Need magplar build advice

Mascen

Returning vet here pretty familiar with the usual build sites just to point that out.

Long story short I'm trying to update my main DPS PVE build but unlike what's posted on Alcast, I want to make a group/solo hybrid that's sturdier rather than one that's streamlined for Trials/dungeons.

So far i've definitely settled on Bashei's from Rockgrove, but unsure about the rest. Prior Theiric looked interesting tho. I just don't want to be too squishy of a glass cannon.

Thanks for any advice.

fred4

Hexos Ward (front bar). Why? Biggest shield and very good 2/3/4 bonuses for a damage build (crit and spell damage). Overland set. Easy to get.

An alternative setup I currently use includes Gaze of Sithis, Aetherial Ascension (crafted) and False God's Devotion. Maelstrom destro back bar in both cases.

Solo play is fundamentally different from trial play. The above setups are viable in trials. Especially the Hexos Ward setup loses little damage. It's just, while I find the defense useful solo and, perhaps, in 4-man content, I find that even in normal trials I die regardless, if I position myself wrong. Hence you might as well go full damage there. I substitute Deadly Strike for Hexos Ward in trials.

I don't agree with Bahsei. I'm an ingrained solo player. In solo play you need sustain. Your survivability on templar stands and falls with your ability to sustain Sweeps. I don't aim for low magicka. Low magicka is an emergency for me. That's why I go with False God. You don't get synergies in solo play. You could aim for a back bar that kicks in at low magicka, e.g. Lich. The problem is that Lich is IMO just not a good set anymore. You want that Maelstrom destro back bar anyway.

Hexos Ward is IMO the best of the shielding sets. Not sure I would stack another. It has a drawback in that the shield lasts for 6 sconds, but the downtime is 7. There is always 1 second where you can get caught out. With pretty much any shielding setup, outside of a Brawler build, shields can be down when you need them, though. A resistance setup, like Sithis + Aetherial Ascension, is more consistent. Not being able to block is an issue sometimes, but fits in with being a templar. You also gain health regen. Using Strategic Reserve CP and withholding your ultimate is one way to get through some fights in, for example, normal Moon Hunter Keep solo where you would otherwise die from prolonged unbreakable CCs. The health regen saves you.

You could also take a leaf from the PvP meta and wear Magma Incarnate + Markyn's Ring of Majesty. About 5K resistances and 415 spell damage. Best of both worlds in many ways, a lot of stat for 3 armor pieces, which is why many PvPers wear that combo. Of course that doesn't leave room for 2x 5-piece sets and the obligatory Maelstrom destro back bar, but maybe just 3x Willpower (front bar) and 1x Trainee.

In terms of a damage monster set on magplar, Nerieneth is very hard to beat these days. I don't do a super complex nor accurate rotation, so take this with a pinch of salt, but in my testing Nerieneth was neck and neck with Harpooner's Wading Kilt and no monster set on a trial dummy parse. I am, therefore, wearing Nerieneth on my Hexos Ward setup, and no mythic. It only gets better in AOE scenarios and it's so much more universal than the Kilt. Basically: Hexos Ward front bar, vMA destro back bar, Nerieneth, trial (Minor Slayer) set of choice. Look no further if you want something for all round play that gives up very little damage.

Necrotech_Master

i would agree with @fred4 on bahsei, i even tried using it and i dont really like it, i could it working better for a stam character that has a smaller mag pool and you arent using the emptied pool for say attacking, it takes some serious micromanagement in terms of balancing resource recovery to still use skills vs being as close to 0 mag at all times

for a solo build, magma + markyn would work good, then you could fit in 1 5pc set, front and back bar arena weapons, and then use a 2 pc filler (i use builds similar to this of 2pc monster + 5pc set + mythic + front/back bar arena + 2pc filler such as trainee, willpower, or agility, although trainee is objectively better for mag toons, i still use agility for stam toons)

i would also agree that hexos ward provides a very good balance of offense and defense for general play

and i would also agree that if your doing trials, it wont matter how good your build is if mechanics are failed or you stand in the wrong spot at wrong time because there are so many 1 shots

fiender66

On my main magplar I use Hexos' (staff+jewels) and it makes a difference with whatever I used before.
For armor I have a double choice: Overwhelming for more serious stuff (WB, solo dungeons not basic, etc) or some funny set like Mad Tinkerer when I want to have fun in Overland (and Maw may provide a very nice zoological addition). Consider that also the humble Withered Hand has proved worthy for me (instead of Hexos, I mean)
Nothing better than Iceheart for a "serious" magplar. I do not like scrying, so do not use mythic.

As an aside: on my stamplar I use Hexos with Briar and Iceheart. This solved for me the notorious problem of the squishiness of this class.
OFC Deadly instead of Briar (2H) may be used for more offensive performance.

