The existential agony of playing a templar support

Leia98

so yes, the title
when do you guys think you are going to bring some love for templar healers and tanks on the table? Every single other class has some unique buffs for the whole group, or at least some viable utility;
with warden you literally heal and give them a health buff, let alone the giant group-wide armor buff
arcanist literally has a skill that gives minor courage
nightblade pairs great with pillagers because of its strong ultigen, and pillagers being the healer meta set atm, its in a very strong position
Sorc gives major berserk with its ulti
Dks literally have stagger, nothing else to say
why nothing unique for templar supports? don't you think there's something wrong here? I know that we can basically give perma recovery buff to the group, but not only is it not unique, because warden stands out more because it has better utility. and guess what? warden also has a skill that gives recovery when you heal them.

Tyrant_Tim

Templar tanks are consistently tiered at the bottom of every list, and rather than address the pain points, they give DK one of the best support sets in the game.

Leia98

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

Templar tanks are consistently tiered at the bottom of every list, and rather than address the pain points, they give DK one of the best support sets in the game, a set that has very ugly visual though, might I add.

at this point i feel like they are either doing this on purpose or they don't play their own game, i dont know which one is worse

Tyrant_Tim

Leia98 wrote: »

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

Templar tanks are consistently tiered at the bottom of every list, and rather than address the pain points, they give DK one of the best support sets in the game, a set that has very ugly visual though, might I add.

at this point i feel like they are either doing this on purpose or they don't play their own game, i dont know which one is worse

I was really hoping these class sets would be 1-3 piece sets that buffed individual abilities, and that our Templar one could have been a buff to Sun Shield or Radiant Aura, but nope, instead we get a gimmick of a set that only Cyrodiil ball groups will be running.

Leia98

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

Leia98 wrote: »

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

Templar tanks are consistently tiered at the bottom of every list, and rather than address the pain points, they give DK one of the best support sets in the game, a set that has very ugly visual though, might I add.

at this point i feel like they are either doing this on purpose or they don't play their own game, i dont know which one is worse

I was really hoping these class sets would be 1-3 piece sets that buffed individual abilities, and that our Templar one could have been a buff to Sun Shield or Radiant Aura, but nope, instead we get a gimmick of a set that only Cyrodiil ball groups will be running.

lets see what class sets they'll bring up next patches, especially looking for the restoring light set

loveeso

Leia98 wrote: »

so yes, the title
when do you guys think you are going to bring some love for templar healers and tanks on the table? Every single other class has some unique buffs for the whole group, or at least some viable utility;
with warden you literally heal and give them a health buff, let alone the giant group-wide armor buff
arcanist literally has a skill that gives minor courage
nightblade pairs great with pillagers because of its strong ultigen, and pillagers being the healer meta set atm, its in a very strong position
Sorc gives major berserk with its ulti
Dks literally have stagger, nothing else to say
why nothing unique for templar supports? don't you think there's something wrong here? I know that we can basically give perma recovery buff to the group, but not only is it not unique, because warden stands out more because it has better utility. and guess what? warden also has a skill that gives recovery when you heal them.

I do agree that Templars should receive some love but they do have useful skills that benefit the whole group. Off the top of my head:

1. Minor Sorcery for the group
2. Minor Endurance, Fortitude, and Intellect for the group
3. Additional cleanse
4. Light Weaver for faster ultimate gain by the group (this should probably be buffed)
5. 100% more health for resurrected allies

Tyrant_Tim

loveeso wrote: »

Leia98 wrote: »

so yes, the title
when do you guys think you are going to bring some love for templar healers and tanks on the table? Every single other class has some unique buffs for the whole group, or at least some viable utility;
with warden you literally heal and give them a health buff, let alone the giant group-wide armor buff
arcanist literally has a skill that gives minor courage
nightblade pairs great with pillagers because of its strong ultigen, and pillagers being the healer meta set atm, its in a very strong position
Sorc gives major berserk with its ulti
Dks literally have stagger, nothing else to say
why nothing unique for templar supports? don't you think there's something wrong here? I know that we can basically give perma recovery buff to the group, but not only is it not unique, because warden stands out more because it has better utility. and guess what? warden also has a skill that gives recovery when you heal them.

