I roll all classes, all characters are Bretons and magicka builds. All of them are using destro/resto staves and 5 pieces of light armor, I cannot complain. I did this since it seems that most of all skills use magicka (could be wrong, but it works for me).

pecheckler wrote: »

magicka damage templars are horrible because of projectile travel time animation delay plus channeled spell stupidity

Whatever that means.

Epona222 wrote: »

pecheckler wrote: »

magicka damage templars are horrible because of projectile travel time animation delay plus channeled spell stupidity

I know exactly what you mean, my templar casts reflective light at the start of a fight and the effect and damage doesn't happen until near the end of the fight, so I miss out on the DoT and 40% snare that it is supposed to provide. One of the healing abilities has such a long cast time that it is never used by anyone ever. And biting jabs has a piddling little knockback that results in a cc immunity (just remove the knockback, and therefore the cc immunity, this should be one of our bread and butter damage skills).

I love my templar but there are a few things not quite right with it.

Would this be different with a stamina build? This skill/spell is still casted by using magicka.

Moonshadow66 wrote: »

Epona222 wrote: »

pecheckler wrote: »

magicka damage templars are horrible because of projectile travel time animation delay plus channeled spell stupidity

I know exactly what you mean, my templar casts reflective light at the start of a fight and the effect and damage doesn't happen until near the end of the fight, so I miss out on the DoT and 40% snare that it is supposed to provide. One of the healing abilities has such a long cast time that it is never used by anyone ever. And biting jabs has a piddling little knockback that results in a cc immunity (just remove the knockback, and therefore the cc immunity, this should be one of our bread and butter damage skills).

I love my templar but there are a few things not quite right with it.

Would this be different with a stamina build? This skill/spell is still casted by using magicka.

Stamina would typically use a different opener. Splash damage alone from a stealthed 2H heavy attack is enough to heavily damage 3 mobs.

Hardicon wrote: »

I thought Templar was magicka based anyway. What would a stamina based Templar be. I must admit my Templar is becoming something I didn't expect, I was thinking more along the lines of a battle cleric from dnd using heavy armor and one hand and shield when I made the character but a buddy told me they were healers more than anything. Ive been playing less than a week so don't know all the ins and outs. I like my Templar of course, it is fun but it is not what I expected or really wanted. I picked Breton on the advice of a friend of mine that plays but like I said I am not sure about this toon now.

I am only level 12 so if there is a way to make my toon the way I originally wanted if anyone can give me some pointers I would appreciate it, but I don't want to be a tank, I want to be dps so not sure if one hand and shield is good for dps.

A Stamina Templar uses a stamina-based weapon like a 2H Sword or Dual Wield daggers, plus the stamina morphs of their class skills. Biting Jabs is a great stamina-based Templar damage skill and it can proc a damage passive called Burning Light that can scale with weapon damage. Power of the Light scales off stamina and is a great quasi-DoT. Templars get 4% reduced cost of all skills (including stamina), 6% bonus weapon damage (affects stamina-based skills), a no-cost skill called Repentance that sucks stamina out of dead bodies. If you have 2 Templars in your group, you can exchange Spear Shards and never run out of stamina. So there are a lot of good things going on with Templars to synergize with stamina dps.

Templars used to be bad at just about everything but healing! And that reputation persists. That has changed a lot, though. Templars are still best healers, but by a much smaller margin than in the past.. And they are now quite competitive at DPS and good tanks (just about everybody makes a good tank with the right gear and 1H+S because tanking is very balanced in this game).

1H and Shield is not used for dealing damage in ESO. It is used to mitigate damage done to you. While it is not exclusively a tank skill, it is all about survivability, not killing things.

Breton are great for magicka-based Templars, especially healing Templars. But if you want to DPS, Altmer would probably be better for a destro-staff wielding magicka Templar DPS, while Imperial and Redguard are probably best for a stamina-based DPS Templar.

