In your face fighting
Tank emphasis DPS emphasis
Now do mind, that this is bit simplistic, and does not cover all the design elements, and does not take into account the fact that you can have a Tanky Stamina based Sorcerer wielding a two handed sword. The game is after all supposed to support any build for any class in any role. The idea was that you could go against the grain and end up with something that was viable. Not perhaps the most optimal build, and more than likely something that required bit of extra effort to pull off, but still a perfectly valid choice - if it suited your personal play style. But some builds will obviously go against the core principles of their class. A ganking sneaky Templar is possible, but not the norm. And a tanky healer Nightblade is perfectly possible, but not something you'd expect. And sure Magicka DKs and Nightblades as well as Stamina based Sorcs and Templars are a thing. But I'm not talking about individual character builds, I'm talking about design principles. And the way I see it, when the game launched, both Sorc and Templar were, in my eye, more clearly aimed at using Magicka based skills, while the Nightblade and DK were designed to be using weapon skills - i.e. Stamina based abilities.
So when one looks at the Templar skills, it's obvious that we were intended to be inherently tanky, able to stand our ground and put up a fight. While at the same time we have ranged attack and support (i.e. heals) so we can serve as battle field monitors, applying damage and healing as it required. Sure, we can also go in your face with Jabs , but we do not have the same kind of damage output a Nightblade has, nor the inherent survivability that a Dragonkinight has in melee combat.
However, while that may have been the original design intent, none of that above is really true anymore. I think it was at launch (of course I do admit that this is pure speculation, since I was not part of the original design team, and thus not privy to what ever they were thinking), but all the sweeping changes and restructurings and reworking of base game concepts that have been introduced to the mix, have more or less invalidated all of that. Removal of Soft caps made hybrids pointless. CP just exaggerated the imbalance issues to a much higher degree. Various tweaks to core mechanics have made standing your ground a bad idea. And most of the new content demands high mobility, empowering those classes that have inbuilt mobility. And now even Dragonknights got their movement boost while Templars got tied down even tighter, standing still in their little circles while the other classes snipe them at leisure.
So to truly balance the classes, ZOS would need to re-balance the whole game, restructure all of the skills to match the new prevailing design of mobile burst emphasized combat, with reliable self heals for all and a way to get out of dodge when things go south. In fact, I believe, they should just take the game off line for a year and rework the mechanics into a coherent whole. A system with clear design principles and underlying philosophy. But that's not gonna happen, not when so many players are still willing to throw money at them.
But that is another matter, and not what we are here for, so no more on that issue then. Just keep in mind that that since the base premises on which these classes were originally based on, have changed so much, and so many ancillary systems have been bolted onto the wobbly core, that balancing it has become almost impossible. And in such an environment, it is not possible to fix the Templar class with just few simple tweaks.
So thus we come to a conclusion, that we should not be talking about Balance as the design principle here, but Parity. Templars need to be equal to the other classes. This can be achieved in many ways. You could try to make each class unique and different, with incomparable but equal abilities. But that is hard. And with all the changes go core play, it has become a nightmare to try to keep everything more or less on the same equal level.
Broken combinations and builds that place you well ahead or behind the curve are fairly common in the current meta of the game, and parity is becoming ever increasingly difficult to gauge between all the different elements that the game has. As such, it is time to simplify the basics: Give each class comparable, if slightly different set of baseline abilities. Each class needs an execute, each class needs resource management. Each class needs a mobility buff. Each class needs a self heal of some sort and so on.
This still leaves room for differences between the classes, but makes balancing them somewhat more feasible. There would still be a need to tweak numbers in future patches and reign in combinations that broke too far ahead of the curve, but at least it would be possible.
By coming up with a clear set of basic abilities and buffs that each class should have access to, will not only achieve Parity but would also help us achieve Utility. This concept, is one of being able to perform the various things that the meta of the game tells us we need to be able to do, in order to be competitive. The current meta of the game is one of mobility, and places emphasis on burst damage. Templars are not strong in either of these. And while you can achieve both, and you need to achieve both if you want to be competitive, it is a lot harder as a Templar. (I myself go through tons of potions just to keep up with the requirements of mobility.)
Another facet of Utility is synergy between class skills and the various builds it encourages. Some classes have more and some have less. For example - 90% of all the Sorcs I've come across have the exact same skills taking up 9 of their 12 slots. There is minor variation between all of them, but the variation is very minor. Nigntblades, on the other hand seem to come in several flavors.
Perhaps the upcoming changes, which seemed to buff underused morphs and skills will bring more build Variety for DKs, Sorcs, and Nightblades. I would not know, since i do not have extensive experience playing those classes.
I do have that as a Templar though, and one of the key things I know about Templars is that the more successful Templars invariably only slot 3 to 5 class skills. And we all slot the same skills. There are few good Templar skills supporting couple of different base builds, but for the majority of all Templar builds you need to go with Weapon, Guild, Alliance or Vamp/werewolf skills if you actually want to be a meaningful actor on the battlefield. And the proposed changes do not really change that at all.
There is no synergy, no real incentive to go with Templar skills. Templar passives do not encourage you to use actual Templar skills. I slot mostly Mages Guild skills since those at least give me access to Resource management passives. Another example is that lots of Templars would rather Slot Purge than Cleaning Ritual - and that is one of the better Templar skills, one that people actually use - because Alliance War Support Skills come with better passives, and Purge is also a much better group purge. (And with the efficient Purge morph, it's not even all that more expensive.)
There has to be meaningful utility in the Templar skill trees. Abilities that enable us to do the things that the meta demands from us, and meaningful synergy that foster variety of different builds.
So with these two principles in mind here are my suggestions to the various Tmeplar skills...