I do agree that Templars should receive some love but they do have useful skills that benefit the whole group. Off the top of my head:

1. Minor Sorcery for the group
2. Minor Endurance, Fortitude, and Intellect for the group
3. Additional cleanse
4. Light Weaver for faster ultimate gain by the group (this should probably be buffed)
5. 100% more health for resurrected allies

Alright, none of those mentioned things are better than other iterations found on other classes.

None of them are unique.

Minor Sorcery does not stack with Brutality, and Dragonknights are the most popular class in the game, yielding your passive useless.

Arcanist, Nightblade, and Warden provide those Minor Recoveries with additional benefits, whereas you ONLY get those on the ability.

There’s only one fight that comes to mind where a cleanse is useful and even then, Efficient Purge is better, as it’s a 12-man activity that halves your group.

Light Weaver has a condition that requires you to heal a target under 50% health, which if you’re a good healer, you’re never healing anyone under 50%, and when it does proc, it procs one time, as your heal would spike them over 50%. Meanwhile, Arcanist grants Minor Heroism to targets under 50%… which continuously grants ultimate for 6 seconds.

Finally, nobody should be dying in your group if you’re supporting them.

Reverb

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

loveeso wrote: »

Leia98 wrote: »

so yes, the title
when do you guys think you are going to bring some love for templar healers and tanks on the table? Every single other class has some unique buffs for the whole group, or at least some viable utility;
with warden you literally heal and give them a health buff, let alone the giant group-wide armor buff
arcanist literally has a skill that gives minor courage
nightblade pairs great with pillagers because of its strong ultigen, and pillagers being the healer meta set atm, its in a very strong position
Sorc gives major berserk with its ulti
Dks literally have stagger, nothing else to say
why nothing unique for templar supports? don't you think there's something wrong here? I know that we can basically give perma recovery buff to the group, but not only is it not unique, because warden stands out more because it has better utility. and guess what? warden also has a skill that gives recovery when you heal them.

I do agree that Templars should receive some love but they do have useful skills that benefit the whole group. Off the top of my head:

1. Minor Sorcery for the group
2. Minor Endurance, Fortitude, and Intellect for the group
3. Additional cleanse
4. Light Weaver for faster ultimate gain by the group (this should probably be buffed)
5. 100% more health for resurrected allies

There’s only one fight that comes to mind where a cleanse is useful and even then, Efficient Purge is better, as it’s a 12-man activity that halves your group.
.

And Efficient Purge doesn’t need to be synergized. The Templar purify is really of limited benefit as a cleanse due to the synergy cooldown, and is just a mediocre HoT most of the time.

Leia98

loveeso wrote: »

Leia98 wrote: »

so yes, the title
when do you guys think you are going to bring some love for templar healers and tanks on the table? Every single other class has some unique buffs for the whole group, or at least some viable utility;
with warden you literally heal and give them a health buff, let alone the giant group-wide armor buff
arcanist literally has a skill that gives minor courage
nightblade pairs great with pillagers because of its strong ultigen, and pillagers being the healer meta set atm, its in a very strong position
Sorc gives major berserk with its ulti
Dks literally have stagger, nothing else to say
why nothing unique for templar supports? don't you think there's something wrong here? I know that we can basically give perma recovery buff to the group, but not only is it not unique, because warden stands out more because it has better utility. and guess what? warden also has a skill that gives recovery when you heal them.

I do agree that Templars should receive some love but they do have useful skills that benefit the whole group. Off the top of my head:

1. Minor Sorcery for the group
2. Minor Endurance, Fortitude, and Intellect for the group
3. Additional cleanse
4. Light Weaver for faster ultimate gain by the group (this should probably be buffed)
5. 100% more health for resurrected allies

as it's been said, my point is that none of those are unique to templar. there is no reason to include any templar support in a raid at the moment specifically because of this, and i think it's a shame because templar has a very good healing kit that makes a perfect healer. it just needs a unique buff to provide.

tincanman

Leia98 wrote: »

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

Templar tanks are consistently tiered at the bottom of every list, and rather than address the pain points, they give DK one of the best support sets in the game, a set that has very ugly visual though, might I add.

at this point i feel like they are either doing this on purpose or they don't play their own game, i dont know which one is worse

spreadsheets: probably a LOT of templars still around from way-back, before warhorn was nerfed to give its health booster to wardens and templars were vampirically drained of mending to feed wardens(and later nb) as healers.

