Official Feedback Thread for Templars

tinythinker

AriBoh wrote: »

Neoauspex wrote: »

Somebody make a new thread, ZOS has definitely stopped reading this one.

I doubt they ever began.

Needs more memes and quick-clip videos.

Razorback174

AriBoh wrote: »

Neoauspex wrote: »

Somebody make a new thread, ZOS has definitely stopped reading this one.

I doubt they ever began.

Agreed. What's the point of having feedback forums when they dismiss all points of criticism with "Oh, the STREAMERS can do just fine, so it's totally acceptable" response?

tinythinker

Razorback174 wrote: »

AriBoh wrote: »

Neoauspex wrote: »

Somebody make a new thread, ZOS has definitely stopped reading this one.

I doubt they ever began.

Agreed. What's the point of having feedback forums when they dismiss all points of criticism with "Oh, the STREAMERS can do just fine, so it's totally acceptable" response?

Hmmm, well, maybe we should offer punch and pie.

Essiaga

acw37162 wrote: »

Here is my Templar suggestion;

* Note is also applicable to Dragon Knights because this deals primarly with the lack of mobility.

Change one of the passives a to the following;

With and ability from this skill line slotted and per piece of medium armor equipped; gain 25/50 % snare negation and 2/4% chance per pice of medium armor equipped to Ignore 1 hard stun capped at 20 %

Result;

An already slow class ignores any snare not greater then 50%.

You gains random chance at a free CC break, give it a animation half the time of normal breakout with no resource cost.

By tying it to medium armor magica builds and heavy armor builds have to scarfice quite a bit for every piece of medium the decide to wear.

Medium armor builds, slow as molasses in January stamina Templar builds get a surviveability buff.

The complete lack of mobility this class has is balanced by freer movement in combat due to snare reduction and a random chance to get a free breakout proc.

This essientally makes us slightly harder to kill statues, a fair trade in my eyes.

Edit:

Give the free breakout proc it's own animations and sound for messaging and give it a 4 - 6 second internal cool down after activation. So it won't proc twice in a row if the person your fighting throws another CC four seconds later.

I think the Templar as a whole need to benefit from changes and have options in class. Though i like the concept. Many will tell you Purifying Rritual will purge yo of the snare/root. I'd like it if this ability made you immune to snares and roots while in it so you're not constantly spamming this (with BOL) to be able to move. Roots just stink in general.

Stamplars could use Immovable and evasion at the cost of stam, but Magplars have such a limited amount of stam and just as many limitations to mobility (if not more). Magicka Evasion belongs to NB. At least there's pots for immobility. A lot of magicka builds are also running Defensive Stance from S&Shield line which cost them stam since it does require pre-casting on the 1 out of x casters that Eclipse does, etc ... Stam builds have some options for expedition (Bow + roll dodge, rapid maneuvers). Magicka build has to be vamp and slot Elusive mist for a 3 second buff ... but we're going Vamp and accepting consequence of the Undaunted skill line (w/ camohunter on 99.9% of stam bars) more so then any other class due to it giving us 2 things all templars lack. Mobility and mitigation.

Magplars still have to block and dodge in addition to any stam skill they uses. Medium armor would kill cut in to magicka regen that we lack via passives. It would cut into our damage and leave us less effective in PVP over all.

Again what does a stamplar use his magicka for? They have really crappy in class options, most of which benefit with investment in magicka, i.e. BOL (THE Templar ability ...) GDB, Reflect, Cloak, Mass Hysteria, Double Take, Streak (the effected) ... these skills just work for their respective classes. Templars simply don't have skills like this. Sun Shield could be but Battle Spirit ruins that (I know GDB and Igneous are as well). Pinning the hopes and dream of the class on use of Medium armor wouldn't help tanks, or magicka builds. Class wide buffs are needed. Though if we received buffs for using Heavy and Medium armor as many have suggested I wouldn't mind so much.

Other classes DO NOT sacrifice stam for mag, or mag for stam. We want something more then BOL for everyone. I think if Sun Shield (and all health based abilities) were excluded from Battle Spirit it would go a long way towards helping both builds though it shouldn't end there. More mitigation should be added so that healing can be nerfed/balanced with out further hurting the 'healing class.'

Still can't believe there's not stam heal for the Templar. What a colossal fail by ZOS. Every stamina build is as Templar as the Stamplar with Vigor. Mending (though limited) is good.

Joy_Division

Hymzir wrote: »

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.

I know this is long, but there are a lot of good points and observations here. Hope the devs take note.

@Hymzir - suggest using spoilers and headers to lessen the wall of text appearance.

Cinbri

1.Animations and visual improvements

Friendly interface and visual effects are very helpfull and making game a little bit easier, especially since many people play without addons to increase perfomance, and since templar has less of those friendly visuals (seriously, wtf) I will post my suggestions regarding those things in this post:
Improvements:

