Templar - Finding this an extremely tough class to solo. (missions)

thilog

I'm level 10 now, I am using cloth armour, enchanted with 2 parts health, 5 parts magika.. fine resto staff with fire enchant. lvl 8 - It's better than making a lv 10 one basic.

I cannot do solo dungeons, end of line missions etc, it's just impossible. It isn't that it's hard work, I am outright slaughtered. I do maybe 15-20% damage before dying and it resets.

With the same level templar, but specced with Heavy armour and sword/shield I can win many of these solo missions, but with resto staff, specced for healing groups, it's just not possible. I've spent thousands now on repairs, dying to almost every miniboss 2-4 times before giving up. I've abandoned 20 odd quests because I just can't win. In many other cases, I need to wait for another player to arrive, so I can heal them whilst "they" kill the boss for the end of line mission (if it isn't a solo only)

Besides players ninjaing mobs and quest items... I see alot of "need healer for XXX dungeon" and it's small wonder they're always asking, I'm getting to the point now that I get honestly surprised everytime I meet another templar.. because we are a rare class.

Iaitoo

I've had the same problem. Basicly gone to deep into healing. I have to start focusing on some dps. I usually survive boss-mobs if they are alone. Use resto staff to fill up mana and do very little dps, and then heal myself and repeat. Takes forever, but works. Gonna try putting in a bit more heavy armor while soloing and go for sword and board.

I wont put any points into the skill line with sword and board, its just to have two items to enchant with magicka buffs. As far as I know, the enchantements on two handed items arent stronger, so when using items just to have something in my hands, I guess 2 items is better. Will be using templar skills for dps. And the board will bring some extra added armor.

Any thoughts on this for soloing?

jdkorreckpreub18_ESO

Support builds like healers are always hard to level solo. The dps just isn't there. I don't see this as a templar problem, both builds that you mentioned are lower dps variants that are for healing or tanking. With the healer build try using a destruction staff for harder bosses and training some destruction skills if needed. For the tank pick up some duel wield skills, 2h weapon skills, or even bow skills for a higher dps second weapon. When you hit 15 you'll even be able to swap back and forth. The quests aren't too hard right now, but they are harder than most mmo's where you can level while half afk watching tv. I hope this helps.

Iaitoo

Uhm, I did not post a plan for a tank build. As I said, I wont be using any skills in the sword and board line. Will be using templar skills from the ranged dps tree

jdkorreckpreub18_ESO

Iaitoo wrote: »

Uhm, I did not post a plan for a tank build. As I said, I wont be using any skills in the sword and board line. Will be using templar skills from the ranged dps tree

Ah you mentioned heavy armor and sword and board, which is the basis for a lot of the tanking skills.

lupusrex

You say that you're specced as a healer; do you have any damage spells at all? Get Sun Fire, Piercing Javelin, and maybe Solar Flare. Sun Fire is cheap damage, and it slows them. I'm also doing a healer Templar, and there are plenty of skill points to spare for other trees, even at the low levels (look up where to find some Skyshards). Even healers need a way to do damage while solo. You didn't mention where you spent your attribute points, but make sure a few of them are in Health if you have trouble surviving.

Piercing Javelin will knock a mob away from you (and, when morphed, knock them down for a few seconds) and has no cooldown. I personally use a bow as my swap weapon, and that adds some more CCs. Right around 15 I noticed that I was becoming extremely survivable. The only mobs that give me trouble sometimes are casters. I can kill groups of 3-4 mobs without being hit if they're all melee.

Finally, make sure that you're blocking their heavy attacks and dodging anything that puts a red warning area on the ground. Even with a staff, you can block.

Good luck!

ghoxenrwb17_ESO

I find the class extremely easy to solo as a tank. I don't think any class is particularly hard to solo, but perhaps some roles are harder to solo than others.

Sakura_Rose

I was having the same problem as well, but I've leveled up a bit and actually went both healing and dmg spec and also being level 15+ makes it so much easier with the weapon swap option.

sufy

Use a bow spec into some stamina skills and templar skill that is ranged stun heal yourself kite with bow win

kmackinley

I use a healing staff, heavy armor, specced for healing but have 2 points into the first 2 Dawn's Wrath abilities and have no issues soloing.

ThatHappyCat

Get the Aedric Spear starter Puncturing Strikes. It is a melee ability (though its range is actually significantly further than melee attack range) but it deals huge amounts of damage to single targets as well as packed groups, and interrupts enemies to boot. This skill alone carried me through all PvE content (currently level 35) as a 5:2 light to heavy armour-wearing Templar.