But increased resurrection speed with a CHANCE to fill an empty soul gem!!!!! Awesome!! /s

Reverb

There is exactly one thing that a Templar has over other healing classes. Does it get any unique buffs or passives? No. Does it have any class skills that are better, or even as good as, any other class? No.

With one situational exception. The ability to have a shard and an orb active at the same time. You can provide resources to two different places when needed.

That’s it. That’s literally the only reason to ever choose Templar over another class.

loveeso

Light Weaver has one advantage over named buffs such as Minor Heroism - it stacks with other sources of ultimate generation (e.g. Minor Heroism from pots, abilities, or Oakensoul) and, as I have written earlier, I think LW would be a good candidate for buffing. The 50% HP activation threshold makes it much less attractive than it could be. Any ideas for some good ways to improve it?

Leia98

loveeso wrote: »

Light Weaver has one advantage over named buffs such as Minor Heroism - it stacks with other sources of ultimate generation (e.g. Minor Heroism from pots, abilities, or Oakensoul) and, as I have written earlier, I think LW would be a good candidate for buffing. The 50% HP activation threshold makes it much less attractive than it could be. Any ideas for some good ways to improve it?

this is actually a good point, maybe it could give 2 Ultimate when you activate a skill from the skill line itself? or 1, if it's going to be too strong
or maybe they can take percentage from 50 to 70, but i feel like my first suggestion will be better

also, very few people actually talk about the joke we have that is the templar tank. it is also very unfair that a class in the game never has the chance to tank anything, because it's always at the bottom.

Billium813

I think some of Templar's issues lay in their passives, not necessarily the skills. Sure, Shards could be on it's own cooldown and not share with Orbs; that could help make Templar more appealing as a support. However, I think the passives are really where the issues are.

The issue with Brutality vs Sorcery and their redundancy is a bigger issue. It makes the conversation more DK vs Templar, rather than a mixture. That's not good for the game. If Templar is best, then DK would suffer. If DK is BIS, then Templar is left out. They really need to clean up this hybridization.

Some Passive changes I'd like to see:

• Spear Wall

  Upon activating an Aedric Spear ability. You and allies within 5 meters gain Minor Protection for 6 seconds, reducing damage taken by 5%.

  Developer Note
  One pain point for Templar is that they don't provide enough utility in groups. It should be baked into the Templar class to protect allies near them. At the moment, non-Templars have access to Frost Impulse and Circle of Protection, Necros get Bone Totem, Wardens have Maturation. It seems safe to establish Minor Protection as a Templar group buff for nearby allies and allies should be rewarded for standing near their closest Templar ally with a wall of protecting spears!
• Prism

  Casting a Dawn's Wrath ability while in combat generates 1 Ultimate to you and your group. This effect can occur once every 8 seconds.

  Developer Note
  This change is meant to give Templar's more group utility and encourage their usage in group compositions. Perhaps unique Heroism could be too strong, so this could be change to Minor Heroism.
• Illuminate

  Damaging an enemy with a Dawn's Wrath ability sets the enemy off balance and have a 50% chance to miss for 3 seconds. This effect can occur once every 15 seconds.

  Developer Note
  Templar Tanking could really use some extra love. Dawn's Wrath is almost totally DPS dominated (minus Living Dark). Adding a support passive to Dawn's Wrath would really help re-align the skill line.
• Sacred Ground

  While standing within your Restoring Light area effects, and for 2 seconds after leaving, gain Minor Mending, reduce the cost of non-Ultimate Restoring Light abilities by 30%, and increase the amount of damage you can block by 10%.