• Blazing Spear: visual telegraphs are important part at least pvp coz as long as Cyro transfrom into large scale battles, visual effects from skills/sieges just stop loading, but telegraphs still visible and play role of markers for people to use those markers to be more adaptive on battlefield. It is nice that hostile Blazing Spear now proc red telegraph as it will help to cloaked NBs to stay away from it to not be revealed. How about add green "friendly" telegraph for ally Spear, so people will see whether they can pickup strong synnergy when visual effects will stop uploading. It may have same meaning as current Nova:
• Nova: current hostile Nova proc red telegraph so people can see it and move out of it. Current friendly Nova proc green telegraph. At first time i saw "green" Nova I ran toward it coz thought that green telegraph means it will buff me inside of Nova, however this skill not granting any buffs to ally inside of it, sometimes it is misleading people; I think green telegraph from ally Nova can be removed as red hostile telegraph will be enough. So either Spear can get same treatment as current Nova(however unlike Nova BS has utlitiy in form of synnergy for those how stay inside area of BS), or Nova can get Blazing Spear treatment.
• Spear Shards: right now animation of this skill is too slow it may looks like it has cast time. At the time when templar start casting second Spear, first one didn't land yet. It is nice to have ranged AoE but with current animation speed it is impossible to target high/medium mobile targets. Regarding removing ability to target zone for this skill: it may improve speed of this skill but i remember how terrible it was whan you was unable to target zone for tactical play, adding such option was great improvement and should not be removed. DKs Eruption on other hand is landing at same second same as revamped Daedric Tomb.
  Currently when templar choose target are of attack it starting 2nd phase of animation: currently templar throwing spear into air, after it animation end it proc next animation - of falling from sky spear.The way to fix it should be similar as new Daedric Tomb working - when templar throwing spear into air, in middle of this 1st animation, 2nd animation of spear falling from sky already should starting to proc.
  Also you can notice that on last phase of 2nd animation, 3rd animation proccing - splitting shards, that decreasing animation even more. Improving this 3rd animation may result of increasing speed of cast for miliseconds.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEgXtanFhT4
  And from this slow-mo you can see that target should be affected but still not affected by spear till 3rd animation played to an end:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPdZ31IEULc
• Blazing Shield/Radiant Ward: Right now BS is only 5m AoE however animation is hitting for entire screen like it is 10m AoE. I remember long time ago patchnotes stated that animation got little revamp to not decrease perfomance hard upon cast. I suggest to take AoE animation from Redianat Ward and implement it to BS; so it will decrease perfomance even less and will be lore-wise with actual radius os BS.
  
• Solar Barrage: this skill still very often making your char to stuck for short time upon casting it. Visually stuck looks like someone cast gapcloser on you.
• Solar Flare: animation is just too slow. With its current speed: on mid distance if you releasing SF while enemy even in the end of roll-dodge animation it visually results that enemy that ended roll already still dodging SF. So, SF animation must get speed up.
• Honor the Dead: since it have long timer(8 sec) of mana return why not to add visual effect of floating yellow essence from initial cast round caster, so people without addons would able to determine when this effect ends. DK's dragonblood always got this treatment.
• Channeled Focus: hoping that CF will still restore mana outside rune. Yet again why not to make it friendly to people without addons and add small visual effect that will symbolize mana return, so people will focus on char and not to looks behind if rune is still there or watching buff addons to see it. Sorcs Empowered Ward already got this treatment.
• Rune Focus: as it will be said below current Arnor buffs' visual effect - yellow glowing body can be overdrived by another body effects, so to not clash those buffs and prevent misleading caster i suggest to change visual effect to less heavy "smoke" glowing like new NB cloak or Steed roll passive. Both showing that char under mitigation buff and not confliciting with other visuals:
  
  Steed roll passive proc visual affect.
  Like DK Razor Armor always visible.
• Focused Healing: i personally think it should be most important visual improvement. Since FH allwoing to store major mending for 4 sec after leaving rune, it making positioning(especially for stamplars) very important especially in Cyro. It should become visual friendly to high mobile templars/stamplars, so i suggest: while major mending is on templar add visual effect of yellow glowing hands from current sorc's skill Empowered Ward that proc minor mending. This effect is easily noticeble and in Cyro high mobile stamplar can cast Rune and won't be forced to count 4 sec or search it in addons till buff expire to reapply it, he will be able to see when glowing will fade away and recast it; also this visual effect will be removed in next DLC alngside bonus that procced it, so i highly recommend not to abandon this visual, that much needed to templar. If not make it for Focused Healing you can always make it for Rune Focus to show us visually when buffs still on us after leaving focus, coz unlike hands glowing textures, current yellow body glowing texture can be overdrived by another body textures like Elude/Defensive Stance and rest of those, tho it is misleading people. This visual is not very bright to annoy caster but even on low visual settings it is easily noticeble:
  

If someone have something to add to this list, do it.
This is important part of competitive PvP gameplay, so ZOS, please don't forget about it.
@Wrobel

Jura23

ZOS you should at least increase duration of Sun Shield. Yeah, it's weak, but if it lasted 12-18 s., it would at least not be complete pain for somebody who slots it.

AOECAPS

Jura23 wrote: »

ZOS you should at least increase duration of Sun Shield. Yeah, it's weak, but if it lasted 12-18 s., it would at least not be complete pain for somebody who slots it.

Lol a 12-18second shield that is a 2k hp shield is still worthless you are just delaying the inevitable a little bit longer. It needs to be based off of max stat.period

Jura23

AOECAPS wrote: »

Jura23 wrote: »

ZOS you should at least increase duration of Sun Shield. Yeah, it's weak, but if it lasted 12-18 s., it would at least not be complete pain for somebody who slots it.

Lol a 12-18second shield that is a 2k hp shield is still worthless you are just delaying the inevitable a little bit longer. It needs to be based off of max stat.period

I didn't say duration increase would solve the problem. What I'm saying, if the duration stays 6 s., it will still be useless no matter what else they do with the skill. At least for me.

kaalmoth

Jura23 wrote: »

AOECAPS wrote: »

Jura23 wrote: »

ZOS you should at least increase duration of Sun Shield. Yeah, it's weak, but if it lasted 12-18 s., it would at least not be complete pain for somebody who slots it.

Lol a 12-18second shield that is a 2k hp shield is still worthless you are just delaying the inevitable a little bit longer. It needs to be based off of max stat.period

I didn't say duration increase would solve the problem. What I'm saying, if the duration stays 6 s., it will still be useless no matter what else they do with the skill. At least for me.

on my hp build (something over 40K) 6s is already very long (in pvp). Usually I want my blazing shield to explode as often as possible and even if I didn't want that, a shield between 7 and 8 K doesnt need a lot of hits to break anyway, so duration isn't the problem.

Idinuse

.

Hymzir wrote: »

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.

So after multiple threads mention the developers and community managers asking for constructive ideas, constructive feedback and constructive criticism in regards to Templars - here it is.

It can't be clearer and more concise than this.

I can't applaud your post enough @Hymzir. Even if I might have other ideas for some minor prettiful details, if this would be implemented - if nothing else as a trial - it would be a marvel.