All above works better if one maximises crit.

fred4

fiender66 wrote: »

Nothing better than Iceheart for a "serious" magplar.

You can't really argue with Iceheart on a solo build, even though it's been nerfed, if you want to make that your only shield or stack it with Hexos Ward.

Just to say that my recommendation of Nerieneth was based on a Skinny Cheeks video, i.e. someone who does far more exhaustive testing than I do. It came in tops of all monster sets for magicka at +8% average damage added. Since procs can crit again, the set does a lot of damage. The caveat is that it needs AOE scenarios to shine, but I think Skinny's spreadsheet wasn't specifically geared for templars. Sweeps dealing 4x direct damage per second greatly increases the proc chance compared to most other builds. Not sure whether Burning Light also counts as direct damage. Basically it procs like mad on templar. If you want a damage monster set instead of a shielding one, Nerieneth is hard to beat.

fiender66

@fred4

My remark about Iceheart was not meant as to be against Nerieneth, which is an amazing offensive set.

I'm used to take the only general advice from YT influencers, even if they are far better players than me, have way more resources and experience. My opinion is that the builds they advocate, even if defined as "solo builds" are a tad too much geared towards end game content like arenas and trials.

My way of gaming is mine, and what is better for me not necessarily is better for every other player. As a dd I play solo almost exclusively, I'm currently in no guild and do group dungeons only as tank or healer. When soloing anything challenging, a bit of defence (and sustain!) pays a higher dividend than any additional fraction of damage IMHO.

fred4

Sure, no problem. The reason I'm down on Iceheart is the small shield size. It used to be a go to soloing set in the past. Then it got nerfed. Then we got Hexos Ward, which offers a much bigger shield. Even though you're sacrificing a 5-piece with Hexos Ward, the 2/3/4 bonuses are so good, you're really kind of not. I think I added an Infused Hardening enchant to Hexos Ward at one point, e.g. stacking another shield, but that didn't do much for me. I've never actually tried Iceheart, though.

It's hard to recommend something without knowing what the OPs expectations are and what content they do. In the grand scheme of things neither Hexos Ward nor Iceheart makes you all that tanky. If you stack them, maybe ... but not really ... see below. These setups are fine for the solo arenas, where the added tankiness will help a bit, but those arenas were designed with few actual one shots. You can survive at 20K health and no shields, because most things, not all but most, don't take away your whole health bar. This changes when you try to solo things that weren't expressly designed to be soloed. For example I went up to a Blackwood group boss for the first time with my magplar after writing in this thread. They just nuked me on the Hexos Ward setup, so I put on the resistance setup instead and promptly killed the boss (solo).

There are tools for every occasion. Hexos and Iceheart both have crit components to them, which means you retain damage, but they are not the most tanky. Building for resistance is not actually better, at least not when you prevent yourself from blocking with Gaze of Sithis, but suits different fights. That's why I carry both setups. However, if you want a step up from magplar, then you should probably run a Brawler build. Shielding sets are good and all, but none of them have the consistency and shield size of the Brawler shield, which refreshes every second and scales up to about 20K. That's a new 20K shield every second, when you hit 6 targets. Compare that to Hexos Ward's 14K shield every 7 seconds.

One further thing to experiment with is thinking of your character as a tank, e.g. shifting all your attribute points into health. This is eminently viable these days, because weapon / spell damage and crit are the important things. Nothing much scales with your max stat anymore, not even Power of the Light. The fact that we all have +1K weapon / spell damage in recent patches has also diluted the importance of max stat.

I run a stamsorc tank that is either an actual tank or a Brawler build via gear change. That character is in a different league entirely. I can do vMA in about 1 hour with her, despite low single target damage. That is slow, but fast for an ostensible tank. Her AOE is good, thanks to the Master's 2H weapon, and she gains time by flat out standing in red and ignoring mechanics. I can let the Argonian Behemoth enrage, bash it, ignore the adds and keep fighting it with that character. Few characters can survive that. I can also solo the first vBRP arena with her. No other character of mine can do that. Hard world bosses, such as the Unfinished Dolmen, are no problem.

Templar builds and Brawler builds are similar in one way. Your defense is staying on attack. This is very important as, otherwise, you don't progress the fight and may be overwhelmed. In both cases sustain is terribly important. If I have one piece of advice for the OP it's really to ditch Bahsei for False God. That may just be all he/she needs. Shields and resistances are nice, but it's the healing from attacking that pulls you through. If you die and you don't die jabbing, then you're doing something wrong. If you ran out of sustain or you insisted on doing a full rotation, then your first steps are to get a sustain set and ditch the full rotation. It may sound boring, but that's how the game works as a solo player.

fiender66

@fred4

Very interesting post yours one, and much to learn from it.