Drekor

At low levels use solar flare, sunfire and a ranged weapon. Throw silver bolts on your bar once you can as well to burn your stamina for damage(upgrade it to silver shards). Have puncturing strikes around for AoE if necessary but you don't really need it at low levels.

At higher levels what I tend to do is reflective light > silver shards > explosive charge > Crescent sweep(if it's up) > puncturing jab. It'll destroy any normal mob, some often die after the explosive charge. I also have purifying light for bigger mobs, just start with that and load up your damage and you can pop big mobs in a circle rotation as well. Full light armor with passives is ideal since it's pretty much all magicka based.

SirTinbox

@OP: would be interesting to know what abilities you use. The templar has good repertoire of damaging class abilities that are not tied to weapons.

Aedric Spear does lots of damage and Sun Fire is brilliant for kiting (ranged 40% snare + damage).

Iaitoo

jdkorreckpreub18_ESO wrote: »

Iaitoo wrote: »

Uhm, I did not post a plan for a tank build. As I said, I wont be using any skills in the sword and board line. Will be using templar skills from the ranged dps tree

Ah you mentioned heavy armor and sword and board, which is the basis for a lot of the tanking skills.

I dont think you read what I wrote, if all you read was sword and board. I said I only wanted it to have two enchanted items and a bit more armor. No skills in the sword and board tree.

Anyways. After I put on 2 pieces of heavy armor, got a sword and board(again, no skills in it. Its just to have more armor and two items I can buff with enchantments) soloing got ALOT easier and smoother. Will see how it works out for a while. Might test out bow as well. But sword and board is free on the skills atm, as I dont use any of those skills.

thilog

Thx for the replies, I'm now level 14, even managed to do the story line right upto dealing with the second brother.

Without using aedric spear, morphed to sweep, (hits multiple mobs) I don't think I'd have made it this far. My sword/shield I stopped at 12 and find easy to solo (ish) I couldn't do the first fighters guild mission for example..

There's also other quests that have a boss which was overpowering, the general for example, has a 2h axe, and he just hits and hits and hits.. he doesn't stop, even though there are 3 ai supporters for the player, the general just attacked me. I was at 10% health for most of that fight. Without stones charged to resurrect on site I'd have had to restart from beginning (of that stage) In these areas, it is not possible to kite them, there is not enough space.

That said, I've been completing quests that are 1-2 levels above me, pretty much ramping up my magic mana pool at level 14 I think I'm at 8 maj, 6 health.

This allows me to start with regen on, and then just aedric them to death maybe a little running to quick heal.

On outside areas, yes, you can run backwards in circles (often into more mobs) and kite them. I guess bowmen have similar issues.

As for using medium leather or heavy metal armour, I don't want to do this, I don't want a templar that is mixed. I wanted pure cloth with a stick. Whilst I realise this was a damning decision it should not make it impossible to play.

Still I have made it through 4 more levels since I first posted.

Barney

lvl20 Templar here. I know that you are able to use cloth armor, but don't. This is why you're dying. I'm also a healer, but I have heavy armor with mana enchants on it and I solo with a 2h axe and blow through everything. Switch out the armor, it should help you out.

adamub17_ESO4

Barney wrote: »

lvl20 Templar here. I know that you are able to use cloth armor, but don't. This is why you're dying. I'm also a healer, but I have heavy armor with mana enchants on it and I solo with a 2h axe and blow through everything. Switch out the armor, it should help you out.

I agree with Barney and others. From a RP perspective, I get that you want to use cloth as a healer. To me, the Templar is more like a CLERIC from EQ; a battlehealer. Switching to heavy armor will help you mitigate some of the incoming damage. If you are running as a pure heals (resto staff, healing spells), you are going to run into problems because you can't DPS the mobs.

In Beta, I tried this - it hurts if you don't have someone to run with. You can still be a healer & still DPS. At 15, you can have your pure heal bar + staff, but then have your DPS bar + big ass sword. It will help for you to focus on the DPS at least initially.

* Templars are fun & can be a nightmare vs. mobs.

jmido8

I have a level 30 templar atm. The lower levels can be a little rough but templar is a great solo class. It gets significantly easier as you level up, especially when you hit level 15 and can start focusing on a dps layout as well.

Here's some tips though that make a huge difference at early levels:

1. Invest 2 skillpoints into dawn's wrath skill chain. Reflective light & Solar flare are powerful nukes and you'll 2-3 shot any non boss monster at low levels. I have yet to have any problem healing any dungeon with any spells other than breath of life from restoring light skillchain and regeneration from restoration staff skillchain. At low levels, you don't need your entire bar to be healing spells, so make sure you get some offensive stuff.