Wells worthy!



I humbly suggest that the developers @Wrobel and/or representatives communicating with developers @ZOS_GinaBruno somehow initiate a multipart conversation, over PM or other means (Facebook or similar) to discuss directly with the veteran Templars, PvE and PvP expert experienced Templar players, because their visions, solutions and feedback to how to make the Templar class viable have been exemplary in this and the other threads these players are active in. Please make contact with @Joy_Division, @Hymzir, @Zinaroth, @MissBizz, @Nifty2g, @Alcast, @Soris, @Cinbri, @BalticBlues to initiate a constructive discussion, and I sincerely and deeply apologize to all brilliant and amazing players who have put time and effort into the Templar issue in this and other threads, that I miss to mention here.

Kudos to all of you.

Chelos

Idinuse wrote: »

.

Hymzir wrote: »

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.

So after multiple threads mention the developers and community managers asking for constructive ideas, constructive feedback and constructive criticism in regards to Templars - here it is.

It can't be clearer and more concise than this.

I can't applaud your post enough @Hymzir. Even if I might have other ideas for some minor prettiful details, if this would be implemented - if nothing else as a trial - it would be a marvel.

Wells worthy!



I humbly suggest that the developers @Wrobel and/or representatives communicating with developers @ZOS_GinaBruno somehow initiate a multipart conversation, over PM or other means (Facebook or similar) to discuss directly with the veteran Templars, PvE and PvP expert experienced Templar players, because their visions, solutions and feedback to how to make the Templar class viable have been exemplary in this and the other threads these players are active in. Please make contact with @Joy_Division, @Hymzir, @Zinaroth, @MissBizz, @Nifty2g, @Alcast, @Soris, @Cinbri, @BalticBlues to initiate a constructive discussion, and I sincerely and deeply apologize to all brilliant and amazing players who have put time and effort into the Templar issue in this and other threads, that I miss to mention here.

Kudos to all of you.

THIS!

Gosh! I'd never thought I'd do this one word replies including all of a message but the Templar is just my favourite class I can't help it.

Nifty2g

Idinuse wrote: »

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Hymzir wrote: »

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.

So after multiple threads mention the developers and community managers asking for constructive ideas, constructive feedback and constructive criticism in regards to Templars - here it is.

It can't be clearer and more concise than this.

I can't applaud your post enough @Hymzir. Even if I might have other ideas for some minor prettiful details, if this would be implemented - if nothing else as a trial - it would be a marvel.

Wells worthy!



I humbly suggest that the developers @Wrobel and/or representatives communicating with developers @ZOS_GinaBruno somehow initiate a multipart conversation, over PM or other means (Facebook or similar) to discuss directly with the veteran Templars, PvE and PvP expert experienced Templar players, because their visions, solutions and feedback to how to make the Templar class viable have been exemplary in this and the other threads these players are active in. Please make contact with @Joy_Division, @Hymzir, @Zinaroth, @MissBizz, @Nifty2g, @Alcast, @Soris, @Cinbri, @BalticBlues to initiate a constructive discussion, and I sincerely and deeply apologize to all brilliant and amazing players who have put time and effort into the Templar issue in this and other threads, that I miss to mention here.

Kudos to all of you.

Problem is, Zenimax right now don't tend to go back and revert changes - once a change is made they most likely keep that change

Frenkthevile

Idinuse wrote: »

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Hymzir wrote: »

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.

So after multiple threads mention the developers and community managers asking for constructive ideas, constructive feedback and constructive criticism in regards to Templars - here it is.

It can't be clearer and more concise than this.

I can't applaud your post enough @Hymzir. Even if I might have other ideas for some minor prettiful details, if this would be implemented - if nothing else as a trial - it would be a marvel.

Wells worthy!



I humbly suggest that the developers @Wrobel and/or representatives communicating with developers @ZOS_GinaBruno somehow initiate a multipart conversation, over PM or other means (Facebook or similar) to discuss directly with the veteran Templars, PvE and PvP expert experienced Templar players, because their visions, solutions and feedback to how to make the Templar class viable have been exemplary in this and the other threads these players are active in. Please make contact with @Joy_Division, @Hymzir, @Zinaroth, @MissBizz, @Nifty2g, @Alcast, @Soris, @Cinbri, @BalticBlues to initiate a constructive discussion, and I sincerely and deeply apologize to all brilliant and amazing players who have put time and effort into the Templar issue in this and other threads, that I miss to mention here.

Kudos to all of you.

thisssss

Essiaga

AOECAPS wrote: »

Jura23 wrote: »

ZOS you should at least increase duration of Sun Shield. Yeah, it's weak, but if it lasted 12-18 s., it would at least not be complete pain for somebody who slots it.

Lol a 12-18second shield that is a 2k hp shield is still worthless you are just delaying the inevitable a little bit longer. It needs to be based off of max stat.period

Shields should never be based on max stam, just as magicka shield should not exist and are the entire problem with shields. Health based shields should not be effected by Battle Spirit as heath is not a legitimate stack-able skill. Its a DPS loss and there for self balancing. Both stam and mag builds would have the option of using Sun Shield and would keep it from being OP as Hardened Ward currently is, not to mention Harness Magick.

Stamplar doesn't have a legit magicka dump and this ability could be that. Blinding Flashes could be that. As a Stand Your Ground class the templar comes up really short across the board.

Here are some skill that provide benefits while not being 100% dependent on Magicka :

NB
Mass Hysteria (CC, debuff)
Cloak (Defense, buff)
Blur (Defense, buffs)
Mark Target (buff, debuff, heal)
Grim Focus (Buffes, damage, debuff)
Agony (CC)
Siphoning Strikes (Regeneration)

DK
Spiked Armor (buff, damage)
Reflective Scales (Defense, buff)
Igneous Shields (Defense, Buff) ... Battle Spirit nerfed
Dragons Blood (Heal, buff) ... Battle Spirit nerfed
Talons (CC, debuff, damage) ... Damage effected
Molten Weapons (Buff)
Petrify (CC) ... damage effected.