Allow me though to stress one or two points: each one of us has a his/her own, different concept of fun. For me fun in ESO is playing in relaxed way, not necessarily avoiding challenges, but staying definitely away from long, repetitive, sometimes frustrating tasks. That's why I do not enjoy trials, some vet dungeons, and arenas, and even many boring WB.

Staying for a full hour in vMA or the like has no appeal to me, or at least it has no more (once I was motivated differently, or attracted by novelty, who knows...).
To give an example of my moderate kind of fun: this afternoon I went with my magplar against that big scorpion in Craglorn. Sure this is incommensurably easier than the Argonian Behemoth, but is a bad customer anyways. I sported a funny set: Maw+Mad Tinkerer+Withered Hand, and was assisted by a companion that I levelled as a hybrid tank/healer. No prob OFC for the task, and my fun was looking at my personal zoo coming to help, while I never went below 80% of mag or health (always doing damage, OFC). This took some 4', the same stretch of time that the same build uses to solo FG1 (skipping). Ah, I was forgetting, once or twice she killed the Mad Guar solo, and those pesky resurrected kings who auto heal in that Craglorn dungeon are no problem (always with the same funny zoo build, LOL).

Now, for the opportunity to let it go with Mag or Stam max. Sure you can do whatever challenging content with a tank-like build. I know one who kills dragon in NE this way. However, you have to use every skill sparingly, with an insane amount of HA, else you drain your mag/stam in a whiff and are a sitting duck. No problem if you enjoy this kind of slow paced gaming, but it is not my cup of tea

fred4

@fiender66: The OP asked for a sturdy build. My question to them is: How sturdy do you want it? When I talk about my stamsorc being a tank, she still does decent damage, but she is extremely sturdy. I'll elaborate on that below. I'm guessing the OP's baseline is a squishy trial DD build. There is a whole spectrum of sturdiness beyond that. Do they want a slightly more comfortable DD that still does a lot of damage? Drop in something like Hexos Ward into your old build. Do they want a fun role-playing build? Go with something like you are running. Do they want the best tanky solo build? I can't help you with templar as of right now, but you could try my stamsorc.

fiender66 wrote: »

Staying for a full hour in vMA or the like has no appeal to me, or at least it has no more (once I was motivated differently, or attracted by novelty, who knows...).

A single hour is actually very good for me historically. That results in a 500K+ score too. Even my templar in full DD mode has managed no better than 48 minutes. I believe the top players do vMA in under half an hour. For that you really need to know your spawn points, your rotations and run a super glass cannon.

To give an example of my moderate kind of fun: this afternoon I went with my magplar against that big scorpion in Craglorn. Sure this is incommensurably easier than the Argonian Behemoth, but is a bad customer anyways. I sported a funny set: Maw+Mad Tinkerer+Withered Hand, and was assisted by a companion that I levelled as a hybrid tank/healer. No prob OFC for the task, and my fun was looking at my personal zoo coming to help, while I never went below 80% of mag or health (always doing damage, OFC). This took some 4', the same stretch of time that the same build uses to solo FG1 (skipping). Ah, I was forgetting, once or twice she killed the Mad Guar solo, and those pesky resurrected kings who auto heal in that Craglorn dungeon are no problem (always with the same funny zoo build, LOL).

That sounds like fun and I think it's relevant to hear what everyone of us, giving advice, is doing, so the OP gets an idea of the level of difficulty or role-playing we're targeting.

The impetus for my stamsorc first came from another forum thread that asked how far you could push a Brawler build with Gaze of Sithis. Whether you could be a dungeon tank with such a setup. Gaze of Sithis has long been dropped and, for dungeon tanking I have found that a Brawler setup, broadly speaking, only works up to the non-DLC vet level. For DLC vet dungeons it's usually better to switch to a conventional tank. This investigation led to me refining my stamsorc for PUG tanking and stickerbook farming, up to and including vet DLC dungeons. You can, however, use the build solo. In it's Brawler variation it is as much a solo / carry build as it is a tank. It deals damage and it sustains and it taunts. It's probably quite unlike any tank you're imagining:

Now, for the opportunity to let it go with Mag or Stam max. Sure you can do whatever challenging content with a tank-like build.

Nope. You actually can't. For example my stamsorc is very borderline for the DPS check in vVateshran, the ring of shades. The only way I can reliably handle that is by slotting Streak to escape the ring. This works on stamsorc, but not all classes have a similar solution.

Another counter-example is soloing vet Scalecaller Peak. Due to the mechanics in the Doylemish fight, you need a ranged build. As it turns out, if you want to solo the very hardest stuff that can be soloed, such as this, people tend to use lightning staff heavy attack builds for that, e.g. kiting builds, not tanky melee builds.