Aedric Spear - The warrior tree for the Templar. It should cater more to Stamplars than Magplars. As such, these skills should default to Stamina and weapon damage. Maybe also switch base damage to physical, but not sure about that one. Would need some testing to see how it works with the new CP system. I would also give every skill a Magicka morph doing magic damage for Magplars to have a chance to benefit fully from these skill. But the key thing to keep in mind is that the tree is mostly aimed at Stamplars.
Radial Sweep and its morphs - This skill needs a redisgn. Ask yourself:"Who is going to use it? For who is it designed?" It's fairly obvious that this is a tanking skill. DPS based Stamplars can always opt to go with Dawnbreaker. Just make sure the damage, and AoE, is on-par with Dawnbreaker. The key difference being that this is a 360 degree skill where as Dawnbreaker is a cone. You can increase the cost of this Ultimate to 100 to compensate for the damage and AoE increase.
Empowering Sweeps - Make sure that the defensive buff it gives is comparable to the Weapon Damage increase of Flawless Dawnbreaker, otherwise everyone will just slot that and keep ignoring this one.
Crescent sweeps - This morph should have some other cool effect. It should not try to compete with Dawnbreaker as a DPS Ultimate. The skill should be targeted for Tanks. Maybe a self heal -would certainly fit the general design principle of Templar skills, even if it is a bit lazy design.
Puncturing Sweeps and its morphs - The removal of the half a second knockback is okay. I would have kept that, since it works as an interrupt, but would've removed the automatic 5 second CC immunity it applied to the target. That was silly.
Adding a short snare is also okay as an alternative, but it really should apply on the first hit and not the last, since that would go a long way to assuage the wonky targeting this skill has. It's a fairly difficult skill to use in PVP with constantly moving targets.
Puncturing Sweeps - The nerf to healing done by this skill was uncalled for. The idea was to buff Templars, not keep them on the same level. While the occasional advantage of having Major Mending buff on while jab-spamming, will lead to increased heals, there was no need to nerf the heal.
Biting jabs - The morph needs some extra attention - perhaps give them back the 170% damage on first target. Also, instead of giving it a Major Savagery, I would give it Major Maim since crits don't work on shields anyway, and most of us have ungodly crit ratings already as is. But I defer to judgement of actual Stamplar players as to what should be done to this skill.
I'd even go so far as give this skill Major Brutality (would free a lot of Templars from relying on 2 handed weapons) since we as a class lack access to this critical buff.
Piercing Spear and its morphs - The range increase is a very good buff, now this skill might sometimes actually reach ones target. It is still a lackluster skill and way too expensive for what it does. Adding Major Breach to it would be a good start and would actually give it meaningful synergy with other skills. Ranged single target CC that gives a meaningful debuff? That sound fairly usable.
Aurora Javelin -This morph needs a complete remake, the skill has absolutely no use for a Magplar as it now stands. The damage, even at max range with the 40% extra is insignificant when compared to what kind of single target DPS you can pump out with other ranged option. Piercing Spear is supposed to be single target CC skill, so give the Magicka morph a CC upgrade and not a DPS one.
Binding Javeling - This morph was one of my fav skills before it got converted to stamina. AS a Magplar I can no longer really use it. But for Stamplars it is okay, albeit expensive option. Adding Major Breach to the base skill along with the range increase will make it a viable choice for many Stamplars.
Focused Charge and its morphs - Talking about this skill is pointless until it's working properly. The skill has been unusable for such a long time, that I have no idea how it actually stacks performance wise. So fix it first and then we can talk about what tweaks it needs in the next update.
Spear Shards and its morphs - The support skill of the Aedric Spear tree. The recent changes to the way DoTs work, and thus the decreased changes for Burning Light procs, dictate that the base damage of this skill and it's dots need to go up. 10-15% is enough. If you are going to add a red circle to make this thing even easier to avoid, you gotta do something about it's flight time. It's too slow to actually hit a moving target (which is basically everyone in PVP.)
My suggestion is to simply remove the targeting step for the spell and just have it hit where ever you are pointing your targeting reticle. I would also move the Blazing Spear damage AoE effect to the base skill. since the base skill is really weak, and the AoE damage makes it a no brainer as to which morph to pick.
As for the morphs of this skill... well one supports Stamina players and the other Magicka Players. Give Magicka support to Stamplars and Stamina support for Magplars and make the thing work the same for both in all other respects. That way it would still be a CC skill that does some AoE damage, but is mostly meant to support your group members and not yourself.
Sun shield and its morphs - This needs two things 1. Increase in its up time, 6 seconds is a joke. 2. a major power increase in Cyrodiil! The skill has been rendered so useless, that beyond that it is quite hard to give meaningful feedback.
Fix the first by giving it at least 12 second up time (along with a toned down SFX - the current is too distracting) Fix the second issue by exempting it from Battle Spirit.
Shields in general need a serious make over. Maybe having them all tied to Health would be a good first move and making them crittable a decent second step. But anyway, until this skill becomes even remotely useful in Cyrodiil, it is impossible to give meaningful feedback on it's performance.
Piercing Spears - Basically a good passive, except for the fact that criticals are useless against shields, and thus this skill is useless fairly often. But to really fix it you'd need to make shields crittable.
Spear wall - This one should be a blanket buff to all blockin not just melee attacks. As it stands now, it's simply too weak a passive when compared to other passives. I mean do you really think this is as good as similar level defensive passives for other classes? DK Burning Heart - Increase healing by 6%/12% while Draconic ability is activated. Which is basically always since the Draconic defense buff has a duration of 20 seconds. Or the Sorc passive Blood Magic which heals for 4%/8% max health when hitting a foe with Dark Magic abilities - i.e. crystal Frags. And Nightblades have Shadow barrier that gives them huge defense buffs for spamming one of their most spammed attacks (at least according to death reports) i.e. Surprise Attack.