Sorc
Encase (CC) ... eh
Daedric Mines (CC, heal, damage) ... Damage effected
Lightning Form (buffs, damage) ... Damage effected
Surge (buffs, heals)
Bolt Escape (Defense, CC, damage) ... Damage effected

Templar
Sun Sheild (defense, damage) ... Battle Spirit nerfed ... very few uses this skill.
Eclipse (Defensive) ...Purge-able, CC breakable, can not apply to CC immune, and limited to 1 target. Use Defensive Stance.
Restoring Aura (Regeneration) ... or just drink a pot, less regen then other class' passives ... Repentance requires corpses.
Cleansing Ritual ... (Purge, also heals...) ... heal based on Magicka. Stationary AOE. Will no long absorb projectiles.
Rune Focus ... (Buffs) ... low up time and must stand still to get all buffs.

All the Templar stamina based skills are Damage with the only exception being a Backlash morph which provides Minor Fracture, which equals more damage. No mitigation.

The bold-ed are mitigation buffs, Resolve and Ward. NB have Blur and passive which provides minor Resolve. Sorcerer's have Bound Armor providing minor Resolve (stam) or both (magicka). DK's Reflect Plates also provides Minor Ward. Rune Focus has a shorter duration EVEN if you stand stationary with in it then the others. Templar has no option for Minor Resolve or Ward. Two of the other class are also granted Major Expedition with these buffs, while our Rune Focus requires us to stand still.

Providing the mending buff while decreasing the healing on Puncturing Sweeps will just require more up keep to gain a buff rather then a nerf as a magicka Templar. Stam builds will have to cast Rune, then Vigor/Rally to benefit and still have NO inclass stam heals, from the healing class. It's hard enough with a class with so many channels and cast times, most are magicka Templar problems (PS, DF, RD, Healing Ritual, Remembrance) not to mention the wonky animations that slow the class down (Shards, Shield, Sun Fire, DF, Solar B, RD, and of course the infamous Toppling Charge ... which needs a stam morph when fixed.)

Focus is the only utility I see in the Templar class for stamina builds, but you can get it through the heavy armor skill as well, with CC immunity. The medium armor skill Evasion also provides the a Evasion buff. These two skills are more useful then skills found in class. Everything in class is completely limited to 1 target, small area, only on corpses, or requiring magicka. So why even be a Stamplar? I feel for you guys. Battle Spirit to shields hurts both builds really bad.

Stam builds have some mitigation available via armor skills and even options for Expedition. I dropped stamina in favor of magicka long ago because of these issues (as well as the dependency on 2-hander for heals, gap closer, burst damage, and execute which was the same as my stamDK, which is now also spec magicka). As you can see there's not much better options for magicka Templar. BOL is the only ability not on that list and its ALL we have, or we can go Vamp and fall prey to CamoHunter which is on 99.799% of stam builds. Both build require more from outside their class then any others to be viable in PVP.

Our best chance as Templars (stamina and magicka) to raise up will be together. No Templar left behind.

Cinbri

2.Small buffs and Improvements.

Here i wana again post list of small buffs that should cover some weak points and help to improve some skills:
1. Runcturing Sweep - once again this morph must get Surge treatment - i.e. like Surge it should be fixed and be able to heal through hitting damage shield. Right now this main templar dps spammable skill loosing most its potential vs damage shield, hitting it with morph means the same as hitting shield with unmorphed Jabs.
2. Biting Jabs - same as Puncturing Sweep, this morph has zero effectiveness vs damage shield and hitting it with morph means the same as hitting shield with unmorphed Jabs. I am not stamplar to recommend any way to fix it so stamplars lets ZOS know how to fix it.
3. Minor Protection/Restoring Focus - since RF probably won't be changed it is still will be less viable than Channeled Focus for both magplars/stamplars. Also nightblades with new change of cloak can't get to invis instantly and thus had morph that apply minor protection buff. To make Restoring Focus morph equal to CF and increase tankability of NBs a little too i suggest to increase Minor Protection buff from 8% to 12%, maybe even 15%.
4. Healing Ritual - this skill as useless as it was before, however it has 1 pros - it can be casted while negated when ground based heals not working. I can suggest only 1 change to this skill to make it viable for PvP healers - make cast uninterruptable.
5. Restoring Spirit - there is no secret that magplars/stamplars have worst sustain, such small buff as increasing this passive's numbers to 8% all reduction will help a lot.
6. Light Weaver - very weak passive that almost don't have synnergy. I suggest to revamp ult giving component and make it return ultimates only to caster(not to allies as they are mosr sustainable) upon casting Healing Ritual and Rushed Ceremony abilities so those healings won't be only 100% defensive mechanic.
7. Balanced Warrior - templar now is only class without major sorcery buff. So in addition to weapon damage it should grant spelldamage and probably same number of physical resistance.
8. Master Ritualist/Kagrenac Templars - it is most seriuos problem with templar passives right now. Stacking of set and passive allowing to res with incredible speed and using animation swap negating any chance to stop ressurection. It was probably made so coz removal of Forward Camps to allow templars take this niche, however as we know Forward Camps are coming back and i think that with camps brought back and many kagrenac templars running in Cyro, the death by itself won't mean anything and won't have any penalty. Another problem is that templar passives are hardly allow templar to self-sustain. So i suggest:

• a. Don't listen whiners that wanna make set and passive not stacking, i.e. to be sure that 1 particular set won't work with 1 particular class.
• b. Change Master Ritualist passive to restore 5% of stamina pool upon casting Restoring Light abilties. It will help templar class overall and stamplars particulary. Unlike stamina return nor magplar nor stamplar need 5% mana restore like beta passive.
  We can compare it with same passive as DK Helping Hands: stamknights mostly starting to spam Igneous Shield on low hp, thus it allowing them not to just restore stamina but casting small damage shield on them that helping them to survive this phase. With regard of templars - Restoring Light tree don't have any damage mitigation or damage redirect or damage dealing ability, but it has skils that usefull for both magplars/stamplars: Rune Focus, Cleansing Ritual; also it has healing skill, thus same as DK it will allow templars to increase their sustain upon casting supportive abilities and survive a little bit longer.
  And we need it hard coz even DKs with all their sustain passives now got speedbuff, small, but still got and we, templars, left as only class without escape/speedbuff and zero sustain passives at same time.