I know one who kills dragon in NE this way. However, you have to use every skill sparingly, with an insane amount of HA, else you drain your mag/stam in a whiff and are a sitting duck. No problem if you enjoy this kind of slow paced gaming, but it is not my cup of tea

My tank is not like that. This is the thing about the game as it stands today. It's very flexible. You can build for hitting the resistance cap in any armor type. You don't want to wear heavy. You want 60% to 90% of your armor to be light or medium for the sustain. In addition I wear Vicious Ophidian or False God, as applicable. On my tank. I'm not a meta player. Meta dudes wouldn't do such a thing, but in reality you can run a Brawler sustain build and solo everything up to vet non-DLC dungeons with that. As long as you taunt, most people won't even notice you're an unusual tank. Here are the 3 build variations I run:

1. Solo build: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=444134
2. Brawler dungeon tank: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=421256
3. Conventional dungeon tank: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=433679

So why does this work so well?

• I'm built for crit to do damage and to keep proccing Crit Surge for healing.
• I never use my ultimate. Instead I slot Temporal Guard for damage reduction and use Strategic Reserve CP for health regen. Note the overall health regen of the build, about 3.7K. Passive, consistent healing from health regen plus Crit Surge / Hurricane is very effective when it's protected by the Brawler shield, or even when it's not.
• If you run Brawler, you absolutely positively need to sustain with Vicious Ophidian, but there is also Dark Deal and 2.4K stam regen.

Maybe it's the health regen. Crit Surge. The Dark Deal sustain. The Master's 2H. The Maelstrom 2H. The 15% damage reduction from slotted skills. The 56% crit from Medusa. The sustain from VO. The combination of all of that allows for a build that breaks rules. I have soloed the final boss in vet Cauldron hard mode with the Brawler variation of this build when my group died. I've ignored the spiders in vet Maelstrom arena 6 with this, the ones you're supposed to lead to the light so they disappear. Those kill every other build. Instead I kept them around and used them to amp up my Brawler damage on the boss. And so on. This build has around 50% crit and 4.5K weapon damage. You actually melt stuff in vMA with this. Killing bosses is a little slow, but on the other hand you can ignore half their mechanics and keep hitting them.

fiender66

Hey @fred4 this is a really awesome post (done)!
This one is my favourite section in the forum, and maybe the only one where you can get such a useful amount of information (this time from your part, at least )

Only out of wish to show how different the styles of gaming can be, I'm giving a resume of my builds as for now:

First, I have my idiosyncrasies: I only raise Breton or Bosmer. Why? Cuz I know them well and I like their appearance and animations in ESO. Templar is my fav class by far. My fault, but I never got along well with sorcs. Last, I try to stay cheap as mach as I can. Meta is not relevant for me, as I solo most of the time.

1. Magplar, Breton, my main dd. I've already spoken at length about her.
2. Stamplar, Bosmer, a brawler/jabber proper (with Stampede and Caltrops). Hexos+Sellistrix+Deadly or Hexos+Ice(!)+Briar. Thief. Terrific AoE, especially with the first build (not a surprise). Very, very good single target damage. Can speed run FG1 in less than 4'. Her problem is that she is rather squishy and, when there are no mobs or alts around, can run out of fuel, Repentance being heavily relied upon for sustain. The DPS though is so good that this is almost never an issue.
3. Tank, magnecro, Breton. A rather non conventional tank with two staves (light and frost) equipped. With 45k+ of health and the Steed she easily survives, and is more aimed towards support. Taunts with IF and does some (little) damage with Syphon and Blockade. Used only for PUG random, when I need stones or for Undaunted pledges. Ages that I do not go to vets: my collection of monster sets almost fills my bank space already.
4. Healer, magden, Bosmer. Very conventional and used more or less as my tank. I could change to a mag class, but there is no real need to put crowns into it.
5. Last, but not least, what has been my older main, an almost 6 yrs old Breton magplar now dedicated to crafting (close to Master). I use her to roam around overland farming mats and golds. She covered all and every map in Tamriel (no quest left aside) and got almost all exploratory achievements (this means less now, after AWA).

Hope to have been at least entertaining. I like to see how others play, so this post is more descriptive than "educational".

Mascen

@fred4
@fiender66
Wow was not expecting this much info but thanks a ton you two! Definitely alot to digest and maybe i should explain my current (crap) loadout to elaborate where im coming from and my concerns.

Long story short its a combo of song of Lamae + Morihaus with the willpower ring set, all heavy 2h frontbar staff on the backbar. I know, its utter garbage and i've been planning to overhaul it for a while but both armor sets have saved my hide from things that have oneshotted others countless times. Especially Morihaus, bowling balling through mobs has often given me the time to cast a panic heal.

So I guess I'm looking for to elaborate is something that enhances my DPS while not sacrificing too much for the notorious squishiness of light armor. Not exactly a panic button proc but something that's there when I need it to keep me from going under. Hexos' Ward is definitely appealing, but my major concern is if i could use those 5 slots for another set and use the monster set for something more defensive like Iceheart instead of nerineth or Thierric.