  Developer Note
  Templar's identity is "sacred ground". They hold the line, stand their ground, and build a house to live in! Unfortunately though, combat is OFTEN mobile. Well designed combat shifts around the area, enemies move and perform actions, and everything is really dynamic! That design though is really punishing for Templar that has to keep moving their "sacred ground" around and paying to setup again. Having to recast Cleansing Ritual because you JUST got a debuff, or because you need to shift the area slightly as the boss JUST moved, can be a big bother. The payment Templar has to make is that they have to burn actions on setting that stuff up again and being strategic in their placement. Instead of just making all skills cheaper, give Templar a strategy for shifting around as combat moves without being prohibitively expensive on resources.

Leia98

Billium813 wrote: »

I think some of Templar's issues lay in their passives, not necessarily the skills. Sure, Shards could be on it's own cooldown and not share with Orbs; that could help make Templar more appealing as a support. However, I think the passives are really where the issues are.

The issue with Brutality vs Sorcery and their redundancy is a bigger issue. It makes the conversation more DK vs Templar, rather than a mixture. That's not good for the game. If Templar is best, then DK would suffer. If DK is BIS, then Templar is left out. They really need to clean up this hybridization.

Some Passive changes I'd like to see:

• Spear Wall

  Upon activating an Aedric Spear ability. You and allies within 5 meters gain Minor Protection for 6 seconds, reducing damage taken by 5%.

  Developer Note
  One pain point for Templar is that they don't provide enough utility in groups. It should be baked into the Templar class to protect allies near them. At the moment, non-Templars have access to Frost Impulse and Circle of Protection, Necros get Bone Totem, Wardens have Maturation. It seems safe to establish Minor Protection as a Templar group buff for nearby allies and allies should be rewarded for standing near their closest Templar ally with a wall of protecting spears!
• Prism

  Casting a Dawn's Wrath ability while in combat generates 1 Ultimate to you and your group. This effect can occur once every 8 seconds.

  Developer Note
  This change is meant to give Templar's more group utility and encourage their usage in group compositions. Perhaps unique Heroism could be too strong, so this could be change to Minor Heroism.
• Illuminate

  Damaging an enemy with a Dawn's Wrath ability sets the enemy off balance and have a 50% chance to miss for 3 seconds. This effect can occur once every 15 seconds.

  Developer Note
  Templar Tanking could really use some extra love. Dawn's Wrath is almost totally DPS dominated (minus Living Dark). Adding a support passive to Dawn's Wrath would really help re-align the skill line.
• Sacred Ground

  While standing within your Restoring Light area effects, and for 2 seconds after leaving, gain Minor Mending, reduce the cost of non-Ultimate Restoring Light abilities by 30%, and increase the amount of damage you can block by 10%.

  Developer Note
  Templar's identity is "sacred ground". They hold the line, stand their ground, and build a house to live in! Unfortunately though, combat is OFTEN mobile. Well designed combat shifts around the area, enemies move and perform actions, and everything is really dynamic! That design though is really punishing for Templar that has to keep moving their "sacred ground" around and paying to setup again. Having to recast Cleansing Ritual because you JUST got a debuff, or because you need to shift the area slightly as the boss JUST moved, can be a big bother. The payment Templar has to make is that they have to burn actions on setting that stuff up again and being strategic in their placement. Instead of just making all skills cheaper, give Templar a strategy for shifting around as combat moves without being prohibitively expensive on resources.

the fact that templar still has a ''res'' passive is a good example of your point man. i feel like templar's passives are really outdated and they should be adapted to the current state of the game.

Cast_El

Leia98 wrote: »

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

Templar tanks are consistently tiered at the bottom of every list, and rather than address the pain points, they give DK one of the best support sets in the game, a set that has very ugly visual though, might I add.

at this point i feel like they are either doing this on purpose or they don't play their own game, i dont know which one is worse

They definitely don't play pvp... or they do with NB and DK ?

Tyrant_Tim

Well, tomorrow is week 2, so we might not see any significant changes, but here’s to hoping this update is the one where Templar tank gets some attention.

ESO_Nightingale

Leia98 wrote: »

so yes, the title
when do you guys think you are going to bring some love for templar healers and tanks on the table? Every single other class has some unique buffs for the whole group, or at least some viable utility;
with warden you literally heal and give them a health buff, let alone the giant group-wide armor buff
arcanist literally has a skill that gives minor courage
nightblade pairs great with pillagers because of its strong ultigen, and pillagers being the healer meta set atm, its in a very strong position
Sorc gives major berserk with its ulti
Dks literally have stagger, nothing else to say
why nothing unique for templar supports? don't you think there's something wrong here? I know that we can basically give perma recovery buff to the group, but not only is it not unique, because warden stands out more because it has better utility. and guess what? warden also has a skill that gives recovery when you heal them.