@Wrobel

Jura23

kaalmoth wrote: »

Jura23 wrote: »

AOECAPS wrote: »

Jura23 wrote: »

ZOS you should at least increase duration of Sun Shield. Yeah, it's weak, but if it lasted 12-18 s., it would at least not be complete pain for somebody who slots it.

Lol a 12-18second shield that is a 2k hp shield is still worthless you are just delaying the inevitable a little bit longer. It needs to be based off of max stat.period

I didn't say duration increase would solve the problem. What I'm saying, if the duration stays 6 s., it will still be useless no matter what else they do with the skill. At least for me.

on my hp build (something over 40K) 6s is already very long (in pvp). Usually I want my blazing shield to explode as often as possible and even if I didn't want that, a shield between 7 and 8 K doesnt need a lot of hits to break anyway, so duration isn't the problem.

I get it, but I still think it would be cool if they give each morph different playstyle. What if Blazing stayed at 6 s and received for example execute effect for it's dmg while Radiant would have longer duration and possibly more absorbed dmg. That would be cool I think.

Murmeltier

I read the Answers from the Devs about our Concerns, they sounds like "We understand your Frustration but we think the Changes are fine because our QA Team tested this and said all is fine". So all the Feedbacks are senseless because your QA Team decides what is ok or not? Nice, you save me a lot of Time for other "Things" in the Future. So it is Time to close my Templar and restart as a Tamer or Valkyre .

eserras7b16_ESO

I'm just going to say that ZoS would be clever if they listened to the Templars community. We've mentioned, commented, argued our skills over and over again up to a point where most of us, atleast 90% of us, has united their opinions about the class. For example: Everybody thinks we need more range on Empowering Sweeps or Everybody knows we need Balanced Warrior giving SpellPower also.

This thread is already 25 pages long, most of the people agreeing with each other.

You must make Templar competitive in PvP, and more now than ever after nerfing BoL, both magicka and stamina.

Get your imagination up, rebuild some skills, there's so many morphs and skills that templars don't use if they learned how the mechanics of ESO work.

We need a rework ZoS.

Alorier

eserras7b16_ESO wrote: »

I'm just going to say that ZoS would be clever if they listened to the Templars community. We've mentioned, commented, argued our skills over and over again up to a point where most of us, atleast 90% of us, has united their opinions about the class. For example: Everybody thinks we need more range on Empowering Sweeps or Everybody knows we need Balanced Warrior giving SpellPower also.

This thread is already 25 pages long, most of the people agreeing with each other.

You must make Templar competitive in PvP, and more now than ever after nerfing BoL, both magicka and stamina.

Get your imagination up, rebuild some skills, there's so many morphs and skills that templars don't use if they learned how the mechanics of ESO work.

We need a rework ZoS.

Couldn't Agree more

cedheimb16_ESO2

Dark Flare
The damage of dark flare sometimes does not register properly. Mobs will die with health left and the damage is not shown in the scrolling damage text.

Reproduce:
While casting, continually move and do light attacks.

Demonstration below, no addons were loaded while this was recorded:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WH885-WUuU

Sallington

I think it's about time Sun Shield and it's morphs started scaling off of Magicka and Spell Damage.

Jura23

Sallington wrote: »

I think it's about time Sun Shield and it's morphs started scaling off of Magicka and Spell Damage.

so another middle finger to stam templars?

MissBizz

Nifty2g wrote: »

Idinuse wrote: »

.

Hymzir wrote: »

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.

So after multiple threads mention the developers and community managers asking for constructive ideas, constructive feedback and constructive criticism in regards to Templars - here it is.

It can't be clearer and more concise than this.

I can't applaud your post enough @Hymzir. Even if I might have other ideas for some minor prettiful details, if this would be implemented - if nothing else as a trial - it would be a marvel.

Wells worthy!



I humbly suggest that the developers @Wrobel and/or representatives communicating with developers @ZOS_GinaBruno somehow initiate a multipart conversation, over PM or other means (Facebook or similar) to discuss directly with the veteran Templars, PvE and PvP expert experienced Templar players, because their visions, solutions and feedback to how to make the Templar class viable have been exemplary in this and the other threads these players are active in. Please make contact with @Joy_Division, @Hymzir, @Zinaroth, @MissBizz, @Nifty2g, @Alcast, @Soris, @Cinbri, @BalticBlues to initiate a constructive discussion, and I sincerely and deeply apologize to all brilliant and amazing players who have put time and effort into the Templar issue in this and other threads, that I miss to mention here.

Kudos to all of you.

Problem is, Zenimax right now don't tend to go back and revert changes - once a change is made they most likely keep that change

That was the largest quote of my forum life.

I agree. Both that I feel when Zenimax wants to be hard-headed with a skill change - they are, and that a meetup would have been a great idea. You would need people of varying playstyles and views on this. A PvP'r may likely feel different about a skill than a PvE'r, as well a top notch PvE player may have differing opinions of a fellow PvE player who maybe isn't as experienced. There are a few names are in that list that I know I'd never run a group with. Why? Other than the obvious EU/NA issue, I know a few of those folks are absolutely top notch and I'm not foolish enough to believe I'm at their skill level. Some pains from skill changes are felt far more harshly in competitive gameplay, while other skill changes are felt more harshly when players with people you don't know/new players etc.

puffy99

"top notch" players from what I have seen is 95% a function of CP, Gear and having time to play.
If you watch them they usually do the same combos over and over again. not rocket science.

put them in a room with level 1 gear and a bunch of noobs and the tables would turn for a lot of them.