So giving Templars added block against melee attacks at similar skill ranks is laughable. If this passive affected all attacks, it would at least give us some use in blocking all those Snipes bow users target us with as as we are sitting in our self provided targeting reticles...
Burning Light - this thing needs to proc on shields. I'd also look at the cool down it has, but would need more detailed numbers to say anything meaningful about that. But based on what people who have done such analysis have posted, a tweak might be in order here. In any case, since the damage of Aedric spear tree abilities has been balanced with this proc in mind, it is imperative that we actually get that proc in actual combat. Far too often we fight a shielded foe and lose a major source of our expected damage output.
Balanced Warrior - This is the biggest and most important change in the whole tree. This thing needs to add the same amount to Spell Damage that it adds to Weapon Damage. Just doing this would go a long way to rectifying the fact that Magplar DPS is behind other Magicka classes. There is no need to give Dark Flare a damage boost in order to give Templars more DPS. Giving us more Spell Damage would do it on it's own, and would give us some parity with other Magicka based Classes. The Spell resistance this adds is insignificant and can be removed for all I care, as long as we get the Spell Damage buff.
Dawn's wrath - The Magplars primary attack tree. As such, it should cater mostly to Magicka users. A few Stamina morphs are okay, but not necessary for all skills, since Stamina users have a wide variety of weapon skills to draw on for offense. But for the Magicka Templar, this tree is it.
Nova - What this skill needed was for a reason to slot it over Meteor, not an extra buff to its group play synergy. My suggestion is to lower its cost to 200 and give us a passive that gives us an extra benefit for having it slotted. Meteor is superior to Nova in almost all ways. It's cheaper, yet hits hard, has nice ancillary effects and comes with passives that boost Max Magicka and Magicka regen. In the proposed changes it no longer can't be reflected making it even more attractive choice. Those are some massive advantages over Nova, so for Nova to compete, it needs to have similar features.
Sun fire and its morphs - The Basic ranged attack of the Templar. Too bad it sucks. Now I know some people like the DoT aspect of this skill, but personally I detest it. I see no use for it. It's slow and inefficient way to deal damage and in PVP and it often just gets purged. I'd be happy to have a dot if I had couple of more ability slots to fill, but on the fairly limited bars ESO has, I simply don't have room for such a weak and inefficient ability. Due to the fast paced combat of ESO, burst damage emphasis, and animation cancelling, I can out DPS this skill with simple Crushing Shock Light attacks spam. Adding Sunfire into the rotation will not make a meaningful difference and requires me to waste an extra slot that could have been filled with something more useful- The only thing the dot is useful for is against PVE Bosses and even in those cases, I'd rather just go with constant Dark Flare Spam than waste a slot for this skill.
I am aware, that there are some players who like to run with DoT builds, and want to have long DoTs. But this is the basic ranged attack of the Templar, and the meta of the game requires for such an ability to be spammable. As a DoT. it's inherently unspammable. At the moment it fails it's role as a main attack since 2/3 of it's damage comes form the DoT. As such I am much better served by slotting Force Shock and doing light attack weaves. Those attacks are unpurgeable, give constant damage wit instant flight time. Slotting DoT with a slow projectile to be used every three rotations of your main attack combo would be a reasonable choice if we had 8 or 9 slots on each bar, but in this game, we simply do not have the luxury of slotting a skill we use every three rotations. Especially one as weak as this.
Whet I would do is to amp the initial damage by a considerable amount. The ideal ratio is 2/3rds on initial hit 1/3 as a DoT. Make the DoT a short and sweet and efficient 4 seconds. Thus purging it would be a tough choice for the defender too - to purge would require plenty of resources, and would only avoid third of the damage. At the moment, purging it is the obvious choice. You avoid two thirds of the damage by doing so.
The Major prophecy buff this skill gives is a cool extra, but far too often a meaningless one. For PVP the same is provided by just slotting Mage Light, no activation needed, and slotting it is required protection against gankers anyway. You also gave the DK skill Inferno crit buff bonuses just by having it slotted. Why not do the same for Sunfire? Then I would have a reason to slot it over Mage Light in PVE and work its DoT into my rotation.
Or better yet, replace this one with Major Sorcery. It's a crucial skill in the current meta and one that Templars have no class access to. Giving it to the first skill of the line might be bit excessive, but giving it to one of the latter skills would be far too OP. If the buff was granted by Sunfire then slotting it would become a meaningful choice.
Reflective Light - Just keep the skill as it is in it's base form and add two ancillary projectiles for some extra group damage. It's good for gringin mobs in PVE.
Vampires bane - I would make this the same as the base skill, it would just hit a lot harder. Extending it's DoT is meaningless. It needs to hit harder. Basically the extra damage the additional projectiles of Reflective light need to be added as damage to Vampires Bane. And most of it as initial impact. 9 second DoT is utterly useless in this game.
Solar flare and its morphs - The only skill to get an straight buff in the update. Too bad it's a really bad idea. The problems with Solar Flare has never been damage. In fact many a times when this was suggested, it has been countered by ZOS on the grounds that its already the hardest hitting skill in the game. So I find it really baffling that in the end they decided to do just that.
But you were right ZOS, it hits hard enough as is, and it does not need a damage increase. When it crits as an empowered version with high Spell Power, it can one shot other players as is. Adding damage to it will not fix it and will only make for bad game play.