Part of the reason (but not the only reason) why warden support is always picked is because our class utility is extremely hard to access as a dps. Maturation requires healing allies in order to apply minor toughness. The only means that dps have to apply it without sacrificing a slot for a green balance skill (none of which actively increase dps) is with healing orb's synergy which leads to inconsistent uptimes especially when groups are split up. Expansive Frost Cloak which is major resolve, likewise has no benefit for dps, despite having the potential to increase chilled proc rate and therefore, damage if it did do frost damage.

I think there needs to be changes made to these class skills/passives to open up the utility the class has, to every role so that you need not be required to play warden healer in every raid composition. This is, however, a seperate issue to dps warden's terrible sustain and low damage.

There's also additional problems with other classes healers lacking some utility. But as i know warden best i figured I'd share my perspective as a warden dps player.

Leia98

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

Well, tomorrow is week 2, so we might not see any significant changes, but here’s to hoping this update is the one where Templar tank gets some attention.

i for one have decided i will keep talking about this until they do something about it.

Leia98

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Leia98 wrote: »

so yes, the title
when do you guys think you are going to bring some love for templar healers and tanks on the table? Every single other class has some unique buffs for the whole group, or at least some viable utility;
with warden you literally heal and give them a health buff, let alone the giant group-wide armor buff
arcanist literally has a skill that gives minor courage
nightblade pairs great with pillagers because of its strong ultigen, and pillagers being the healer meta set atm, its in a very strong position
Sorc gives major berserk with its ulti
Dks literally have stagger, nothing else to say
why nothing unique for templar supports? don't you think there's something wrong here? I know that we can basically give perma recovery buff to the group, but not only is it not unique, because warden stands out more because it has better utility. and guess what? warden also has a skill that gives recovery when you heal them.

Part of the reason (but not the only reason) why warden support is always picked is because our class utility is extremely hard to access as a dps. Maturation requires healing allies in order to apply minor toughness. The only means that dps have to apply it without sacrificing a slot for a green balance skill (none of which actively increase dps) is with healing orb's synergy which leads to inconsistent uptimes especially when groups are split up. Expansive Frost Cloak which is major resolve, likewise has no benefit for dps, despite having the potential to increase chilled proc rate and therefore, damage if it did do frost damage.

I think there needs to be changes made to these class skills/passives to open up the utility the class has, to every role so that you need not be required to play warden healer in every raid composition. This is, however, a seperate issue to dps warden's terrible sustain and low damage.

There's also additional problems with other classes healers lacking some utility. But as i know warden best i figured I'd share my perspective as a warden dps player.

i have a Warden healer and i freaking love playing it. i have no issues there. and i understand that some classes will be meta over others, but i just think it's unfair that templar healer and tanks have almost nothing in terms of utility

ESO_Nightingale

Leia98 wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Leia98 wrote: »

so yes, the title
when do you guys think you are going to bring some love for templar healers and tanks on the table? Every single other class has some unique buffs for the whole group, or at least some viable utility;
with warden you literally heal and give them a health buff, let alone the giant group-wide armor buff
arcanist literally has a skill that gives minor courage
nightblade pairs great with pillagers because of its strong ultigen, and pillagers being the healer meta set atm, its in a very strong position
Sorc gives major berserk with its ulti
Dks literally have stagger, nothing else to say
why nothing unique for templar supports? don't you think there's something wrong here? I know that we can basically give perma recovery buff to the group, but not only is it not unique, because warden stands out more because it has better utility. and guess what? warden also has a skill that gives recovery when you heal them.

Part of the reason (but not the only reason) why warden support is always picked is because our class utility is extremely hard to access as a dps. Maturation requires healing allies in order to apply minor toughness. The only means that dps have to apply it without sacrificing a slot for a green balance skill (none of which actively increase dps) is with healing orb's synergy which leads to inconsistent uptimes especially when groups are split up. Expansive Frost Cloak which is major resolve, likewise has no benefit for dps, despite having the potential to increase chilled proc rate and therefore, damage if it did do frost damage.