Cinbri

3.Skills Overhaul

I will be short here and for first will compare DK skill(since I love DK the most after Templar) to show why dk skill so good:
Fiery Scales:
a. It is selfbuff - even with this high cost ability all he need is cast ability once, he don't need to target it and recast for each enemy. It mean when dk outnumberd it is works perfect.
b. Reflect a. - it means this ability not wasting stamina when you reflecting projectiles, thus increasing sustain
c. Reflect b. - it means this ability not just increasing survivability a lot but also deal high damage in return.
Using this example I wanted to show that multiple factors making abilities good and balanced, not just one aspect of skill.
Templar as class is lack of such abilties and thats the source of problem.
Suggestions:
1. Radiant Aura - with new dlc, PvP meta seems will change to zergbusting and small group will become more viable; with this new meta Repentance will become even more usefull morph and i don't see how RA may become more usefull in Cyro open AvAvA world. Even adding stacking with tri-pots and Major Sorcery buff won't be able to compete with amount of resources returned by Repentance after nuking large enemy group. I suggest to rename and revamp Radiant Aura to work similar as sorcs Dark Deal/guild mage's Spell Balance = 1 sec/instant cast to return stamina in cost of magicka/hp. It hould work for templar only.
2. Javelin - this is expensive skill and in compare with counterpart Stonefist less effecient. Since this skill mostly used by stamplars I suggest to add 2 sec root upon hitting enemy.
3. Spear Shards/Luminous Shards - it is one of the most usefull skill coz as my example with Fiery Scales, it has multiple factors making it good. However Luminous Shards morph very weak in compare with another morph. It doesn't change fact that this mostly supportive skill can't be used by its own caster. I suggest to make it more supportive skill:

• a. Remove synnergy completely, but allow skill to deal aoe disorient in 8m. - it will reduce lack of AoE CC.
• b. Remove mana return from synnergy, remove disorient, decrease stamina return to 20%, but allow templar to pick up own spear/synnergy to affect caster. - it will reduce lack of templar sustain.

4. Unstable Core - after spamming it in dungeon on mobs i didn't found usability of this morph. I suggest to make it work as CC through block and deal aoe block upon breaking free. So this skil work same as DK Fossilize. Visual effect can be taken from npc menders that can apply Rune Cage on you. Once again it will serve to decrease lack of CCs of class.
5. Total Dark - this revamp in fact is nerf coz after change, this morph became even weaker: most of ranged attacks are hitting like wet noodle, while most of melee attacks hits like a track, especially after DKs buffs. You must understand not weird mechanic of skill made it useless and tho abandoned by templars but cap on 1 target. You may thought that no cap made this ability strong but this ability costs as Scales and to achieve usefullness of Scales it should be casted on several targets = same effectiveness of Scales but with triple cost. Also Scales is selfbuff, so enemy won't be able to break it free to negate effect, also Scales could counter several enemies and finally it could reflect Snipe ability that has longer range than Total Dark. Several suggestions that depends on if you revamp Radiant Ward and Sollar Barrage as suggested after below:

• a. If no revamp of Radiant Ward. Just make it work as Scales = selfbuff, so templars won't be pciked as easy target for tons of snipers.
• b. Remove time bomb, remove cap or increase it to 2-3 enemies and allow it to reflect all melee and projectiles abilities. With removed/increased cap will be not that useless - to spam it on several targets it still will drain magicka pool much enough, also it will become usefull skill for 1vX and as debuff it is still will require for enemy to be out of CC immunity buff to be affected, i.e. 6 sec cooldown. Also, all reflect will allow to use it against every enemy, not a secret that right now more than half of people in Cyro run stamina build and vs them Total Dark unusable at all. Also removing time bomb is imprtant part and will allow to cast it only on accessible targets, let me tell what i mean - before time bomb introduce you could try to cast Eclipse on enemy = if cast succeeded you could do rest of things, if target was under CC immunity - cast didn't work and you didn't waste very high amount of mana and again could do rest of things while waiting CC immunity to expire; after introducing of time bomb - even if enemy is under CC immunity and will negate effect of reflect you still wasting large amount of mana to apply time bomb that very weak so skill became inefficient.
• c. Removing of cap completely, removing time bomb, allow to reflect all projectiles or melee abilities, decrease cost. - as i said already this skill even with those changes won't be even near as good as Scales.
• Total Dark should not restore Health as templar doesn't require even more healings, instead - it should restore small amount of stamina upon every reflection - it will make this magicka casted skill to be very usefull for sustain of templar and especially of sustain of stamplar.

6. Radiant Ward - this is most useless morph and will never compete with Blazing Shield morph. Some theorycrafting:
Imagine our shield is 6k(that is already hard to achieve), so with 6 enemies in 5m radius shield will be buffed on 36% = 8160, i.e 2160 increase. In practice it means thatwhile you have 6 enemies stacked on you you additional shield will be able to absorb just 2 weaved light attacks and you should agree that when you fight 6 enemies it means nothing; especially in compare with another morph - BS is not just shield that have tiny increase of strength but it transforming into offensive damage shield; after removing of double PvP reduction this morph became even more effective than RW.
Also, as we know Inhale got seriuos buff and working is it was in 1.0 to make life of outnumbered Dk easier. To compete with this change Templar simply must get seriuos buff as Blinding Flashes. So i suggest:

• a. Most weakest buff - Completely revamp morph and make it work as 20 sec that grants Major Evasion. As additional morph bonus it can grant either speedbuff - it will remove fact that templar is only class without such buff; or grant Minor Evasion 8% - to increase survivability.
• b. Make it work as now, but remove damage shield aspect, make 5m AoE damage to stun/disorient affected anemies for several seconds - like sorc's Streak it will be capable to deal small damage and also increase survivability of caster a lot, also it will be only AoE CC for templar.
• Most desirable buff - make it as revamped Blinding Flashes = pulse every 2 sec for 8 seconds in 5m AoE that will grant Major Evasion buff and will set off-balance affected enemies. So it will be version of skill that everyone loved, nad will increase survivability as early templars had.