2. Use heavy armor with magicka passives. Light armor is pretty useless until higher levels when you have enough skillpoints to fully invest in the light armor skills, otherwise you're just gimping yourself big time defensively and gaining no light armor benefits at all. I still use heavy/medium armors at 30.

3. I remember having a really hard time managing magicka for a while, I would always run out. Provisioning is an amazing profession for templars, the magicka food makes a huge difference. Alchemy is good too for magicka pots but I still think provisioning is better. The food you can craft will give you like 25-33% more max magicka.

4. Don't worry about a stat being overcharged at early levels, you do get less magicka if your max magicka is overcharged but templars are really magicka hungry early on and they need that extra magicka. Once you around lv 20, you'll have a pretty decent magicka pool and can start distributing your stats better.

5. As soon as you hit level 15, get an offensive weapon. Personally, I found that bow works super good with templar. My current offensive hotbar is: Venom Arrow, breath of life, reflective light, aurora javelin, scatter shot, and nova ultimate. My other hotbar is a restoration staff with healing spells and 1 offensive ability.

Templar are really easy once you level up some. You can do good damage and heal yourself really well so they're an amazing solo class. I can chain kill monsters without ever having to stop.

omnomolyub17_ESO

In my experience, as a templar healer you only need 2 heals. I haven't hit 15 yet for the weapons swap, but my load out is sun fire, solar flare, binding javelin, healing ritual, regeneration, plus the healing ultimate from the templar tree (mostly an oh-***-button, practically infinite health for 4 sec has helped me more times than not).

I'm also a high elf in light armor, so I can sustain binding javelin on mini bosses to solo them and disable an enemy in a group while I finish off his allies.

I think the part that makes templar a bit harder of a class is that we don't have very many stuns, but I was lucky that javelin turned into a knockback+stun.

Niovetchi

I am a level 13 templar now with full cloth armor and using a resto staff. I have solo'd everything so far. It's not always easy but I have never needed someone else to help me. Im specced in both dawn's wrath and restoring light. On mini bosses and bosses I mainly attack with my staff and on occasion hit the mob with sunstrike to keep the dot on it. then I use my mana to keep myself healed. I have to switch it up with some of the mobs and sometimes just hit them with everything i have and run til my mana regens.

thilog

Thanks for the answers, esp the higher level guys, you've put my faith back in place. Maybe my dependance on aedric spear was my main fault and certainly maybe too many heals. I think what I'll do, is suffer through to 15, then I'll switch to heavy armour. Or, I'll log my original templar on, who is already heavy armour, with sword/shield and move him from 12 to 15, then add in a 2h axe/sword/mace and train it up for primary dps.

I did try going with dual wield mode which worked for awhile as well.

jmido8

Gear is pretty easy to get in game, just start choosing the heavy/medium armor stuff when you have the chance.

Also, when you hit level 16, look for the warlock set. It is amazing! I'm currently using 2 warlock rings and the warlock pendant for the set bonus. Once every minute, it'll restore like 250 magicka or something when you get to low magicka. I never run out of magicka with the set and I still use it at lv 30+ despite it being level 16 gear. It also has good stats for us like max magicka and magicka regen.

Talmet

I'm leveling as a light armor wearing resto staff wielding healing templar, and it's going fine...what are you guys doing that is not working? You should take a few DPS skills, otherwise you are really just standing there with your staff...which isn't going to work that well as you get higher lvl, you need some AoE, or you're going to be swamped by the groups of 2-4 mobs you have to fight.

The skills I normally use to solo are:
-Dark Flare (reduce healing taken) & Reflective Light (for AoE) for DPS
-Breath of life, if I fall below like 40% life
-Rapid regen, always on, this costs practically nothing and lasts a long time
-Nova as my ult, for bosses or when bad stuff happens. I really don't like the restoring light's ult...

You don't need to be wearing all 7 pieces of light armor, there's a skill that requires you to wear 5 pieces that you'll probably want to pick up in the light armor tree...so wear 5 pieces of light and then 2 pieces of medium or heavy, start wearing those 2 pieces now to start lvling up that skill line.

Block stuff, interrupt stuff, dodge stuff. Even in the middle of your attacks, block/interrupt/dodge. White particles flashing around a mob = block, or there goes like 50% of your health at least...red on the ground means at least 75% of your health. Avoid it all.

