mousekime111rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Pmarsico9 wrote: »

I just want to end this by saying that a panel of 20 guilds is not the playerbase. If 18 of the guilds say the game is perfect and needs nothing, then there's no benefit at all to the more than 770K people who play this game.

The problem with this is that the majority of the player base is often wrong, those who don't invest their time in spreadsheets and the such tend to overlook, make generalizations, declare mechanically difficult things weak, etc etc. Unfortunately the game will NEVER be balanced for the unskilled. It's just the way it is, if zenimax balances the game for the average player there will be skilled players abusing the living *insert expletive here* out of tough to pull off mechanics for unreasonable advantages.

Basically the reason a lot of build paths seem weak is for the average players own good. It's a sad but true fact, to reference league of legends here a game with similar balance issues - is also balanced exclusively around the best and as a result a large number of champions are not seen in low level games and considered weak by the majority of the player base. The net result is a balanced game with a bunch of people begging for buffs that would only end up hurting them.

david.haypreub18_ESO wrote: »

I agree with OP.

ZOS's fixes have been too slow in coming. It is six months in, and magicka is still better than stamina, light is still better than heavy. I would argue that vamps and DKs are still reigning supreme (at least in PvP), but that is a bit more controversial, so I will just stick to what pretty much everyone would acknowledge: heavy armor and melee and stamina builds all need help. Six months is too long to wait for that.

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

Regarding Templar I am also aware that we have two broken passives currently. Illuminate (the one that is supposed to give you Spell resistance when you use a dawn's wrath ability... for how long who knows the tooltip doesn't say, maybe it is .0000001 seconds which would explain why my spell resist never raises) and master ritualist, the one that is supposed to give you back a soul gem but never actually does (along with making resuscitation more rapid. I haven't actually tested resuscitation speeds, but I'm curious if that portion of the ability works as well.).

There are other flaws in the class of course. The only Templar armor boosting ability is an extremely tiny ground based buff that you can't move outside of. Compare this to Bound Armor or Spike Armor, or even Fighters Guild which has a much better area of effect.

Blazing Shield (one of the two morphs) has been capped recently, and that was probably a good idea. That doesn't change the fact that now the damage output is (generally) really low but only has a 6 second duration. The other more tanky morph should have a longer potential duration that coincides with the way Conjured Ward looks. Also consider that Templar has a lower base spell recovery than Sorceror. This doesn't bode well for Templar tanks.

Blinding Flashes is a nice move but from what I've seen it is far less effective than an ability like Cinder Storm. Cinder storm snares and increases miss change of everything in its area while also dealing a quite nice fire DoT. Additionally it is the only area cc the Templar has, the other CC being Blazing Spear or its morph. As a form of crowd control it is highly slushy, and the 7.2 second duration means that 1.2 seconds of the power are wasted. Why not give it .8 more seconds and give us another pulse of the effect?

Focused/Explosive Charge - I always go with Explosive charge because it is by far the more reliable of the two morphed effects, although generally I find shield charge even more useful. That being said, the Templar charge has a tendency to send you flying past your target and over cliffs. The other day in craglorn I charged a boss, and flew past him and into some rocks and underneath the map, where I commenced to fall in a strange blue screen behind the curtain, and a minute later slammed onto the earth next to a way shrine. Generally though, you crash slightly behind your target instead of on it. This is terrible in melee, and actually puts you in a disadvantaged state.

Melee in general has a problem with targeting. You can stand right in front of a player or npc and miss half the time, purely because you are either too close to their hit box or your sword swings slightly 'off' from it. There's something odd and slushy about this arrangement, because the npc all to often has full capability to strike you at that range.

Backlash is a nice power in theory but I'm of the opinion that to make it more viable in general they really need to consider making it instant cast or give it a strong burn DoT or initial shot. I personally think they should leave it as is and give it an instant cast. I realize this power MIGHT have some minor use in any 12 man content, but only for one player to use it. This is really too situational to be a class ability honestly. (Much like Healing Ritual). The morph that heals self falls into problems with its area of effect being too small when fighting larger bosses. The morph that boosts damage sounds like a great idea for tanks, except the cast time on this power is atrocious.

Eclipse is a great power in theory, but there is a problem with it. Most of the NPC foes you want to hit with it ignore it outright. The ones you can strike it with, you really don't need to use this attack on. Its fairly expensive to use, its single target, and its easily removed. Now that people know what it does, it presents no problem for them whatsoever in pvp. I find it so frustrating with this power that even Unstable Core's damage element can be resisted because the whole thing is resisted. Again, consider putting some sunfire damage on this attack, don't let enemies auto resist it, or make it cost significantly less.

Balanced Warrior is a nice passive but if we are expected to have a very low magicka return as a class, particularly while wearing heavy armor, it would be nice if this passive gave a stronger bonus to weapon damage. I've always assumed Templar weaker magical output was to be made up for by weapon output. I just don't see it, particularly since Templar needs so much magicka to fire off things like Blazing, Radiant Aura, and Rune Focus/Blinding Flashes to stay alive. The magic cost to actually use a lot of core mitigation abilities is extremely high, particularly when other classes can do many moves at once in one ability.

As an aside, it would have been nice to see a morph in the Templar Restoring Light skill line that was more biased to the Tank role. Many Templars made the class expecting to be a heavy armor wearing Knight based on the starting image. Power costs and the need to spam them conspire against that though. Admittedly this could simply be part of the problem with Heavy Armor's design in general.

I could actually list quite a few other issues with the Templar class with respect to other classes, but to keep this post from growing out of control I won't. I'd like to note that the Nightblade is full of issues as well. The only reason I'm not listing those here is that I believe a lot of those problems are well known, or that someone else will come in and more ably do it than me. I do have a nightblade though, and I'm aware of the oddball elements of the class. I'm also aware that Nightblade is capable of insanely high single target damage via archery and stealth, but other classes simply kill at will without the need for this.

This is not to say either class is horrible I simply believe that they both need some tweaking and adjustment still. The largest balance issue I believe surrounds the problem with Heavy Armor under performing. I'm not entirely sure why .15% return was ever considered that useful. Heavy Armor needs a good baseline Damage Resistance as per the Nord racial, that would go a long way toward making it more viable. If you can't fire magic/weapon abilities as often, there needs to be compensation in the amount of beating you can take.