PvE is a great place for templar because of the easy heals.

Competitive PvE or PvP is a different story. People complain because the game changing skills specific to the class are all broken (charge, sun shield, eclipse, etc...). The class doesn't suck. But has a lot of bugs related to it, and has been nerfed beyond nerfing. Also the changes to the game mechanics have all been disadvantageous to templars. A lot of the damage abilities and passives relied on dots and procs, both have been scaled down in PvP. A lot of the skills did a lot of CC effects instead of higher damage output, which was also almost nullified with CC immunity and the sorts. I'm not too up to date on every single little tweak, but a lot was done in general to the game, that had also an impact in make templars less efficient. So even though templars weren't DIRECTLY nerfed, they were indirectly nerfed like hell. (And added grief that some of its skills still bug out on a regular basis almost 2 years after release)

If you go back to the PC release, Templar was hands down the strongest PvE class by a LARGE margin, and was pretty darn nasty in PvP too.

In Pve you do fine. I think currently they can be a little more challenging than other classes to play in the Tank role. I'll give you an example, the Rune is fantastic but you have to either walk through it or click it every 8 seconds. There is an opportunity cost every time you have to click something (versus another thing). Comparable skills like Spike armor (which reflects damage), Boundless Storm (Which has a pulsing aoe lightning damage that also procs disintegrate), and the shadowy passive that procs every time NB's use a shadow skill. In the case of the nightblade it is shorter duration but significantly more aggressive, and in the case of the other two classes the duration is long and carries with the player (in the case of sorcs giving them one of the best speed boosts in the game).

Most Templar abilities are also channels or sluggish, so that limits a lot of what you can do apart from very specific roles. I don't want to go into a complete answer here because I've pointed it out in other areas before. I'll give you an example of where this is a problem though. The Jabs skill is a channel which more or less locks you in place and gives you terrible control on where the spear is pointing. There are a few tricks to keeping an enemy on target, but it is also very easily avoided. In a dungeon situation (or pvp situation) the problem is that half the time you're going to have to dodge which kills that skill's dps. The other problem with the skill is that it can't really be clipped comfortably. You could channel-clip-channel-clip but it is very clunky. Someone can much more easily spam some of the nightblade skills like cloaked blade, the assassin blade, and medium attacks, ambush, etc. This ability to spam multiple abilities at once gives other classes higher potential dps. Burning light which was a big part of jabs functional dps has been nerfed as well (which is inherently not as good as a passive like Disintegrate already).

The class itself keeps receiving nerfs, despite generally underperforming apart from the healer role. Stamplars get very little benefit for being a Templar apart from Balanced Warrior, repentance, rune, and cleansing ritual. Cleansing ritual is only useful to a stamplar for the cleanse and cleansing is about to receive a major nerf in pvp, go figure. Blazing Shield use to be a good magic dump for Templars but has been progressively gutted to the point that no one uses it anymore, or at the very least minimally. Most of the passives a Templar receives from the stamina perspective are worthless, particularly when you compare to other classes. Templar has the least selection in what is useful from the Stamina standpoint, despite skills like Biting Jabs which are nice enough in pve, but frankly I do just as well with other skills like steel tornado, if not better.

On the matter of tanking the nerf to blocking hits Templars the hardest. Templars already have the worst stamina regeneration of all classes, and the blocking passive has become significantly less useful with the removal of regeneration while blocking. The one nice thing a Templar tank has at their disposal is the ability to fire off repentance if there are a lot of adds around. Otherwise they are inferior as a tank, its really that simple.