I think there needs to be changes made to these class skills/passives to open up the utility the class has, to every role so that you need not be required to play warden healer in every raid composition. This is, however, a seperate issue to dps warden's terrible sustain and low damage.

There's also additional problems with other classes healers lacking some utility. But as i know warden best i figured I'd share my perspective as a warden dps player.

i have a Warden healer and i freaking love playing it. i have no issues there. and i understand that some classes will be meta over others, but i just think it's unfair that templar healer and tanks have almost nothing in terms of utility

that was not my argument, i was bringing up an additional problem with why warden healer is picked so much. it's all compounding. templar and other supports should recieve more utility to help them stand out against warden, but warden dps itself suffers from not being able to reliably access our own class's utility. these things together make group compositions always take at least 1 healer warden.

essi2

Just going to chim in to say as a Templar Tank main, I agree that Templar Support needs atleast 1group utility that is Unique(or atleast as unique as any other) AND impactful.

Gray_howling_parrot

essi2 wrote: »

Just going to chim in to say as a Templar Tank main, I agree that Templar Support needs atleast 1group utility that is Unique(or atleast as unique as any other) AND impactful.

Same for me - agreed. I’ve played paladins and/or Templar classes in every RPG or MMO where it’s possible and I’ve always been a tank main. I still Templar tank regardless, but we’re hurting pretty bad from a group utility standpoint!

jecks33

my templar tank would love to have at least one crowd control. Just one, he is not asking for too much....

Tyrant_Tim

jecks33 wrote: »

my templar tank would love to have at least one crowd control. Just one, he is not asking for too much....

Right, would it really hurt the game if Luminous Shard was an AoE root?

edward_frigidhands

This is a very serious post title.

jecks33

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

jecks33 wrote: »

my templar tank would love to have at least one crowd control. Just one, he is not asking for too much....

Right, would it really hurt the game if Luminous Shard was an AoE root?

it was, in the early days

Tyrant_Tim

jecks33 wrote: »

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

jecks33 wrote: »

my templar tank would love to have at least one crowd control. Just one, he is not asking for too much....

Right, would it really hurt the game if Luminous Shard was an AoE root?

it was, in the early days

It was a Disorient, and on every build I ran.

Tyrant_Tim

Yet another week of zero lines regarding Templar.

I’m about to stop testing on the PTS and providing feedback if it’s not going to be heard, and I would advise anyone else who feels like this to do the same.

Leia98

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

Yet another week of zero lines regarding Templar.

I’m about to stop testing on the PTS and providing feedback if it’s not going to be heard, and I would advise anyone else who feels like this to do the same.

haha lol, was about to come back to my post to say this. It's not surprising, devs really think they're doing a good job by allowing a class to be a completely useless support. good job guys

Billium813

I'm actually gonna take the devil's advocate position that it's fine Templar doesn't have a class specific AOE CC. I know, blasphemy.

See, I'm fine with every class having blind spots and if Templar has no AOE CC, that's OK for me. Based on current design, it seems like ZOS would rather have Templar give minor movement AOE debuffs rather then a hard AOE root. Don't get me wrong... it's annoying as Templar Tank not having an AOE CC... but I'm actually OK with Templar class skills skipping this functionality.

HOWEVER!! What's the generic skill that Templars should use as an alternative? Wall of Frost fit pretty well, but Immobilize was removed for PvP reasons. Annoying casualty of PvP balancing PvE skills. What's the backup? Time Stop? I like the huge AOE and the Psijic passives, but it's waay too expensive and Templar Tank already has terrible Magicka sustain issues. Volcanic Rune? I like the cheap cost and the knocking them into the air, but the radius is waay too small.

I wonder if Frost Pulsar could be changed to add back an Immobilize to Frost staves. For Templar, this would be great since the current Minor Protection is redundant anyway with the passive Spear Wall, so Frost Pulsar is redundant. Alternatively, maybe Time Stop could be made cheaper, or more cooldown? I like the Psijic stuff so its a contender imo, but just way too expensive.