Looking for advice on how to improve my Magicka Templar

Kylric

Hello All,

I could use some advice on the Magicka Templar. There are several guides out there giving advice on the min/max builds. However, I don’t have the best gear. I don’t mind setting goals and grinding, if I set a plan together but for right now I’m just looking to make some improvements, if needed.

Goal in game: Solo/PVE, dungeons and been doing trials lately. I don’t enjoy PVP. In fact, I might go back to being a stamplar if I grinded the assault skill line more. I might focus on this more in the future, but I just don’t enjoy PVP enough to continue.

I’ve honestly been thinking of converting my Templar to a flavor Imperial magicka S&B Paladin. The way I see it, this would give me in increase in stamina and more of a warrior feel. I would focus on Aedric Spear class skills. I just don’t know if the significant drop in magicka would gimpy me too much. I’m not a min/max kind of guy, but I do want to be viable and able to solo most content. If someone has a link to share, it would be appreciated.

My current build: Through trial and error, I found my current play style was very close to Alcast’s Beamplar build. In truth, it was not intentional. However, I found I was dying too much during close combat, due to lack of game skill and being in light armor. I found the need to back up and fight from a distance. Plus, I found that Radiant Oppression is just a killer.

Race: Currently Brenton, but open to changing.

Bar #1 / DW: Reflective Light, Puncturing Sweep, Inner Light, Radiant Glory, Breath of Life, Shooting Star

Bar #2 / Destro Staff: Channeled Focus, Radiant Aura, Structured Entropy, Elemental Blockade (Fire), Blazing Spear, Shooting Star

Champion Points: Currently at 246 – I am guessing this is an area I could make some improvements.

Steed:
• Magician – 47
• Arcanist - 34

Ritual
• Elfborn - 39
• Spell Erosion – 10
• Elemental Expert – 8
• Thaumaturge – 24

Astonach
• Light Armor Focus – 11
• Thick Skinned – 10
• Hardy – 30
• Elemental Defender – 30


Some specific notes:
• I was a stamplar previously, so I have maxed to 50 on several skills.
• Mundus Stone: The Thief
• Undaunted – current ranking only 5, but I’ve been focusing on increasing the ranks.
• Skill points are not an issue. I’ve found most of the skyshards
• My health is only 12,158 unbuffed. I added a health enhancement already but I feel I should need to increase this a bit more.
• I feel I press too many buttons to press, but it’s working. I’ve been getting more comfortable with the rotation, so this might not be too much of an issue. Thoughts?
• Confused: Alcast recommends inner light on both bars, but also recommends Spell-Critical Potions (spell-critical, spell damage, magicka). Since both grant major prophecy, do these stack or is it redundant?

Gear:
• 2 Piece heavy (head / chest), 5 light
• All Divines
• Armor: 5 piece Julianos / 2 Piece Magnus – all yellow
• Daggers: 2X Magnus / Sharpened
• Inferno staff: Magnus / Sharpened

Crafting: I know 7+ traits on the armors and weapons I would use for my Templar. Still a work in progress to get to 9.

Well, I think I hit it all. Overall, I think I’m doing well. However, I don’t know enough about some of the skills or how to properly take advantage of the CP system.

Thank you in advance

AzuraKin

are you doing this for pve or pvp? sustained or burst? how reliant do you want to be on heavy attacks. those are questions you need to figure out before can tell you what gear would be best for you.

Kylric

Thank you for your question:

PVE

I'm not worried about sustain or burst, because I fell that would be more relevant to what I'm up against. General game play.

I'm not reliant on heavy attacks. I don't use my staff often, but will as needed.

riberion

I am currently running 5pc Rattlecage, 5 pc Soulshine, and 2 pc Grothdarr with 5/1/1 for the undaunted passive. Wearing so much heavy armor as a magicka build seems unconventional, but I am able to sustain and do good damage without a problem, and am able to solo most content. With my set up, the only time I have the full 5 piece from Soulshine is on my dual wield bar, which is where my puncturing sweeps, radiant destruction, and soul assault are (since Soulshine increases the damage of those spells). My destro bar is mostly used for applying DOTs and the occasional heavy attack. I have 32k+ max mag, ~1800 recovery, and over 20k health. My spell damage is around 2800 on my dual wield bar, a little less on my destro bar. I use The Apprentice mundus stone. Bars are as follows:

Destro Bar (Rattlecage Inferno): Wall of Elements, Vampire's Bane, Blazing Spear, Inner Light, Breath of Life. Ult: Shooting Star

Dual Wield Bar (Rattlecage and Soushine): Radiant Destruction, Radiant Aura, Puncturing Sweeps, Inner Light, Breath of Life. Ult: Soul Assault

I have BoL double barred so I can do back up heals when needed. Radiant Aura gives a 10% increase to all recovery for just being slotted, and can be activated for even more. Inner light helps with crit and max magicka.