The only style of play the buff serves is that of ganking, and I can already see people getting themselves Cunning Alchemist gear, while running already a high Spell Power build. Then by jugging a Spell Power potion for a major increase in Spell Power along with Major Sorcery buff. All they have to do then, is to start casting Dark Flare on an unsuspecting target, and immediately recast Dark Flare when the first one is on it's way. When the second launches they then move to finishing the target with Radiant Oppression. The second Dark Flare of the combo will hit as Empowered, with the Cunning Alchemist Spell Power buff and both Minor and Major Sorcery buffs. And if it crits, which is most of the time, since most DPS builds crit more often than not, that second one is going to hit for ridiculous amounts of damage. And after having cast those two Dark Flares the target is finished with Radiant Oppression. It too will be Empowered, and you will have Cunning Alchemist Spell Power Buff, Both minor And major Sorcery Buffs, and most likely the high Magicka Buff from Radiant, and the target is most certainly in execute range. And even if they immediately start to self heal, the Major Defile from Dark Flare will make that difficult as well. There is very little you can do to survive that kind of spike damage. I guarantee that we will be seeing people crying for nerfing OP Templars on the forums.
The problem with this scenario for the Templar is, of course, the fact that they still have no mobility or meaningful stealth. Perhaps by going vampire they can work an escape system into their bar and happily gank away. 'Cause if the combo fails, and the target manages to dodge in time, the Templar is screwed. But if it does connect... I really cannot see any way anyone would survive that. The second dark flare, if it crits, would hit for well over 20k damage alone. And that is not what the game needs - introducing even more ridiculous damage spikes. And it will not fix the real issues the skill has.
The problem with Dark Flare and the reason why so few slot it, is not damage. It is utility and ease of use. Compared to the Sorc counter Part Crystal Fragment, Dark Flare is clearly the inferior skill. The instant proc chance of Frags is crazy good. There is even a forum thread "What do you do when you catch your DPS hard casting Crystak Frags..." Everyone knows how bad idea that is, and how inefficient it is, compared to just spamming something else until the skill procs. Veteran Sorcs note to beginners that they should keep Hardened Ward on the same bar as Frags, so that if you are on the defensive, you can just keep spamming Ward until Frag procs and then instantly retaliate with a frag to the face and CC your foe. You then have a chance to either Execute, or Bolt away to rebuild your defenses and resources and stack all your shields once more.
Crystal frags is an amazing skill. It hits hard, offers real CC has synergy with both offensive and defensive play and with Sorc passives, and when it procs can be cast as an instant for reduced cost and increased effect. And it's not like the proc chance is particularly low or anything. It only takes 3 casts to get a crystal proc going on average.
Compared to all that, Dark Flare fails miserable. It's slow as hell, has a lengthy cast time, it's obvious as hell, leaving the target with ample time to put up defenses (casting shields, or a reflect ability, or just dodging away) and it's only really useful for offense. What this skill needs is more utility, and ease of use.
As a single target DPS skill it's never more desirable to slot than Radiant Oppression. Even if you slot iust to use against PVE bosses, you would still slot Radiant Oppression as well. Radiant is an amazing skill - it's powerful and comes with ton of utility. And it also hits fairly reliably and can't be reflected or even dodged.
We have a limited bar of skills, and we need to think carefully what we slot and why and what utility it brings with itself. Radiant is a very powerful execute, possibly the strongest in the game. It also has the potential to do obscene amount of damage. However the damage portion of the skill is just one part of it's utility, it does so much more than just kill targets. What it does, is work like a marker light. It's a giant finger of light pointing at a target and telling everyone in your team to kill it. Now!
In a game with powerful burst heals, it serves as a constant grinding finisher just waiting for you to dip into execute range, to be a fraction of a second late with a self heal. All the other players need to do is to get the target to less than 30% and the Radiant will most likely finish the target with it's next tick.
Even when it is hitting a target at full health, it still applies a constant distracting pressure. And many a times you can disrupt an archer spamming Snipe on the parapets by hitting them with Radiant. Most experienced players would rather retreat than stand in the light of Radiant Destruction. While you wont kill them with that attack you will stop them from spamming Snipe at your team, which in turn lowers their teams DPS. And if some noob chooses to stand in the beam... well all it takes is for one Snipe from your team to hit it and the Radiant will execute them for some easy AP.
It also works against tanks. When a group of players is trying to finish a particularly tough tank, you can eat away at their stamina fairly fast by just keeping the pinned down with Radiant Destruction. No stam regen while blocking after all.
It also follows the target no matter where they go. It keeps the group aware where the target is going. A common tactic in ESO is to suddenly reverse your movement vector and maybe dodge roll or bolt escape through your pursuers. But the Radiant beam keeps locked on the target telling everyone where they went, thus making the tactic less reliable.
It's also really good at lighting up those sneaky Nightblades. When I spot a Nightblade skulking about, I just light them up with Radiant thus preventing them frpm disappearing again and alerting my team mates to their presence, leading most of the time to a dead Nightblade.
All in all, Radiant Destruction is so much more versatile and useful skill that there is no reason to slot Dark Flare instead of it. It also plays well in combos - Many a times I have killed a squishy target, like a Nightblade that failed to gank, by using Degeneration to get Major Sorcery and the Empowerment buff, then hitting them with Meteor (which is prepped and ready more often than not due to its relatively low cost) and then starting Radiant Oppression as soon as the Meteor is on it's way. Radiant prevents them from vanishing and then the Empowered Meteor hits putting them into execute range and the next radiant tick finishes them off. That is not something I could reliably achieve with Dark Flare. It's just too slow and cumbersome to use in actual combat.
So first of all, keep the damage as is, no need to buff it more. The game does not need more high swinging attacks that crit for insane amounts of damage with spell power buffs. That road only leads to QQ on the forums about OP Templars.
Instead of the damage buff, give the skill a new animation. Instead of launching it in the air with a high arc, let it fly straight towards the target. Just copy the basic parameters from Crystal Frag skill. Projectile speed, cast time, flight trajectory. Just replace the hand waving and projectile with new graphics. That takes care of it's obvious and clunky nature to cast.