The main appeal of thierric for me was the AOE increase since spear jabs is technichally an area attack and Luminous spear would also benefit from it, both are bread and butter of my main bar along with radiant oppression and purifying light. So my mindset was focus on the main spam attacks in the weave.

fred4

Can you let us know what the things are that have oneshotted others countless times? Just to get some idea of the content you're playing.

Heavy armor is the domain of some PvP builds and PvE tanks. Maybe some healers. If you spec away from light armor as a magplar, you'll take a noticeable sustain and damage hit. Magplar has a crit damage passive. That said, these days you tend to wear a mixture of medium and light as a DD, as medium now also buffs spell damage and templar also has a spell damage boosting passive. I typically wear 1 or 2 medium, 5 or 6 light, since I like the sustain, e.g. in the Hexos Ward setup. With my resistance setup I wear 1 heavy, 2 medium, 4 light, I think. The loss of damage, switching away from the near optimal Hexos Ward plus Nerieneth to Aetherial Ascension plus Gaze of Sithis, is already quite noticeable.

That said, I have nothing against the sets you are wearing. It's not how I build, thus I simply can't judge how effective your build is. What puzzles me is how you sustain. Heavy armor gives you some sustain while being attacked and the templar sustain rune is very good. However, heavy armor is designed for blocking builds. Templar is not a blocking class, due to it's channeled abilities. It's medium that supports dode rolling and, as of recent patches, also light. Thus Morihaus in a heavy build sounds suspect to me. When you say it saves you, is that because you're running out of magicka?

I have a hunch that this all comes down to playstyle. The most effective solo playstyle in my experience is to stay relentlessly on the attack. A Puncturing Sweeps spamming templar is a happy templar. If you die while spamming Sweeps, then you have simple options ranging from upping your health via attributes (or Hakeijo enchants) to wearing Hexos Ward to building for greater resistances. Your first priority, though, has to be your sustain. It is, perhaps, terribly boring to advocate Sweeps spamming when you are in a jam, but I do believe that is the most effective thing. If you are doing difficult content and you die, because you run out of magicka and have to heavy attack, then fixing your sustain should be your first priority. I mean, maybe stunning everything with Morihaus, then doing a heavy attack, is fun, I don't know. I obviously wear False God and that's the end of pretty much all sustain problems.

As to upping your damage. Sure, increasing your AOE damage is good. However, the templar meta is to use a fire staff or dual-wield in trials. Apparently, if you weave light attacks and do a full trial rotation, a fire staff - which buffs single target damage - is better in the all-important boss fights. This is despite the fact that even the single-target component of Sweeps counts as AOE and is buffed by a lightning staff, not a fire staff. I'm just throwing this out there, so you know what people do in trials. That said, for solo play I think a lightning staff (or dual-wield) is much preferrable. As to Prior Thierric, that set seems to have a 50% uptime at best. I can't say whether it's good. It's worth a try, I suppose. The Whirlwind is probably stationary. I think that would count against it.

In general, if you want to do damage, you build for crit. This is especially true on templar. Proc sets are viable, but so is plain old crit. Again, this is one of the boring facts about the game. If you wear False God, you get 2 lines of crit and 1 line of permanent Minor Slayer. Thierric gives you 5% extra AOE damage 50% of the time. False God gives you 5% to all damage all the time and gives you crit and movement speed and a ton of sustain. You could, of course, stack the two.

Other simple aspects of the build are very important. Bloodthirsty jewelry. Usually all spell damage enchants. The Thief mundus. Divines armor. A Precise front bar weapon and an Infused Maelstrom destro staff back bar. Sustain should be covered by False God, Channeled Focus and Witchmother's Potent Brew. I hate to say it: Light and medium armor. You want 50% crit, preferably 70% if not running some proc that makes up for it. More crit, more damage, more healing from Sweeps. More crit heals from your healing skill(s). My way of building is to keep these things constant. If I feel too squishy I either add the Hexos Ward Shield or I get to the resistance cap (33K) with my Gaze of Sithis plus Aetherial Ascension setup.

fred4

In case you want to study the all-important details, here are my builds:

Deadly Strike (all damage): https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=450114
Hexos Ward (with shield): https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=418221
Ascension (high resistance and health regen): https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=450113

My skill layout harkens back to PvP. Let's go over that:

• Puncturing Sweeps - Your spammable
• Camou Hunter - Spell damage from Fighter's Guild passive, Major Prophecy and Minor Berserk, beats Inner Light
• Degeneration - Not a great skill, but this + Camou Hunter covers Sorcery and Prophecy, allowing you to use cheap potions or daily reward / tri-stat potions
• Radiant Glory - Execute from range and heal
• Solar Barrage - Another not great skill, but gives you and the group Minor Sorcery from templar passive - more overall damage
• Flawless Dawnbreaker - More passive damage increase from Fighter's guild. I rarely use this actively.