Gear slots as follows:

Grothdarr: Head/shoulder
Rattlecage: Jewels, destro staff, one sword, greaves
Soulshine: 4 pcs armor, one sword

It can be a pain to farm these items, as Rattlecage is BoP, but if you get a good group together it can go pretty fast. Weapons took the longest, and I still don't have a sharpened staff, but oh well.

Basic rotation for me starts with the staff, applying wall of elements and vamp bane. Blazing spear provides good cc and another dot. Then switch to dw bar and use puncturing sweeps, finish with radiant. On bosses, I will re apply dots several times, and try to use soul assault ult. Be careful with too much chanelling tho, can leave you pretty vulnerable.

Well over max CP at this point, and all my gear is gold. I don't usually max out the gear until I'm sure I like the set up, costs too much in tempers. All attribute points are in magicka, and all armor is enchanted with magicka as well. Jewel enchants can be spell damage or recovery, depending on what you might need. Oh, and she is a High Elf, for the extra damage. I don't think you would necessarily need to change race, you will just have better regen from your racial passives. I use Orzogas Red Frothgar for my food, since it gives both max health and magicka regen.

Not saying this is the best ever build, but it's working for me.

As far as the pots....you only get major prophecy once (does not stack). Major and minor can stack, but not two sources of major prophecy. I just craft the basic magicka pots for the longer regen boost (this is where I've had the most trouble with this build, but if I get low, I just take a pot and activate Radiant Aura, also weave in heavy attacks on my staff to generate ultimate as well).

Hope this helps!

Kylric

It's a very interesting set-up. I will take a closer look at in later this week. Thank you for sharing.

NoFlash

I too am looking for tip. Following this thread until it dies.

riberion

What kind of tips are you looking for?

Kutsuu

Alcast has a lot of info on magicka templar DPS on his site and youtube channel. Please don't wear heavy armor as a PVE DPS player if you are going to do trials. You can get away with most anything in dungeons as long as you have a decent rotation.

Anyway, the usual magicka DPS sets are good. TBS, Infallable mage, moondancer, Julianos, Mother's Sorrow, Burning Spellweave.

If you want more of a VMA build than a trials DPS build then I think this one is pretty great. http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/ducks-magplar-vma-build-shadows-of-the-hist/

Kutsuu

The reason for Inner light isn't so much the spell critical as it is the 7% max magicka and 2% magicka regen you got for slotting it. You should definitely swap to Grothdar. Amazing set.

riberion

Kutsuu wrote: »

Please don't wear heavy armor as a PVE DPS player if you are going to do trials.

Why? I do trials with this set up. I may change out a few skills that aren't needed in a large group, but there isn't any reason (that I'm aware of, at least) why you shouldn't wear heavy armor as magicka dps.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

riberion wrote: »

Kutsuu wrote: »

Please don't wear heavy armor as a PVE DPS player if you are going to do trials.

Why? I do trials with this set up. I may change out a few skills that aren't needed in a large group, but there isn't any reason (that I'm aware of, at least) why you shouldn't wear heavy armor as magicka dps.

You lose out on the extra 10% crit and the 4884 spell pen that is why, those two together will increase your dps by at least 15%. Not to mention the cost reduction and the regen increase that you get from wearing light.

I

have 32k+ max mag, ~1800 recovery, and over 20k health. My spell damage is around 2800 on my dual wield bar, a little less on my destro bar

How much spell crit do you have? End game dps needs at least 65%. You dont need 1800 recovery with light cause your skills cost less with each piece you have on, 3% per if I remember right. Your mag is really low too, end game has at least 40k, depending on race. Also 2.8k spell damage on your sword bar is low, I had 3.2k on my temp.

ryanborror

You should be using swords. Daggers don't do anything for magic builds, don't use them. Try using harness magicka or repentance for survivability. The key to surviving is just to sweep as many people as possible. What jewelry are you wearing?