AS for utility, give it a proc chance for something. It doesn't have to be an instant cast like Frags. Perhaps it could proc spontaneous damage shields when damaged or something. Just give it more synergy and utility. It will still be hard pressed to be as useful as Radiant, but giving it extra ancillary features would at least force people to think what they slot and why.
I'd even give up the Empowerment ability on this skill if there was a proc chance for something more versatile. All Empowerment brings to the table is an incentive to keep spamming and spamming the same skill over and over. If you want Empowerment you can always get it from using a Mages guild skill, and that at least would mean that you'd have to come up with a combo instead of just re-spamming the same attack.
Solar barrage - I like this skill personally but haven't used it for over a year now. It just that useless. I ran with it for a long time while still leveling, but eventually gave it up since Dark Flare is much better skill. In the end, I don't use either of them. I might slot Dark Flare every now and then for giggles and stuff. But I would never choose Solar Barrage morph for any reason at all.
Just look at your data, I'm sure that if you check, no-one running a vet level Templar uses this skill. People might use it while still leveling, since they don't yet know how bad it is, or simply because they want to max out all class skills and morphs. But in actual veteran stage combat? No one uses it. At least I sometimes come across someone who is trying to get Dark Flare to work (and usually failing at that), but Solar Barrage? I can't even remember when I last saw it.
At this point it might be prudent to just remove the morph all together. It was a cool idea, but not one that really worked or even fitted the Templar skill tree anyway. And those who need that sort of AoE will always have Impulse or Steel Tornado, both of which are superior skills.
AS such, I would just replace this morph with a AoE variation of Dark Flare. Make it hit for less damage but give it a small AoE and a 6 target cap. If it hit 6 targets for 66% of damage that Dark Flare does to one target, I bet lot's of people would start slotting this a lot.
Backlash and its morphs - I never use this skill. It's far too gimmicky and gludky to use. It might have some role in PVE but since that is not my forte can't really say much about it. Apart from noting that most people. who have experience with this skill, bluntly state out that it sucks. So maybe listen to to them and do what they suggest about fixing it.
Eclipse and its morphs - This thing has never worked well. Conceptually it is reversed DK reflect with some Sorc bits thrown into the mix. The simple reason that it's easily CC breakable makes it mostly useless. I never slot it since it never works.
Having a dependable class reflect would however be a game changer. If Templars had something similar to Reflecting Scales I, and no doubt many others, would be all over that skill. But the idea of placing a reflecting bubble on target just does not work in a dynamic and fluid multiplayer environment.
Radiant Oppression - Another skill I have fairly little to say about, beyond that it works fairly well. It has been toned down from it's earlier incarnations and is in a good spot at the time. It is strong, but has it's set of drawbacks. My only real issue with is that it's perhaps the least responsive Templar skill in Cyro during lag. Many a times I have spotted a low health target and hit Radiant and ended up with my character just standing there not doing anything. I even get helpful hints on my UI that tell me to "Execute now!" And yet my character just stands there and does nothing. Then two or three seconds later he decides to fire of Radiant into nothingness. The target having moved on a long time ago and no doubt no longer in execution range either. Using Radiant during lag is really annoying.
I would also consider removing Radiant Glory and replacing it with a Stamina Morph just so that Stamplars would have a class execute. However... since stacking weapon damage is lot easier than stacking Spell Damage, I would reduce it's strength by a fair bit. How much I can't say since I do not have the raw numbers, but balancing the Stamina morph would undoubtedly take few incremental tweaks to get right.
Enduring Rays - I would replace this with something else, perhaps a straight simple +3%/+5% to Dawns Wrath damage. I mean, look for example at the Sorc Lightning skill tree - three of the four passives there increase damage the Sorc is putting out. There is a straight increase to the damage of the Lightning skills, an increase to the Sorcs Spell Damage stat, and a passive that gives a proc chance for extra damage.
So rename this as Scorching Rays and give it a small proc chance to make the enemy burn. That'd be cool. Or you could add some sort of mechanism that is tied to the number of Dawns Wrath abilities slotted perhaps and thus increase Spell Damage. Would give us a reason to slot more Dawn's wrath skills and maybe even opt to go with Nova instead of Meteor.
Prism - I suppose it's okay as is. It's different from other class passives so it's harder to accurately rate, but I find it useful. So I suppose this one is okay as is.
Illuminate - Comparable, yet slightly different, than the Minor style Buffs Sorc and DK passives give (Even though the DK one comes with an extra buff for some reason.) This one is fine as is.
Restoring Spirit - this one needs a buff. Sorcs Get a stronger version of this at lower skill level, with the caveat that it doesn't touch Ultimate, but then again, Sorcs get an even stronger version for Ultimate. Sorcs can get -5% for Stamina and Magicka skills and -10% to ultimate. So buff this one up! - I'd say -3%/ -6% would be okay. Maybe even -4%/-8% since Templar skills are fairly expensive, and would make going full heavy armor so much more viable, and Templar was after all, envisioned as being a heavy armor using class. At the moment, it's really hard to go Heavy armor as a Templar because you are so dependent on armor passives for resource management.
Restoring Light - The Support tree of the Templar class. This tree should be usable by both Stamplars and Magplars. It should give us Self Heals, Self Buffs and resource management to supplement what ever play style we choose to pursue.
Rite of Passage and its morphs - this is a useless Ultimate. Barrier, even with the nerfs is still better that this . I really can't say much about it. Maybe if it didn't make us sitting ducks it might have some use. But I don't know... I like the idea of having a Healing Ultimate, but I can't come up with any idea that would make this thing work.
Rushed Ceremony and its morphs - Add a check into this skill - If the caster is below 40% health it should automatically target the caster. A dead caster heals no one. This simple change would make the skill an actual self heal.