• Unstable Wall - The all important skill that keeps your Infused back bar enchant procced and activates the vMA destro, even after bar swap
• Honor the Dead - Emergency Heal. Alternatively try Harness Magicka or Dampen Magic. Some people prefer that.
• Channeled Focus - Sustain and resistances. Essential.
• Blazing Spear - I personally find the damage unconvincing, but it gives the synergy for group play and can be thrown from a distance, while you are approaching the target. For solo play I move Solar Barrage here and slot Toppling Charge on the front bar instead.
• Race Against Time - I cannot live without this skill in any content. PvP habit, I suppose. Removes roots and snares. Means you use less stamina for dodge rolling. The Minor Force is nice to have. I use this skill for movement. Also good to catch up with the group, if they ran ahead.
• Shooting Star - I usually use this ultimate.

fred4

Some additional notes: I use Degeneration, Camou Hunter and Solar Barrage, because those skills last reasonably long or don't need to be cast at all. This means my percentage of using Sweeps goes up. Sweeps is your heal. Honor the Dead is strictly for emergencies or when you have nothing to hit in front of you. Sweeps in combination with these sets and passive buffs does a lot of damage. 60K+ on the trial dummy.

Of course, if you want to use Spell Power / Crit potions, you could ditch Camou Hunter and Degeneration. You could also replace Solar Barrage with Power of the Light. However this means you will have skills other than Sweeps to cast more often. Solar Barrage is pretty crap, but you can precast it before combat and it lasts for 10 seconds. Purifying Light or Power of the Light is the meta skill that also gives Minor Sorcery, but you need a target and you need to keep it up every 6 seconds. I prefer the simplicity of the Solar Barrage. I'm not aiming for much over 70K of trial dummy damage with this build, but that's fine.

Sweeps keeps you alive. You run in and cast Blazing Spear + Unstable Wall as you do so. Then you jab. I use Degeneration and Solar Barrage inbetween jabs, when I'm sure nothing is going to one shot me right there and then. As long as you jab, you are safe. It's when you stop, because you need to reposition or your rotation forces you to the back bar that you are vulnerable. When in doubt, block as you are recasting Channeled Focus or anything on the back bar. Yeah, you'll miss some light attacks, but so what. Of course, the idea behind the Sithis setup was to not block and be tanky. This works to a degree, but as I mentioned there are other setups, e.g. my stamsorc, that are far tankier.

Finally, Living Dark is pretty OP - one of the must have skills in PvP - but will be nerfed next patch. As it only lasts for 6 seconds, you would put that on your front bar and cast inbetween Sweeps. I don't usually do this in PvE, but it's an option worth mentioning.

fiender66

@Mascen

Happy to help, always. And to do it a bit more, from what I can gather from your last post, what you are looking for is some build that is basically damaging, and not fragile as tinfoil at the same time. Correct?

One useful information would be what exactly do you want to do with it. Roam overland without shying from WB's? Solo dungeons (and which type of them)? Arenas? Participate in trials? Imperial City? All of those according to your whim? The (near)optimal build solution for each task is different, sometimes slightly, sometimes greatly.

Anyways, IMHO (and I mean my real experience, not dummies nor borrowing from others) is that a simple, rather cheap build that can do the basic work is Hexos+Withered hand+Iceheart. You have all light (Hexos on weap/gems, OFC), but really great sustain and 2 shields. With precise and divines and Thief as Mundus. Again, this is simple, not by any means meta or optimised for trials and arenas, but does the every day work in an astounding way, and it is really cheap and easy to get. If you can stomach farming Tempest Island for a week or so, Overwhelming surge is somehow better than WH, but not very much so.

As for skills, pls consider that they give VERY different results depending on how they are used. As an example, what works FOR ME is weaving each puncture with at least TWO light attacks. This is definitely not what any expert would recommend, but fits well with my fingers, my hardware, my ping and who knows how many other elements. I found it through experimenting. One had to do the same.

Last, do not underestimate the help that a companion can give. If you can afford it (i.e., if you own Blackwood), Bastian with 2 procs skills in the first slots (Funnel one of them for sure), and a toughening equip can be of real help.

Feel free to ask for more details, if you need them. And most of all, have fun.

fred4

@Mascen, in case this is confusing, what @fiender66 and I are recommending is much the same thing. Damage shields and sustain from doing damage. The two of us are on the same page. Use Hexos Ward alone or stack it with Iceheart. The latter may well be the sweet spot. Iceheart also gives you a line of crit, which is exactly what you want. It's a drop-in replacement in any of my builds and, who knows, maybe that's actually better than 1x Sithis plus 1x Slimecraw for example, because you can block.