Kylric

ryanborror wrote: »

You should be using swords. Daggers don't do anything for magic builds, don't use them. Try using harness magicka or repentance for survivability. The key to surviving is just to sweep as many people as possible. What jewelry are you wearing?

I was thinking i needed daggers, very helpful. Switching tonight.

I have three set Willpower - all arcane.

davey1107

I think you've got a really good set up. It's similar to the magplar I use for vet maelstrom, etc. My back bar has a few more buffs rather than attacks...but very close.


Gear: I like Julianos plus Magnus. However, because my Templar does so much dot, I made him 5 Julianos, 5 a second set that offers jewelry, and the Valkyn skoria monster set (or any other than procs well on the sort of damage you do). Valkyn procs every 5-6 seconds...it feels like it ups his dps 10-15%, pretty significant.

A set that I consider underrated as a magplar "training set" is bahara's curse. It creates this consecrated ground all the damn time that throws massive heals back at you. I don't think it's a great end game set, but I liked it from my magplar when he was champion 50-350ish. The heal buff was like training wheels, then when I got tougher and felt tankier I replaced it.


CPs: I feel like your CP choices could use minor tweaks. When I first configured, I spread them out like that too. Then when I read suggestions for focusing on the most powerful, it really helped.

For example, you have very few points in elemental expert. This increases your damage for ALL magic based damage. If the ability says magic damage, this applies. Points here are far more valuable than in thaumaturge (increased DoT damage) because considering all the attacks you're making, you're doing far more magic damage than anything else (and in fact, most of the DoT damage you're dealing is magic based, so elemental expert increases it too). A CP point you can spend on offense/defense you use all the time is almost always better than one spent on a rarer event.

My personal preference is to pile CPs into elemental expert, then secondarily the spell crit one. Your first 120 blue points can go here...like maybe a 80/40 spread. You WANT arcane well. by the time you get there all your magic damage will be up like 20% and crit damage like another 15%...more helpful,than anything else you can get in the blue lines. In green, I pile into mag recover, reduce magic cost and a little health recover. Again, as you work toward 120 in greens you want to ultimately get your mag recovery up 15-20%, so 80ish of the points go here. For reds, I split between hardy and elemental defender evenly, pretty much like you do. But I ignore most everything else. Piling into these two reduces ALL incoming attacks, which is far more powerful than the more specialized ones. I find the light armor one to be crap...it doesn't feel like much of a buff compared to the others.

Given your challenges, you might also throw 5-10 CPs into healing cast and healing received. These stack, so you can boost the heals you cast on yourself both ways. And this applies to jabs and radiant, so awesome.

Note - a lot of your survivability issues will improve as you earn more CPs. You're about 300 under max. Those 300 points are going to decrease incoming damage another 10%, increase all outgoing attacks by 10% and offer some other buffs. That's a big deal for survivability...think about how many times you die fighting like ten monsters where you die when two or three are left. If that battle went slightly faster w slightly less damage, you'd have been fine. I've helped a lot of players level, and CP200 is usually where vets start to feel comfortable wandering into the end game content...then often they get slaughtered. I'm like a B+ player, and at 250 CPs about half the vet undaunted dungeons, vet maelstrom and some other areas are just too hard. So be patient...you'll feel waaaaaay tankier as you get up toward max CPs.

davey1107

Also, stamina templars are way fun and imperials rock for this. But I'd NEVER spend on ZOSs insane racial change tokens. And I wouldn't give up a magplar anyway.

They're about to run the new life festival thing...100% bonus xp for a couple of weeks. Roll a new character, and in 6-10 hrs of grinding you will have yourself a new lvl 50. Some tips:

- create the character now and start feeding the mount.
- Work their provisioning to 50. Buy the recipes and ingredients to do this in guild stores...they're very cheap. To go faster, spend the skill points to allow higher level recipes...you will need a level 1, 2, 3 and 4 recipe and 50 or so of each ingredient they require. once you max provisioning go to the shrine and spend 200ish gold to get the skill points back.
- The purpose of this was to spend three points to extend consumed drink. Now the character gets 50 minutes from a psijic ambrosia.
- Make them level 6, 20 and 40 training gear with junk enchants. Any steam set will do...you just want them strong. Hundings plus night silence is perfect for this. Invest their CPs.
- When the festival starts, grind them in festival form on psijic through the public dungeons and dolmens. That's a 150% xp boost. You'll get the festival prizes, and they'll get to fifty pretty quick.