Honor the Dead - No changes needed - as long as the self heal clause form the base skill would carry on to the morph.
Breath of life - Oh dear... this is going to be a long entry...
Okay, on a certain principal level, I agree that this skill needs to be toned down. However, the way ZOS decided to do this is a really bad idea. All it does is remove the great utility this skill has while doing nothing to correct the actual problems it presents. It's frankly speaking a lazy cop out from the devs, and show their utter lack of willingness to actually do their job.
The issue at hand is that not only is there no real reason to opt using Honor the Dead instead of BoL, it is downright dangerous to not use BoL. Placing a self heal clause into the base skill would go a long way in balancing these two skills.
There have been several times when I have died, even while spamming BoL simply because there were other players with less health within range of the spell. A self heal that doesn't heal yourself when you are in danger is not a true self heal. With Bol you at least had three times the chance of having at least one of the heals land on you and not on other players. With Honor the Dead, and group fight situations, the chances of there being someone nearby with less health than you are just too high to even think about using Honor the Dead. Te desing should encourage people to pick Honor the Dead as a dedicated self hel and BoL as a group heal. But at the time, BoL is better choice for both. And even with the nerf, it still is.
Also note that the upcoming nerf to Bol will in no way appeases the people who are crying for nerfs to the skill. The primary heal of BoL will hit just as strong as it always has, and with the more readily available Major Mending buff for Templars, it's going to heal even more. So when a situation happens, where you have three or four DPS character swarming a solitary target, that is being supported by couple of healers from the safety of keep walls or the heart of a zerg, the DPS players will be even more frustrated by their inability to kill their solitary target.
But you know... in my view that is okay. BoL is expensive to cast. And you have no control over where the heal actually goes, so there is a certain amount off unreliability in using it. And I think that if you have a situation where 4 guys are trying to kill one target that is healed by 3 healers then yeah... they should have hard time killing that one target. If you try to gank someone who is being healed by someone up on a keep wall, then yeah - killing that target should be hard. You are basically fighting two people.
Now, having said all that I still think that BoL does need a nerf, but a nerf that serves a purpose, solidifies the actual intended use for the spell, reduces spike healing and gives both morphs clearly different profiles, and retains the utility of BoL in 4 man groups.
My suggestions is to have BoL heal 3 targets as before, but heal them all for the same amount. That way it will be clearly meant as a group panic heal, where as Honor the Dead will be a stronger single target panic heal. This creates a strong difference and a tough choice between the two morphs. (And will still give BoL an edge over Sorc Matriarch pet heals...)
If BoL is healing for, let's say 10k on primary and 5k on the secondaries, I would have it heal for 6k on all three targets. That is still a 10% nerf on total heals. Furthermore it would make heal stacking less useful. Even if you have three guys on the keep wall propping up a solitary player fighting several foes, it doesn't matter that each of the casters is generating three heals, since each caster could only target one of the heals on the player they are supporting. Thus the three healers would generate 18k of heals with all of them casting Bol, where as now, and wiht the upcoming nerf to Bol those three casters would be generating 30k of healing to the target since all the strong heals would go to the one target that is not at full health.
That would make a meaningful difference in having people support others through keep walls and rocks and trees and what not, while still keeping the classic group panic heal feature intact.
If you want to have as powerful heal as possible then you would slot Honor the Dead. But since that is only one target heal, it's not as useful in supporting others as BoL.
Consider a situation where you have two fighters supported by two healers. Casting Bol would mean that each of the fighter would get 1 strong heal and 1 weak heal, thus both would gain 15k heals. With Honor the Dead each would only get one strong heal for 10k heals. With my proposed change to Bol both would gain 12k heals. Adding a third healer would mean that with Honor the Dead, one target would get 20k heals and the other 10k heals. With the upcoming changes to BoL one target would get 25k heals and the other 20k heals. With my proposed change to Bol both would gain 18k heals.
So I at least come to the conclusion that while toning down BoL is needed, the proper way is to keep the three target nature of the spell and just make the heals similar in size and smaller than the one target heal offered by Honor the Dead. It would also make pure healers lot more squishy since Spamming BoL to save their own skin would heal themselves for significantly lower amounts. Tanks and solo players could opt to go with Honor the dead and retain that strong self preservation capability at the expense of being far worse group support healers.
Healing Ritual and its morphs - This skill has always been useless and it is still useless. The healing it offers is too slow and way too strong to be efficient. It overheals far too often, so why waste the time and Magicka casting this when you get result faster and cheaper with other options. Remove this skill and come up with some sort of general buff spell. The game has plenty of healing options already, so having yet another crappy group heal cluttering the Templar tree is pointless. You can't slot all the heals on your bars anyway. So replace this skill with something useful.
That is all I really have to say about this one. Rushed Ceremnoy is better as a panic heal, even with the nerf, and Resto Staff offers better group heals. So this is basically an open slot in the skill tree to add something new. Like a replacement for the self defense we lost, when you took Blinding Flashes away form us! Just make sure it has both Magicka and Stamina morphs.
Restoring Aura and its morph - This skill is mostly garbage except for the Repentance morph, and that is really only useful for few select builds. It is atrocious that Templars need to slot an active ability to get Resource management. I get the requirement of slotting an ability from the tree to get access to the trees passives, but the need to slot a skill that is basically a passive for all the other classes is an insult to the people playing Templars. Add furthermore, that the active effect replicates the buff you get from potions is even more inane. Templars need a real resource management passive and it is part of my proposed changes. More about that in the section dealing with Restoring Light passives.
With a real resource management passive build into the tree, slotting this ability would then become a meaningful choice. Slot it for dedicated resource management build at the expense of losing one of your active slots.
