Magicka Templar - Weapon of choice

Sckazy

Hey guys,

Currently building a Magicka Templar, mainly as a Support and DPS and I'm struggling on choosing which weapon I should use and level up.

The Sword and board are a must and I'll always keep it on my defense bar, however, for my offensive bar I can't decide weather to go Dual Wield or Lightning staff.

Upon checking vids I see most Magplar running Dual wield, but mostly in previous patchs and changes might have occurred.

For Expl: Lightning Staff has 1300 damage, while Dual Wield has 1100 + 1100 = 2200 Damage, will that affect my Spell damage as well?

What's more worth, having more spell damage, or having the AOE bonus from Lightning staff ??

Thank you!!

AcadianPaladin

What a magplar gets from dw swords vs staff is 5% to all damage (the key being this included magic damage) and an extra item slot to enchant. They don't really use the swords to hit things since they have big magicka, small stam and therefore small sword damage. So they cast and cast. The price they pay is giving up the staff line of abilities (on that bar) and not having effective heavy/light attacks on that bar to slow magicka loss or help recover it. So I think it boils down to a sustain concern. Given the direction of the upcoming patch in June, I'd be leery of anything but staves on both bars.

Let me confess I'm a magplar healer so the call is a no brainer. I'm extrapolating some of my experience here to muse about magplar dps. I will happily yield to those with more magplar dps experience and their thoughts on it.

Kaymorolis

I always thought that Magicka based characters were designed to choose between the four staves, while Stamina based choose between DW, 2H, or SnB.

Is that not the case?

Sckazy

Yeah totally agree I noticed that the Heavy attacks from staff restore much more Magicka than other weapons, maybe it is intended as such since Staffs weapons uses Magicka and it would make sense.

As for the damage, it's true that DW grants +5% damage, but does the Spell Damage stack up for both weapons?

By that I mean if I go staff, will I lose a lot of spell power? Almost 1350 spell power if the off hand adds up (Haven't tested it yet)

That's a lot of spell power to be considered :-/

Sckazy

Kaymorolis wrote: »

I always thought that Magicka based characters were designed to choose between the four staves, while Stamina based choose between DW, 2H, or SnB.

Is that not the case?

I found it strange at first to have 4 weapons that uses Stamina and only 2 that uses Magicka, but this difference is compensate by the fact that almost all Class skills uses Magicka (Except some morphs).

So If you go Magicka, you'll mostly use Class skills whilst when you go Stamina, your main Skills will be Weapon skills.

As an exemple I use 0 weapons skill for my Magplar all my skills are from Class skills and Guilds/WorldWide...

Sckazy

Btw in order to proc the Spell damage Enchant on the Dual wield, do I need to do a Light/Heavy attack with them or any skill on my Dual Wield bar can proc them?

davey1107

Some answers to your questions:

-Zos considers there to be four staff types since there are three different destro types. A weak answer, but it's what they say, lol.

- it's intended for heavy attacks to restore stamina with stamina based weapons and vice Vera's for magic based weapons.

- enchantments and poisons on weapons ONLY proc via light and heavy attacks. Note that they have a cool down, and a buff/debuff does not stack. With dual wield you therefore get a strategic option: putting different enchants on the weapons. If I heavy attack w two swords, they can both proc their enchant. But if they both have an increase spell damage enchant, the first will affect me and the second will be wasted. So if that was a shield, or return magic, or anything else it would be more useful than a wasted proc. The same applies if I am doing many light attacks in a row - two different enchants will proc benefits more often than the same enchant on both.

- the damage of each ability cast is affected by the power of the weapon you're holding. It doesn't matter what the weapon is, or if the ability is stam or magic. A weapon's damage is the first aspect of the dps calculation. So I did a quick test to make sure the magic/stam based rule applies regardless the weapon type. I used a stam character and made him some junk swords, 1200 and 1100 damage rating. His test stam attack did 3250 and 3100 damage between the weapons, and his test magic attack did 1848 and 1790.

- so it follows that more damage equipped is better all around. Meaning that even disregarding the passive buff of two swords, two 1100 damage swords will outperform sword and board or a staff w 1300 damage. I did a quick test between two 1300 damage daggers and the same dagger with an equivalent legendary shield. I got 2100 from a stam attack, and then 1730 from the same attack with the shield equipped.

- so between the addl weapon damage and the buff, two swords give you power on an attack bar. I use this for my magplar...he needs all the dps he can get. The costs to consider are:
a. No magic return on heavies
B. Threading lights is good for ultimate generation, but now your lights are weak.
C. Same for weapon enchant or poison proc. However, the right enchants/poison can help make up for the dps loss in using swords for light attacks. Or they can return magic.


Hopefully that helps. If anything is confusing, reply with @davey1107 in the post so it alerts me...happy to answer questions.

Sckazy

@davey1107 Thank you soo much, you answered pretty much to all what I was wondering about, specially the enchat proc

I'm going with Dual wield as my Templar could you use some Spell damage as well, specially the way I play it. I'll lose some sustain and range with them, but other spells can compensate for that.