A second vet character is pretty handy. All of a sudden you have all of this bonus xp open to you...stuff your first character already cleared. That can help you grow your pool of CPs faster.

The drawback is that you'll have to play pvp to rank their assault...doh. You need to get to assault 5-6, that's only 85,000 app these days. Two or three nights running in a group should do it. Or when I ran my friends character because he needed vigor but hates pvp, I would run around repairing walls everywhere and then help defend keeps under heavy fire. You only need a few really good keep defenses to get there...and any keep usually has 1500 app in repairs sitting around.

Kylric

Davey - thank you for taking the time to respond. I've made some changes and most of what I've done falls in line with your advice as well. I knew nothing about the new life festival, so that is great news and something i need to prepare for.

The mount is so true! I feel like I'm so slow when I don't feed my horse. Drive me nuts

Again, thank you

itsfatbass

Two things: Put way more into elemental expert. Dump every mage point into it until you cap it out at 100. Thaumaturge is good also but don't bother with any of the rest until that elemental expert is capped. Secondly, yes use dual daggers. Not a sword... You're Magicka and the benefit from daggers is great, esp with that Jesus beam.

Kutsuu

jphipps85b14_ESO1 wrote: »

Two things: Put way more into elemental expert. Dump every mage point into it until you cap it out at 100. Thaumaturge is good also but don't bother with any of the rest until that elemental expert is capped. Secondly, yes use dual daggers. Not a sword... You're Magicka and the benefit from daggers is great, esp with that Jesus beam.

Daggers give weapon critical, not spell critical. Swords are the only one that affects magicka damage.

itsfatbass

Kutsuu wrote: »

jphipps85b14_ESO1 wrote: »

Two things: Put way more into elemental expert. Dump every mage point into it until you cap it out at 100. Thaumaturge is good also but don't bother with any of the rest until that elemental expert is capped. Secondly, yes use dual daggers. Not a sword... You're Magicka and the benefit from daggers is great, esp with that Jesus beam.

Daggers give weapon critical, not spell critical. Swords are the only one that affects magicka damage.

You get 325 more spell damage from dual wield daggers. This is by far the biggest and best benefit for Magicka.

Not to mention you get the benefit of an additional weapon for set bonuses.some builds utilize this.

Kutsuu

jphipps85b14_ESO1 wrote: »

Kutsuu wrote: »

jphipps85b14_ESO1 wrote: »

Two things: Put way more into elemental expert. Dump every mage point into it until you cap it out at 100. Thaumaturge is good also but don't bother with any of the rest until that elemental expert is capped. Secondly, yes use dual daggers. Not a sword... You're Magicka and the benefit from daggers is great, esp with that Jesus beam.

Daggers give weapon critical, not spell critical. Swords are the only one that affects magicka damage.

You get 325 more spell damage from dual wield daggers. This is by far the biggest and best benefit for Magicka.

Not to mention you get the benefit of an additional weapon for set bonuses.some builds utilize this.

You realize that dual swords give the exact same benefits, while the twin blade & blunt passive for them actually affects Magicka damage right? I can't tell if you're trying to troll me.

itsfatbass

Kutsuu wrote: »

jphipps85b14_ESO1 wrote: »

Kutsuu wrote: »

jphipps85b14_ESO1 wrote: »

Two things: Put way more into elemental expert. Dump every mage point into it until you cap it out at 100. Thaumaturge is good also but don't bother with any of the rest until that elemental expert is capped. Secondly, yes use dual daggers. Not a sword... You're Magicka and the benefit from daggers is great, esp with that Jesus beam.

Daggers give weapon critical, not spell critical. Swords are the only one that affects magicka damage.

You get 325 more spell damage from dual wield daggers. This is by far the biggest and best benefit for Magicka.

Not to mention you get the benefit of an additional weapon for set bonuses.some builds utilize this.

You realize that dual swords give the exact same benefits, while the twin blade & blunt passive for them actually affects Magicka damage right? I can't tell if you're trying to troll me.

I can assure you, that for Min/Max DPS, DW is BY FAR superior.

Kutsuu

jphipps85b14_ESO1 wrote: »

Kutsuu wrote: »

jphipps85b14_ESO1 wrote: »

Kutsuu wrote: »

jphipps85b14_ESO1 wrote: »

Two things: Put way more into elemental expert. Dump every mage point into it until you cap it out at 100. Thaumaturge is good also but don't bother with any of the rest until that elemental expert is capped. Secondly, yes use dual daggers. Not a sword... You're Magicka and the benefit from daggers is great, esp with that Jesus beam.