I would also change the active ability of this skill and instead of giving the same major buffs potions give, I would simply let it give the player Major Expedition for 4 seconds. Just activate this skill and sprint to safety. Templars need a source for this vital buff, and this is the place I think it would fit the best, and be of equal benefit to both Stamplars and Magplars.
Radiant Aura - As an extra ability for this morph, I would give the Templar a minor purge. Activating this ability would remove one negative effect from you. It would thus become a possible alternative for Cleansing Ritual, with the caveat that it would only purge yourself. It would certainly be a solid option for solo players.
Repentance - This skill is really good for those who have build around it. But it is fairly limited and circumstantial. I don't really use it all that much so I can't comment on it, more than that. It ca be amazingly effective when running with a large group and hitting it after having killed several opponents, but since the base skill is so crappy it still sees only limited use.
Cleansing Ritual and its morphs - This one needs a buff. Not a huge one mind you, but one that would make it better than Purge. Everyone can slot Purge so this one should be slightly better than Purge since it is a class skill. The unintended ability to cleanse incoming attacks was such a thing. But now that it's gone, this one no longer holds candle to the generic Purge.
Especially since the other reason to slot this over Purge is also gone - Healing people in its AoE used to be 30% more effective. Previously you cast this on keep wall breach and then retreated to safety while healing the people manning the breach for extra strong heals. No you just cast Rune behind the safety or the walls and heal people in the breach with your Major Mending backed heals. Since now you just get Major Mending if you stand in a Rune (which you have to for resource management) l, there is no longer any reason keep this on slotted. Efficient Purge is lot better as a group purge.
What this skill needs to be first and foremost a cleanse, not an AoE heal, and thus it needs an automatic cleanse of one bad effect from all allies in it's range when cast. Keep the synergy for an additional cleanse and heal as is.
Purifying Ritual - This is the morph everyone takes since it is so much better. If the skill had automatic purge of one effect built into the base skill then this morph would be fairly okay. Efficient Purge would still be better cleanse, but this one would come with extra healing so there would be a meaningful choice between the two.
Extended Ritual - no one in their right mind would pick this over Purifying, and since that is now less useful than just taking Efficient Purge... This one needs pretty heavy buffs to be useful. Just keep in mind that this is supposed to be a cleanse, not an AoE heal, so make the cleanse part the main component not the healing it does.
Rune focus and its morphs - This skill needs more mobility. Tying us down is not only stupid but suicidal. Make it fully mobile buff, just like similar buffs for every other class in the game! Stop forcing Templars to be sitting ducks that cast convenient target reticles for our enemies, signalling that "I'm here! Hit me! I'm the healer! I'm your first priority target! I'll even make it easy for you and wont move, so just come here and kill me already!"
If you absolutely have to keep us confined then make the following changes: Rune focus gives it's buffs to you as long as you remain in the rune. If you step outside you will lose the buffs after 8 seconds. Returning to the rune will reset the counter. Since the duration of the rune is 15 seconds that means you can cast it and keep moving. You just need to return to the circle before 8 seconds lapse, or lose the buffs. When you reenter the circle the counter resets and you get another 8 seconds of buffs from it. The maximum benefit you could get from the rune would be 23 seconds up time, if you manged to stay all that time in the rune, or returned it before the last second of it's duration ticked by.
This would limit Templars mobility to the area where you cast your Rune and would be a meaningful drawback, but would not be crippling restriction.
But this only works as long as all the benefits, including the Magicka Regen from Channeled Focus, must stay active when you leave the rune. Also switch Restoring Focus to give similar Stamina gains as Channeled Focus gives to Magicka. This would make the skill a quite desired ability to Tanks and Stamplars in general, and would provide them with an excellent Magicka dumb skill. And make Templar Tanks much more self-reliant than other Tanks. A nice class distinction if you ask me. DK tanks would still be hardier and come with better mitigation, but Templar Tanks would have better sustain.
Mending - Templars are supposed to be the best Healers. We have a healing tree in our class after all. So please let us actually be the best healers in the game. This can be done fairly simply by just Changing the Mending Passive to affect all healing, not just Restoring Light abilities. Most Templars would still use Restoring Light skills for most of their heals, but would open up interesting synergy with healing from other sources. Would also help Stamplars a bit since it would now also affect Stamina heals for Vigor and Rally.
Focused Healing - I am on a fence about the upcoming changes to this passive. As someone who uses Resto staff fairly often, even though I do not use any of its skills, the Magicka return from heavy attacks is vital to my poor resource management. So leeching Magicka with heavy attacks is normal operation for me, and thus I will be receiving the Major Mending buff fairly constantly from that.
On the other hand, if Templars were to get meaningful resource management buffs in our passives, I could ditch the Resto staff and still have access to Major Mending if I got it from casting Channeled Focus. But it would require that Templars had actual resource management passives.
The increased healing done in Cleansing Ritual circles was also a fairly nice thing. It certainly came handy in sieges while defending. I can see how in PVE it is much harder to herd your teammates into the circle, but in PVP those situations rise up naturally. No herding needed. Like when defending or taking a flag. And for those situations I would really like to have both Major Mending and the old Focused Healing buff active at the same time. But that might be tad OP.
So after lot of thought and lots of different ideas I've finally come to the conclusion that the change to Focused healing is okay, as long as you also implement meaningful resource management buffs into the Templar skill trees and thus let us finally stop relying on the Resto Staff for our Magicka regen.