False God, Withered Hand, Overwhelming Surge, and Vengeance Leech for that matter, are all the same idea as well. Sustain from doing damage (though Overwhelming errs on the pure damage side). That's the most important feature of those sets. If you have False God in your stickerbook, then that is the recommended set, because of the amount of other stuff it gives you that is all exactly what you want. This elevates that set to crop up in some trial player's recommended lists (maybe Overwhelming too, tbh). False God or, more to the point, it's older stamina counterpart, Vicious Ophidian, have been the recommended sets for the solo arenas since forever. Nothing has changed. These are evergreen sets for solo play.

If you look at YouTubers who do solo builds, Hack the Minotaur and others, you'll see them mention damage shields as the number one solution for defense, just as the two of us are doing. Damage shields are best thought of as a temporary health extension. A bigger health pool protects you from what might otherwise be a one shot. Higher resistances up to the 33K cap will do the same thing by minimizing damage, but usually if you build for resistances you end up making more compromises that lower your damage output. Less damage, less crit, less healing. By and large that's not good, except in PvP where build patterns are entirely different and heavy armor has a larger role. I should also clarify that, when talking about shields, we mean shields that you get "for free", such as the Hexos Ward and Iceheart shields. Shields that you have to cast without doing damage, e.g. Harness Magicka / Dampen, are for emergency use only. Used regulary (spammed), such shields only push your problem down the line and can be counterproductive. Those skills are also very magicka hungry.

My stamsorc works because it combines all of these things. It has a higher health pool. It has some of the biggest and most consistent shields in the game from Brawler spam against multiple targets. It is at the resistance cap and it's not hampered by Gaze of Sithis or having a channeled spammable, so it can block on top of everything. It even has high health regen and matches templar's healing from damage with Crit Surge. And it has sustain. It's very hard to square the circle and combine all of those things into one build. I think a templar will never match a stamsorc for how comfortable / tanky it can be made to feel in solo play. On the other hand a jabbing templar has more inherent single target damage and you generally don't need to be as tanky as my stamsorc, unless you want to cross over into actual tanking or soloing stuff that can normally only be done with a group.

I also just want to draw attention to the basics again. It's all for nought if you don't have those right. Take 3 Infused weapon or spell damage jewelry enchants, for example. You would get 834 weapon or spell damage from those. Not saying you should use Infused jewelry, because Bloodthirsty is the meta for PvE, but just to put armor sets in perspective. No armor set gives you that much weapon / spell damage. Hardly any set gives you as much crit as Divines gear with the Thief mundus and a Precise weapon - daggers if you are using dual-wield - either. Paying attention to these build details is as important, if not more so, than the armor sets you are wearing. This is how you can deviate from the trial meta, which stacks everything into damage, and still make builds that kick butt.

Mascen

@fred4
@fiender66

Yeah a lot of good info guys still alot for me to digest but I'll try to elaborate and articulate further of what i'm looking for. And yeah that medium armor info is great news. I left shortly before Southern Elsweyr dropped and only returned last March.

1. On my current loadout and what im looking for, I've known fire staffs were good for single target damage for a long time but generally preferred using lightning staffs because i had issues locking on when casting heavy attacks to regain magic on fire staffs whereas I found with lightning I could lock on far easier and be able to change the camera mid attack and focus on strafing more from AOEs, boss mob grunt heavy/stunning strikes, etc. But in hindsight maybe I just need to try again and get better with fire staffs, maybe switch up my back bar more since the only real destruction abilites I use are the Ultimate storm and destructive reach. Also need to learn how to do proper weaving loops since my current plan is basically blazing spear+ backlash, spam spears till they wear off, switch to radiant oppression once below 50% swap to backbar and heavy lightning staff if i need more magic than a potion can provide, and spam heal as necessary or if the healer dies/needs backup.

2. As for what has one shotted me previously? Mostly veteran bosses pre-hiatus and Vet trials bosses like Hel-Ra Citadel. But since I've come back I've also been occasionally oneshotted by newer dungeon bosses like that yaghra looking boss in Coral aerie with the whirlpools and the maomer final boss in shipwrights regret and those were on normal, granted they were on the daily random dungeon runs with no communication and I was going in blind on the dungeon/boss mechanics.

3. And to elaborate on Morihaus, it stemmed back pre hiatus when I was on ad (mob grunt) control in trials, dungeons and occasionally soloing world bosses for daily quests. Often they'd be coming at me from all sides like some of the anka-ra in VHRC while the healer was preoccupied or I was out of range and one would be charging up a heavy/knockdown attack that I knew would floor me and have me killed by the rest of the mob I hadn't killed yet. So Morihaus (at least back then because it appears it doesn't do damage anymore) would give me the few seconds I needed to cause a brief respite and heal.