7. Solar Barrage - most weakest morph of Solar Flare. Theorycrafting:
1. Dark Flare has cast time and long travel time, but in return can pull from invis and apply 8m AoE Major Defile. And i think it is perfect risk vs reward, also it got 12% buff. In compare with this morph Solar Barrage don't have risk vs reward at all and also didn't get 12% damage buff.
2. There is no reason to use another 8m AoE dps skill when templars already have range 8m AoE dps skill with one of the strongest synnergy, CC effects and AoE DoT that can be synnergized with Burning Light passive = increasing damage more than 20% Empower from SB. So i suggesting:

• a. Make it as smaller templar version of Proximity Detonation and take visual effect from Eclipse time bomb - it will make this skill trully AoE dps and change fact that tempalr's damage most weakest. On other hand it can get Sweep ult treatment - instead of being time bomb, it can deal upon cast 4-5% more damage for each affected enemies with limited damage storage - it will make this skill to be usefull only in large scale battles and deal much more damage than "supportive" Spear Shards.
• b. If Radiant Ward will get a. paragraph from suggestions above - Make it apply stun/disorient/set off-balance affected enemies in 8m radius.
• c. If Radiant Ward will get b. or c. paragraph from suggestions above - Make it Apply Major Defile upon cast - as i said above Dark Flare is perfect in risk vs reward: to be able to apply debuff this skill will reuire for caster to fight in melee against larger group of players, i.e. his life will be in danger unlike Dark Flare; and it will make this skill to be usefull in large scale battles and play "debuff" role unlike "supportive" Spear Shards.

8. Rite of Passage
I think it working weird in compare with NB Soul Siphon:
Rite healing 6 tragets; Soul healing 6 targets.
Rite not allowing you to move; Soul allow you to move
Rite apply major mending; Soul apply major vitality.
So after reading patchnotes you can notice that Soul Siphon was buffed. In compare to this Rite always got 30% healing buff but after change of passive it resulted in 5% healing nerf. Soul allow to move while apply 30% buff, while Rite prevent from moving while apply 25% buff. Without Focused Healing passive templar ultimate loosing in healing capabilities. You may find that additional effect from Rite morphs can compete with Soul more usable mechanic and i would agree, however in Cyro 4 sec of disabling possibility to move/use skills/block/dodge is decreasing usability of this ultimate(while Soul not applying such penalties). In addition to those penalties Rite healing is very weak and prevent from saving you in crucial moments. However I believe that granting any additional buffs(like vitality buffs) can make this ult too strong in regard of its cost, so I can suggest to make it more viable for caster only:

• a. Ultimate healing 6 targets - however if there is less than 6 allies, ultimate loosing too much healing outpoot. I suggest for every missed healing ball to restore some amount of resources to caster - so the less allies near the more self-sustainable ult becoming.
• b. As i said healing in addition to all penalties is very weak - another suggestion: every healing ball that not healing ally to heal caster, so if there is no ally near, all 6 healing balls will heal templar. It will make this ultimate usefull in solo-play and equalize healing outpoot with Devouring Swarm. No damage but at least notacible healing.
• c. Another way to fix weak healings - apply 100% snare on caster, so he can't move, keep CC immunity, but allow caster to use skills/block - it will increase usability of ultimate in any situation as templar won't be disabled while channeling ultimate.

@Wrobel

kaalmoth

Cinbri wrote: »

Skills Overhaul

I will be short here and for first will compare DK skill(since I love DK the most after Templar) to show why dk skill so good:
Fiery Scales:
a. It is selfbuff - even with this high cost ability all he need is cast ability once, he don't need to target it and recast for each enemy. It mean when dk outnumberd it is works perfect.
b. Reflect a. - it means this ability not wasting stamina when you reflecting projectiles, thus increasing sustain
c. Reflect b. - it means this ability not just increasing survivability a lot but also deal high damage in return.
Using this example I wanted to show that multiple factors making abilities good and balanced, not just one aspect of skill.
Templar as class is lack of such abilties and thats the source of problem.
Suggestions:
1. Radiant Aura - with new dlc, PvP meta seems will change to zergbusting and small group will become more viable; with this new meta Repentance will become even more usefull morph and i don't see how RA may become more usefull in Cyro open AvAvA world. Even adding stacking with tri-pots and Major Sorcery buff won't be able to compete with amount of resources returned by Repentance after nuking large enemy group. I suggest to rename and revamp Radiant Aura to work similar as sorcs Dark Deal/guild mage's Spell Balance = 1 sec/instant cast to return stamina in cost of magicka/hp. It hould work for templar only.
2. Javelin - this is expensive skill and in compare with counterpart Stonefist less effecient. Since this skill mostly used by stamplars I suggest to add 2 sec root upon hitting enemy.
3. Spear Shards/Luminous Shards - it is one of the most usefull skill coz as my example with Fiery Scales, it has multiple factors making it good. However Luminous Shards morph very weak in compare with another morph. It doesn't change fact that this mostly supportive skill can't be used by its own caster. I suggest to make it more supportive skill:

• a. Remove synnergy completely, but allow skill to deal aoe disorient in 8m. - it will reduce lack of AoE CC.
• b. Remove mana return from synnergy, remove disorient, decrease stamina return to 20%, but allow templar to pick up own spear/synnergy to affect caster. - it will reduce lack of templar sustain.