Light Weaver - As it is now, it's a completely useless passive. I don't even have points allocated to it since it has no impact whatsoever on my character. Even if I use Restoring Aura, I invariably use Repentance so the 10% extra duration no longer applies. I would never under any circumstances use Healing Ritual because I am not suicidal, and even If I was... Granting 1 or 2 Ultimate to those under 60% is meaningless! It would have to grant at least 10 and 20 Ultimate to even register. The buffs for Rite of Passage are only meaningful to those who have not yet gained access to Barrier and are still stuck using a clearly inferior Ultimate. Besides the buffs this passive gives to Rite of Passage should be inbuilt to the skill as standard. Using Rite without this passive is just not feasible! And the idea that you need to have a passive in order for your Class Ultimate to be usable is fairly sickening.
Thus my suggestion is to simply remove the passive and replace it with a better one. Not like anyone will really miss this one. Just move the buffs it gives to Rite as basic qualities of the Ultimate and replace this with a better one.
My idea is to make it similar to the Sorc passive Expert Mage, but instead of damage increase it would instead give us resource increases. Kinda like the Mages Guild passive Magicka Controller but wihtout the regen buffs. My suggestion is to give us +1%/+2% Stamina and Magicka per each Templar skill slotted. With all 6 skills filled with Templar skills and 2 points in the passive we would thus get 12& increase in the stats. A major, but not an OP bonus, since we would also sacrifice a lot by having to use only Templar skills. And we would need to balance both bars with equal number of Templar skills to keep the buff constant. Every choice of using a non Templar skill would now become a significant question. You would think hard and long about what to slot and why.
Master Ritualist - This passive needs to go away. Rezzing others is far too quick as it is and there is no real drawback to dying. I know this from personal experience, since I currently run around with Kagrenacs Set and the rez buff that one gives, along with those fron CP trees and alliance wars and the Templar passive makes me an almost instant rezzing machine.
Furthermore, as a Templar I have never bought a single Grand Soul gem - the ones I find in chests and get from Enchanting crafting writs and from Rewards of the Worthy are more than enough to keep me supplied since with Master Ritualist I have a 50% chance on not using one when rezzing others. I can go rezzing all day long. With Kagre equipped I see my fellow dead team mates as alternative Magicka potions I rez them simply for the Magicka gain.
Battlefield rezzing is fine, and should be in the game, but death should mean something too, and when you manage to kill one of the enemies, they should not just pop up back up in 1 second with full health. Having passives that make rezzing easier and more efficient are also okay, but they should be universal and thus restricted to the Alliance war trees and CP passives. And that one bit of gear.
The reintroduction of Forward camps will lessen the need for battlefield rezzing. And with that in mind I find it detestable that another facet of supposedly unique Templar traits is cheapened with a consumable bit of gear.
That's why Master Ritualist needs to be replaced with something, and I would slot in it's place something useful for both Magplars and Stamplars, something the class as a whole needs desperately. A simple +5%/+10% percent increase to Stam and Mag regeneration would be a much better idea than the one we have now. And would bring our baseline resource management to comparable level with other classes.
And that about does it - this is what I would want to do with the Templar. But chances are that ZOS will not do any of that and instead just give me a reason to move on and spend my time playing something else.
Wall of text critically hits you for over 9000 damage!!!
I really really really tried to read that....it's just too long sorry. I can't read a novel here, maybe in the future try to narrow it down a little bit more.
Edit: We appreciate your feedback however.
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Hymzir✭✭✭✭✭
✭dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »@Hymzir I think you make a lot of good points. It is lucky I was on hold all this time, and actually had the opportunity to read all of that. I would say that I agree with almost everything you said except for Solar Barrage. Solar Barrage I really want to like, and I think I know how it can be done. What if the defile effect also applied to Barrage as well?
Cool, thanks for reading. I like Solar barrage too - I started out as a Heavy armored Magicka/Stamina Tank hybrid wielding Sword and Shield and ended up being mostly DPS based Ranged Light Armor clad Staff wielder. But I did use Solar Barrage for a long time, but in the end, it was so obvious how useless it was, that eventually I switched to Dark Flare. That at least was somewhat useful in PVE. My suggestion to remove it and replace it with an AoE morph of Dark Flare is mostly based on the fact that it's the only melee range skill in the whole of Dawns Wrath tree, and also the only real AoE in the tree. Sure Eclipse has an AoE element, but it's not really an AoE attack. Picking between the really strong single Target Dark Flare and an a reasonably hard hitting ranged AoE would be a tough choice. As it stand now, Solar barrage is obviously the inferior choice, since you will lose the option to use Dark Flare. I really hate those skills from design point of view where a morph completely changes how the base skill works.
But yeah, your suggestion would work for melee builds. I just think that effect would fit thematically better somewhere else, like maybe as a part of Biting Jabs. Would certainly fit the theme. Puncturing Sweeps heal, and Biting Jabs would Defile.Your points about Efficient Purge and Cleansing Ritual really hit home for me. I've been on the fence about this ability for a while because on the one hand in order to use our class passives and heal properly we're asked to use the Ritual, but on the other hand its horrible at purging compared to Efficient Purge. You can really feel the difference.
Yeah, should I still continue running around in Cyrodiil after Thieves Guild hits, which is really iffy as things stand, I would certainly switch to Efficient Purge, since there really is no reason for me to keep using Cleansing in group situations. However while running solo - I would still slot Cleansing since that is much better skill for solo play, which is kinda ironic since it's obviously designed as a group support skill...
Oh and for the record, my power level is indeed over 9000!1 -
AriBoh✭✭✭✭✭Somebody make a new thread, ZOS has definitely stopped reading this one.
I doubt they ever began.khele23eb17
Agreed. Whoever came up with the design should be shot in the foot and only admitted to hospital when he manages to find 3 other people willing to maim themselves the same way in order to accompany him.
ZOS_AmeliaR admin
Ultimately, any method of entering an enemy keep without breaking down the door is considered an exploit. Thanks for checking!
tinythinker
"I used to be a healer once, but then I took a Wrobel to the knee"8