Oddly enough my second toon is a stamsorc Orc but hes waaaay on the backburner becuase my magplar is my OG/crafter/main focus. I was thinking of giving him the Morihaus stuff since his build is another slapdash build of Defilers + twiceborn + stormfist. Also should build a tank and healer eventually but that's even further on the backburner.

4. As for what I'm looking to tackle now? Vateshran Hollows has been on my eye for a while now because I want that black dye and the maebroogha trophy. Problem is I got floored in Maelstrom Arena when Orsinium first dropped so I've been very apprehensive on tackling arenas since. Trials would be another area for similar reasons as far as dyes/trophies but i also like that Kynes Aegis banner and since I finally squirreled away enough gold to buy Proudspire yesterday (hate the creepy Western Skyrim music, but thats another issue and I have to either get a music box I like or brown-nose here on the forums and cross my fingers some ZOS higher up shows me mercy and implements my suggestion). Anyways also veteran dungeons so that I can farm/sell motifs.

5. As for what I'm looking for currently? Well like you've explained Hexos' Ward is very appealing and does have great refresh times and relatively easy seeming procs on spear jabs given it just needs 1 crit to trigger. I suppose the issue with that is whether I'm overthinking the losses in resistance/health/armor too much and maybe i should put more effort into DPS. But then again maybe I should invest in multiple sets; I could design the equipment loadouts so that I can have both solo and trials/dungeon PVE builds and hybridize between the two for general play just by swapping out specific sets as entire chunks like lego blocks. Bahsei appealed to me mainly because it affects all NPCs and as my magplar is a Breton and I got mag +spell crit/power potions up the wazoo in addition to tricrown restoration potions, sustain hasn't been much of an issue for me, or at least it feels like it hasn't.

And if I havent said it already thanks again for all your help guys.

fred4

1. I agree on lightning staff heavy attacks for sustain. I would always run at least one lightning destro (front bar or back bar) or a resto staff (back bar) for this reason. That said, the more pressure you are under in solo play, the less time you have for heavy attacks and the more you should aim to sustain without them, unless you run an actual heavy attack build, which is a different kettle of fish altogether and most suited to magicka DKs. Actually a heavy attack templar using Solar Barrage (Empower) may also work. That would be a templar not using Sweeps, though, so why would you do that to yourself? In trials you should also aim to sustain without heavy attacks as much as possible, e.g. make maximum use of synergies and provide them for others.

Like I said, you should not run fire staves just because the trial meta says so. You and I both are running a fairly minimal rotation while spamming a lot of Sweeps. In that case I actually think a lightning staff is better ... or dual-wield. I prefer the staff.

2. If bosses one shot you in group content then, by and large, that means the tank isn't doing his / her job. Higher mitigation setups with shields or high resistances are primarily useful in solo play. They are somewhat useful in 4-man group play. In trials they are not all that useful, since you are liable to be one shot anyway if the tanks and healers aren't up to the job. Positioning yourself correctly so the healer can do their job and you are not surrounded by enemies on all sides is the most important thing. For example in Sunspire you want to be between the face and the right-hand wing of the dragon. You don't want to be too far to the right, e.g. outside of the wing, because the dragon will one shot you by lashing out with it's wing, if you do that. This will be a one shot pretty much regardless of what you wear.

4. vMA is far, far easier these days than when Orsinium dropped, due to power creep. Any of the setups we mentioned should be good, though I will say that having health regen helps where ground AOEs deal damage to you and you momentarily lack a target to proc a shield or heal from, e.g. vMA arena 2 and the Vateshran second red arena boss. A trick is to use Strategic Reserve CP and not use your ultimate to add health regen to any build. On the other hand the final Vateshran boss includes a DPS check. I'm not aware of any tricks templar has to bypass that. Having sufficient damage and a good rotation is key there. Even though the 400ms cast delay on gap closers is horrible, I also recommend Toppling Charge to deal with "taking aim" archers and fire mages. Toppling Charge will interrupt and stun them.

If you want to significantly ease vMA and vVateshran and you can't get anywhere otherwise, I would recommend making an exact copy of my sorc tank, either of the two Brawler variations. The combination of damage, tankiness and ease of play is unmatched by any other build I've ever played. You don't need perfected Dragonstar and Maelstrom weapons. The normal ones would do. Markyn and Medusa are optional. You could use Hexos Ward instead of Medusa and Iceheart instead of Markyn + Slimecraw in the respective build variations. The arena weapon(s) and Vicious Ophidian are key, though, as is the Tormentor set, if you go for that build variation. It doesn't just taunt. It also gets you to the resistance cap. You will still be a little under the cap on Orc, so perhaps that will be the variation to run on that race, rather than the squishier Medusa / vMA 2H build.

fred4