I think DW is better in PvP.
Now I see why we have to prioritize upgrading weapons first before gear

Since they don't take much skill points, I'll switch to Destro staff when doing PvE content and max both of them.

That was very helpful thank you!!

Sckazy

@davey1107
Would you suggest me to go Heavy or Light Armor for PvP and PvE content?

In most of the PvP build i've seen, they all run Heavy armor with a couple of light and they don't seem to run out of Magicka that much

I wanna be able to take on 1vX and be on front of the fight without having to flee for my life every time I see a Nightblade or a Stam DK

The Necropotence set if very tempting but it's light tho.

I'm already squichy in my Vamp Stamblade so I want a character that can take damage but do decent in DPS as well. Hard to balance between survival, sustain and damage at the same time, but the way I see it, the less damage I take, the less Magicka I would have to use to heal myself and focus more on putting pressure on the enemy

Thank you again!

Karius_Imalthar

I use dual wield and destro staff. Like someone mentioned you get another set piece slot with the second weapon so you can do 2 5-piece sets and monster helm/shoulder that way.

Sckazy

Karius_Imalthar wrote: »

I use dual wield and destro staff. Like someone mentioned you get another set piece slot with the second weapon so you can do 2 5-piece sets and monster helm/shoulder that way.

Yes it's a huge boost to have an add slot for the set (given that you are able to obtain them xD)

You made me thinking about dropping the Sword and board for a destro staff... : s

Waffennacht

Sckazy wrote: »

Karius_Imalthar wrote: »

I use dual wield and destro staff. Like someone mentioned you get another set piece slot with the second weapon so you can do 2 5-piece sets and monster helm/shoulder that way.

Yes it's a huge boost to have an add slot for the set (given that you are able to obtain them xD)

You made me thinking about dropping the Sword and board for a destro staff... : s

Kinda where I am too... But... Resistance and a slot...

davey1107

Full disclosure, I don't pvp with my magplar enough to be an expert. He's my second most used pvp character, but I'm working really hard to level my stamblade to Legate so I play 98% of my pvp with him. But VMSA is totally my magplar, and a lot of the mechanics apply across the board.

In pve, you really need the dps that running 5 light provides. I run 5/1/1 because I have the undaunted passive. I overcome the squishiness in hard content by front barring harness magicka. It almost always buys me time to get in enough jabs to act as a burst heal.

In pvp it's more of an open question. So heavy builds right now are very tanky, and my stamblade will either "trick" a heavy magplar to their death by setting up a super hit with stun that allows me to drop enough power that they can't come back fast enough (rally + siphoning + magelight + snipe + cloak. If this hits for 12k+ and stuns he can move in for the kill). If this doesn't work I'll irritate them then leave (no net AP for anyone). So my feeling is that in groups heavy magplars work because you can all contribute some damage, but out on their own theymlikely survive great but face a challenge completing kills.

A light magplar in pvp can be VERY squishy. If I snipe one and they react very quickly...ward, roll, heal, roll, shield, assess....then they can put up a fight and survive. But any hesitation or delay in getting those wards up, and they're dead. I got better, but being slow to react led to me dying a lot as a magplar.

All of this becomes somewhat moot next month when all of this sees a drastic change in update 14. One of their big goals is to eliminate "troll builds", the endlessly sustainable overpowered shield builds. This is certainly going to affect heavy armor Templars, but I'm not sure how drastic or if it will change how we look at armor types in either pve or pvp.

azfardajiwang

I use rattlecagex5, dual torugs and backbar s/b transmutation along with valkyn skoria. Hits like a truck. Get the crit damage mundus

Eshelmen

I use 5 PC Soulshine/5 pc lich(S&B back bar to proc) /2 skoria/2 dw willpower or torags
Make sure to add 100 points into elemental damage and at least 75 into thermaturge.

DW(sharpened) and S&B(health glyph on shield to balance entropy health increase on front bar) is my go to.
Puncturing sweeps is a must for the magplar, and once you get the hang of throwing in a quick light attack in between each sweep, the damage adds up even more so. As well, I throw a spell damage enchantment on the swords and even though there is a cool down on them, that 1.5 seconds of free and added SD does come in handy.

Structured entropy>vampires bane>light attack > sweeps is a good combo to get used to.
Entropy adds massive SD for twenty seconds, vampires bane burns target with a dot, plus adds 10% crit for six seconds, quick light attack to proc enchantment spell damage, then sweeps. Soul assault for damage ultimate.


It's a nasty build that is quite fun to play with.

stileanima

Sckazy wrote: »

The Necropotence set if very tempting but it's light tho.

Necropotence on a Magplar is useless. You only benefit from the 5-piece bonus when you have a pet active, and Templars do not have any pets to summon.

And no, non-combat pets don't count. I only say this because I've heard stories from guildies about a dude in zone chat wondering why he didn't have extra mana while wearing Necropotence while his pet Guar was out. xD