Daggers give weapon critical, not spell critical. Swords are the only one that affects magicka damage.

You get 325 more spell damage from dual wield daggers. This is by far the biggest and best benefit for Magicka.

Not to mention you get the benefit of an additional weapon for set bonuses.some builds utilize this.

You realize that dual swords give the exact same benefits, while the twin blade & blunt passive for them actually affects Magicka damage right? I can't tell if you're trying to troll me.

I can assure you, that for Min/Max DPS, DW is BY FAR superior.

Ok well that makes me sure that you're trolling. lol

Kodrac

Kutsuu wrote: »

Ok well that makes me sure that you're trolling. lol

He probably thinks you have to use daggers to dual wield while the rest of us know dual wield = two weapons. Just to confirm, two swords add 5% spell/weapon damage.and two daggers adds 5% weapon crit. Weapon crit is useless for mag users.

idk

@Kylric

With the swords you want the twin blade blunt passive and that's the only passive you need from the DW line for magika.

Kutsuu

Kodrac wrote: »

Kutsuu wrote: »

Ok well that makes me sure that you're trolling. lol

He probably thinks you have to use daggers to dual wield while the rest of us know dual wield = two weapons. Just to confirm, two swords add 5% spell/weapon damage.and two daggers adds 5% weapon crit. Weapon crit is useless for mag users.

Just to clarify and be specific, dual swords add a 5% damage modifier to your tooltip values. This is different from spell/weapon damage, and often a stronger buff.

itsfatbass

DW gives you a 2.5% dmg modifier per weapon, total of 5%. That is indeed a tooltip value, and the benefit is far greater than carrying around a 2hander with some puny passive benefits from it.

itsfatbass

Kodrac wrote: »

Kutsuu wrote: »

Ok well that makes me sure that you're trolling. lol

He probably thinks you have to use daggers to dual wield while the rest of us know dual wield = two weapons. Just to confirm, two swords add 5% spell/weapon damage.and two daggers adds 5% weapon crit. Weapon crit is useless for mag users.

The daggers also add 5% weap/spell dmg.

Reorx_Holybeard

jphipps85b14_ESO1 wrote: »

Kodrac wrote: »

Kutsuu wrote: »

Ok well that makes me sure that you're trolling. lol

He probably thinks you have to use daggers to dual wield while the rest of us know dual wield = two weapons. Just to confirm, two swords add 5% spell/weapon damage.and two daggers adds 5% weapon crit. Weapon crit is useless for mag users.

The daggers also add 5% weap/spell dmg.

There's a bit of confusion there. The benefit of DW for a magicka build comes from 2 sources:

1. The additional Spell/Weapon damage from the second weapon (20% of the weapon's damage value, +267 for a CP160 gold weapon).
2. The Twin Blade and Blunt DW passive which gives +2.5% Damage for each Sword equipped.

Daggers and Maces will contribute to the first effect but not to the second one which is the larger and more important effect.

itsfatbass

So then having swords and daggers equipped has ZERO differences in that case. I guess I thought people were talking about 2-handed weapons compared to 1-handed. There is literally no difference between 2 swords or 2 daggers, except that the daggers look cooler. But if you're trying to argue that a 2-hander like a Mace would be more of a benefit than DW daggers, you are very much wrong on that.

AcadianPaladin

My understanding -

Magicka-based characters (like a magplar) who dual wield prefer swords for the + damage. My magplar healer is destro/resto so I don't worry about that.

Stamsorcs prefer to DW daggers for the +crit chance that so wonderfully complements Critical Surge + Hurricane, granting loads of healing during combat.

I think it is just a matter of reviewing the truth in the description for the top of the line dual wield passive perk that explains what the perk does for swords (+damage) vs what it does for daggers (+crit chance).

Unsent.Soul

jphipps85b14_ESO1 wrote: »

So then having swords and daggers equipped has ZERO differences in that case. I guess I thought people were talking about 2-handed weapons compared to 1-handed. There is literally no difference between 2 swords or 2 daggers, except that the daggers look cooler. But if you're trying to argue that a 2-hander like a Mace would be more of a benefit than DW daggers, you are very much wrong on that.

There is a difference, that's what people have been trying to tell you, it's pretty much spelled out for you.