4. Unstable Core - after spamming it in dungeon on mobs i didn't found usability of this morph. I suggest to make it work as CC through block and deal aoe block upon breaking free. So this skil work same as DK Fossilize. Visual effect can be taken from npc menders that can apply Rune Cage on you. Once again it will serve to decrease lack of CCs of class.
5. Total Dark - this revamp in fact is nerf coz after change, this morph became even weaker: most of ranged attacks are hitting like wet noodle, while most of melee attacks hits like a track, especially after DKs buffs. You must understand not weird mechanic of skill made it useless and tho abandoned by templars but cap on 1 target. You may thought that no cap made this ability strong but this ability costs as Scales and to achieve usefullness of Scales it should be casted on several targets = same effectiveness of Scales but with triple cost. Also Scales is selfbuff, so enemy won't be able to break it free to negate effect, also Scales could counter several enemies and finally it could reflect Snipe ability that has longer range than Total Dark. Several suggestions that depends on if you revamp Radiant Ward and Sollar Barrage as suggested after below:

• a. If no revamp of Radiant Ward. Just make it work as Scales = selfbuff, so templars won't be pciked as easy target for tons of snipers.
• b. Remove time bomb, remove cap or increase it to 2-3 enemies and allow it to reflect all melee and projectiles abilities. With removed/increased cap will be not that useless - to spam it on several targets it still will drain magicka pool much enough, also it will become usefull skill for 1vX and as debuff it is still will require for enemy to be out of CC immunity buff to be affected, i.e. 6 sec cooldown. Also, all reflect will allow to use it against every enemy, not a secret that right now more than half of people in Cyro run stamina build and vs them Total Dark unusable at all. Also removing time bomb is imprtant part and will allow to cast it only on accessible targets, let me tell what i mean - before time bomb introduce you could try to cast Eclipse on enemy = if cast succeeded you could do rest of things, if target was under CC immunity - cast didn't work and you didn't waste very high amount of mana and again could do rest of things while waiting CC immunity to expire; after introducing of time bomb - even if enemy is under CC immunity and will negate effect of reflect you still wasting large amount of mana to apply time bomb that very weak so skill became inefficient.
• c. Removing of cap completely, removing time bomb, allow to reflect all projectiles or melee abilities, decrease cost. - as i said already this skill even with those changes won't be even near as good as Scales.
• Total Dark should not restore Health as templar doesn't require even more healings, instead - it should restore small amount of stamina upon every reflection - it will make this magicka casted skill to be very usefull for sustain of templar and especially of sustain of stamplar.

6. Radiant Ward - this is most useless morph and will never compete with Blazing Shield morph. Some theorycrafting:
Imagine our shield is 6k(that is already hard to achieve), so with 6 enemies in 5m radius shield will be buffed on 36% = 8160, i.e 2160 increase. In practice it means thatwhile you have 6 enemies stacked on you you additional shield will be able to absorb just 2 weaved light attacks and you should agree that when you fight 6 enemies it means nothing; especially in compare with another morph - BS is not just shield that have tiny increase of strength but it transforming into offensive damage shield; after removing of double PvP reduction this morph became even more effective than RW.
Also, as we know Inhale got seriuos buff and working is it was in 1.0 to make life of outnumbered Dk easier. To compete with this change Templar simply must get seriuos buff as Blinding Flashes. So i suggest:

• a. Most weakest buff - Completely revamp morph and make it work as 20 sec that grants Major Evasion. As additional morph bonus it can grant either speedbuff - it will remove fact that templar is only class without such buff; or grant Minor Evasion 8% - to increase survivability.
• b. Make it work as now, but remove damage shield aspect, make 5m AoE damage to stun/disorient affected anemies for several seconds - like sorc's Streak it will be capable to deal small damage and also increase survivability of caster a lot, also it will be only AoE CC for templar.
• Most desirable buff - make it as revamped Blinding Flashes = pulse every 2 sec for 8 seconds in 5m AoE that will grant Major Evasion buff and will set off-balance affected enemies. So it will be version of skill that everyone loved, nad will increase survivability as early templars had.

7. Solar Barrage - most weakest morph of Solar Flare. Theorycrafting:
1. Dark Flare has cast time and long travel time, but in return can pull from invis and apply 8m AoE Major Defile. And i think it is perfect risk vs reward, also it got 12% buff. In compare with this morph Solar Barrage don't have risk vs reward at all and also didn't get 12% damage buff.
2. There is no reason to use another 8m AoE dps skill when templars already have range 8m AoE dps skill with one of the strongest synnergy, CC effects and AoE DoT that can be synnergized with Burning Light passive = increasing damage more than 20% Empower from SB. So i suggesting:

• a. Make it as smaller templar version of Proximity Detonation and take visual effect from Eclipse time bomb - it will make this skill trully AoE dps and change fact that tempalr's damage most weakest. On other hand it can get Sweep ult treatment - instead of being time bomb, it can deal upon cast 4-5% more damage for each affected enemies with limited damage storage - it will make this skill to be usefull only in large scale battles and deal much more damage than "supportive" Spear Shards.
• b. If Radiant Ward will get a. paragraph from suggestions above - Make it apply stun/disorient/set off-balance affected enemies in 8m radius.
• c. If Radiant Ward will get b. or c. paragraph from suggestions above - Make it Apply Major Defile upon cast - as i said above Dark Flare is perfect in risk vs reward: to be able to apply debuff this skill will reuire for caster to fight in melee against larger group of players, i.e. his life will be in danger unlike Dark Flare; and it will make this skill to be usefull in large scale battles and play "debuff" role unlike "supportive" Spear Shards.

@Wrobel

Can't agree more. We lost A LOT imo in that total dark "buff". Actually I see it as a major nerf to a skill that really didn't need it. Your idea for shields and other stuff are pretty good too!

Sallington

Jura23 wrote: »

Sallington wrote: »

I think it's about time Sun Shield and it's morphs started scaling off of Magicka and Spell Damage.

so another middle finger to stam templars?

In a perfect world, it would scale off of magicka OR stam, whichever is higher (I wish most skills would do this...).

Either way, scaling off of HP is terrible.

AzuraKin

Change to Healing Ritual cast time probably ok though I say probably say the faster cast time morph should be a little bit faster. also the cost should be decreased to go with the cast time change. healing ritual is suppose to be the sustained class heal, reducing time while keeping cost same ruins that. what I say is make it like this. morph cast time reduce: .85s, morph adds delayed heal: 1.3s, cost after change: current cost reduced by 50% heal value reduced by 40% of current amount.

AzuraKin

allow it to either be block castable like other skills or while casting caster is immune to cc (so that can be used during fights like manticore boss in sactum ophidium)