Generally, I seem to kill a single mob faster than most other players that I see (if I use dark flare+reflective light, I can two shot mobs my lvl. If not, 2 reflective lights & a normal attack will kill them). Groups, eh, it might take me a little while, maybe 10 seconds at the longest to deal with a group of 2-4 same lvl mobs. Oh, and heal random people you see fighting, they'll like it & you get xp/loot/credit for their kills

Amsel_McKay

Lv 41 Templar here... Light Armor, Aedric Spear, Restoring Light, Healing Staff, War Guild Crossbow... I focused on all mana and spell crit. I can solo any mob my level or above by killing them before they kill me... If I need to heal its very rare. I can DPS and Heal all the Dungeons with no problems at all. I have soloed everything PvE to this point and have done a little PvP. If I run out of mana I just cross bow 3 or 4 times and then recast (mana Regen is off the chart). According to my addon I was out DPSing the Nightblades in my last few groups and I always out DPS the DKs. I am more in line with a Sorcerer when it comes to dps.

In my opinion Puncturing Strikes is the most deadly ability in the game and I'm sure it will be nurfed soon.

Drekor

Talmet wrote: »

You don't need to be wearing all 7 pieces of light armor, there's a skill that requires you to wear 5 pieces that you'll probably want to pick up in the light armor tree...so wear 5 pieces of light and then 2 pieces of medium or heavy, start wearing those 2 pieces now to start lvling up that skill line.

I'm up to 40 now and wearing 7 piece light but to be fair at low levels you gain almost no benefit from light armor. It's best to go heavy/light mix for a bit until you can really start sinking points into your passives. Once you get up there though the magicka cost reduction, regen, resists, crit, and most importantly MASSIVE amounts of spell penetration is just awesome.

cazlonb16_ESO

Agreed with most posters here, Templar is very easy to solo with a decent setup. Just pull with reflective light, block/interrupt the early heavy attack, use Biting Jabs once or twice and pretty much all normal mob groups are dead already.

Remember that you can switch your skills around for specific tasks. For boss fights for example Piercing Javelin can be very useful, just killing regular mobs it's a waste of a skill slot imo though.

JHoov714

I'm lvl 18 now and I've been doing the 5 Light / 2 Heavy approach and consider myself a healer, or maybe more like a Paladin. I have a 1h Shield on one bar, and Resto Staff on the other.

I took the AOE version of the first 2 skills in the Dawns Wrath line, the rest of my points are in Restoring Light and Light Armor for the most part. When I'm soloing I usually have my 1h equipped, run into a crowd of 2/3 mobs, do my Dawn's Wrath AOE moves and they are already at half health and slowly burning to death.

I only took one move from the 1h Shield line, Low Slash so I can burn a little stamina that I would otherwise hardly use for anything. Plus since it snares, I can do a little minor kiting, or at least shuffling to keep someone off me.

I'll either do another AOE combo or hack em up for 2-3 seconds with my weapon and they are all dead. I've been finding it very easy to solo, with only certain quest bosses here and there giving me a tough time.

I think the little bit of Armor from the 2 pieces of Heavy and the Shield helps out, and I have been putting a couple points into Health as I level up. I'll also occasionally swap a piece of gear in with some health on it, while keeping my Mana pool just at the Overcharged point,

thilog

The problem isn't with normal mob groups. The problem I am/was facing is with solo only boss dungeons, ie end of line quests. I see where most of you have gone, skills wise and I've changed my skills to suit and it is a lot easier, I had spent too many skill points in healing and not enough in offense. For those that replied over lv 40.. in a week.. wow.. I don't understand why you rush to fast through a game. It sounds like this is like wow, the higher you get, the easier the game gets. But we'll see, I found it abit easier after i got to lvl 13/14 maybe I was just getting leveling blues.

rosarose

I have done it the other way around, I am a Templar, but have focused on dps and only one healing ability for now. I do plan to focus on healing later, but this way I can level up without problem ( or not to much problem ) I also use heavy armour. Now I am at level 13, and plan to soon look more into healing

cazlonb16_ESO

thilog wrote: »

The problem isn't with normal mob groups. The problem I am/was facing is with solo only boss dungeons, ie end of line quests. I see where most of you have gone, skills wise and I've changed my skills to suit and it is a lot easier, I had spent too many skill points in healing and not enough in offense.

In my experience so far it is considerably easier to burn these bosses down as quickly as possible than to try to outlast them. Even to my tanking Templar with heavy armour and sword&board they usually do just too much damage to whittle them down slowly.

For this kind of encounter you'll want Piercing Javelin with the knockdown morph and a dps weapon rather than sword&board or resto staff. Send them flying on their butt and burst them down.

thilog

yeh i've found now with shield charge that it's alot easier.. but at lv 7-8 when you dont even have access to these skills.. such missions are impossible.