Hardicon wrote: »

Well I will tell you what I thought I was playing. I thought I could be like a paladin, using heavy armor, 1hand and shield or 2 hand with some melee attacks and a little bit of healing. I am playing on Daggerfall Covenant to play with some friends so I was thinking about going Redguard or Orc now that I know more about the game. Using some Aedric Spear abilities and 2 hand I think, and going melee dps. Just not sure which skills to really take for that right now.

Just kind of playing around here is what I came up with.

Redguard Templar 2hand/heavy armor

Skills
Biting jabs
Carve
Reverse Slice (not sure about this one, does bleed effect counts as a wounded target)
Repentance to get back health and stamina
Power of the light
Ultimate - Crescent Sweep

Might take out power of the light or carve for rally for heals.

Does that look like a good start to a build.

Redguard Templar for a stamina build is usually great! As for armor, medium is generally best for stamina DPS. It gives increased weapon critical, lower cost of stamina skills, increased stamina regen, increased weapon damage, etc. 5 Medium will get you all the most important stamina DPS boosts, so a lot of people go 5 Medium + 2 Heavy or 5 Medium + 1 Heavy + 1 Light. That last is best for if you do a lot of the group dungeons, which will eventually unlock a passive that gives bonus magicka/health/stamina when you mix more armor types. If you only wear 1 piece of heavy, make it your chest piece. Chest provides more armor/spell resist than any other piece and heavy provides more armor/spell resist than any other armor type, so that is your first choice for a heavy piece. For a second piece, go with legs, shoulders, or head. They provide similar levels of armor/resist so go with whatever you like the looks of.

Of course, for leveling 1-50, you can get by just fine in all heavy. The base game is not too rough and you can succeed with all kinds of builds. The suggestions above are more for if you want to succeed in endgame group PvE. Those are a lot less forgiving.

I would recommend wearing all 3 armor types and trying all the weapon types while Leveling 1-50. Even if you only put them on or equip them while turning in quests. Quests give a big amount of XP and can help you level up weapons and armors even if you are not using them in regular combat. That way, when you get to Veteran levels and endgame, you will be able to switch around your build without having to grind out leveling up the weapon/armor trees.

I was a Light Armor magicka Templar tank for a long time. But they made some changes to the game that made that build much less viable. So I was glad I had leveled up 2H and Medium armor along the way so I could easily switch to Medium Armor stamina DPS. I was getting a little tired of tanking, anyway. That can come into play, too. Maybe you will get of tired of stamina DPS in a few months. If you have leveled up all the weapons and armor from quest turn in over those months, it gives you a lot more flexibility to try different things. You could switch to light armor + restro healing. Or light armor + destro DPS. Or heavy armor + 1H-S for tanking or whatever. This is especially important if you tend to concentrate on one character. Some people have 4 or 5 different "alts" for different roles so individual character flexibility is not as critical.

Rally is almost a must have for stamina Templar. Both the self-healing and the Major Brutality buff it provides (20% boost to weapon damage) are awesome effects. Getting self-healing in other ways is tough because our class-based heals are magicka-based. Even when I use Bow for ranged DPS (some boss fights are not melee-friendly), I keep a 2H on my other bar so I can swap to it every 30 seconds and reapply Rally. Rally boosts all stamina-based skills, not just 2H skills. And it is the only way to get the Major Brutality buff for Templars. Some classes get class-based skills that can provide Major Brutality temporarily, but Templars get the permanent 6% weapon boost instead. Which is good and bad. We need a weapon skill to get that 20% boost, but once we do get it, we have the temporary 20% boost plus our 6% permanent boost from our Balanced Warrior passive.

You will have to kill a lot of Daedra and Undead to get it there, but once you get Fighter's Guild to Level 10, the Dawnbreaker Ultimate unlocks. There is a morph of that which gives 8% weapon damage when slotted. So Rally + Balanced Warrior + Flawless Dawnbreaker = 34% weapon damage boost. Now you can start wrecking stuff with your stamina Templar. :-)