In terms of magical dps they underperform, but they make up for that with strong burst heals. The class still has a clunky feel about it on the magic side. The attacks are either very slow, heavily telegraphed, bright and shiny, and easily avoided with things like dodging and blocking. In addition some of the best abilities for a Templar are functionally defunct. The Focused/Toppling charge skill for instance is a death sentence 1/10 times. Unlike Ambush it goes haywire if it doesn't like the pathing, even if you appear to be level! There is no stamina morph for this skill either, but we can live with that. I'm finding most Stamplars would rather use 2h or 1H charges, because they are far more reliable and less dangerous to use. This is a problem of the class as a whole: You do better with abilities outside of the class. Even Cleansing Ritual is problematic***. When I played as a healer I found myself using Efficient Purge a lot more than Cleansing Ritual, because it guaranteed my capacity to remove bad effects as opposed to Cleansing Ritual which requires your comrades to synergize, and synergies don't always pop up conveniently whether that is due to lag or not I have no idea (and a lot of times when they are in trouble they are also cc'd, ergo no synergy). Eclipse is a great idea conceptually but really underperforms when you consider how difficult it is to actually target someone without cc cooldown on them. It also gives someone a free cc immunity for way too long, and it can be easily purged. Its a lose lose in most cases, and costs way too much for its unreliability. I found myself far more often using skills like Defensive Posture which serve the same purpose and actually function in keeping me alive. Reflective scales is vastly superior to Eclipse, it goes without saying. You pop it and it works.

Playing a Templar you have to play like a surgeon. You can't afford to make mistakes, EVER. Lag is not your friend, because if you miss the right cues you are dead. There is very little forgiveness in that regard. I really don't know what else to say on the matter. A magic based Templar has a lot more forgiveness particularly because of the heals built into skills jab/sweeps/radiant/etc and breath of life. The magic templar has a bigger safety net because he can also use his sun shield a lot more comfortably. Stamina Templar is fun but really it is playing hard mode in pvp compared to other builds. If you are farming regular content with a lot of mobs, then repentance is pretty fantastic. Remember however, that whatever morph of radiant aura you get, the regeneration it provides is a major/minor buff so it DOES NOT stack with potions and it also helps your team more than you because of that (They have their own innate class buffs, repentance/aura IS your class buff). I use speedy, detection, immovable, invisible type potions for this reason, it just makes sense if you're a Templar.

In Pve it really isn't a big deal. Magic templars can do a great job healing (Although strong team dps can make other classes a better selection). Stamina Templars get a lot more forgiveness in pve than they do in pve. In general Templar Tanks took multiple major nerfs, and while it is possible to succeed with one it is clearly much less efficient than it use to be. I personally find it much easier to tank on a Nightblade, Sorcerer, or DK these days. In general though, yes it is just a pvp issue. I do strongly believe they have been damaged in the tanking role however.

***I'd like to point out that I realize the use of Cleansing Ritual now is used to make your >Restoring Light< heals stronger. I'm aware of that, although if you are built for stamina this is worthless. There are likely better uses of your magicka here than breath of life, and you'll get more out of Vigor/Rally anyway, even if Vigor/Rally is actually better on other classes. The healing templar(mage) will still use cleansing ritual, but even in pvp I had efficient purge on one bar, and cleansing ritual on the other. Efficient Purge is just better than Cleansing Ritual apart from the passive that boosts your other heals. The synergy between abilities and passives is just not like with the other classes.

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

Resource management is an issue, but so is mobility (their abilities actually slow them down and root them in place - not even DK has to deal with that),

I saw you had posted something about Jabs locking you in place. I can circle around a mob to avoid attacks and even kite them together while using Jabs. I have no mobility issues. Not sure if it is the morph that heals that allows that or something else. My Templar is the one class that I use more of the Class skills on than any other class I play.

Drop Blazing Spear, fire off a Reflective Light or two and then use Jabs to clean up. Mobs are dead. Bosses are dead. Breath of Life if needed. I don't use the Channel abilities of any class I play so I can't comment on those (particularly as I don't want to root myself) so whether those are any good or not, can't comment.

Nestor wrote: »

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

Resource management is an issue, but so is mobility (their abilities actually slow them down and root them in place - not even DK has to deal with that),

I saw you had posted something about Jabs locking you in place. I can circle around a mob to avoid attacks and even kite them together while using Jabs. I have no mobility issues. Not sure if it is the morph that heals that allows that or something else. My Templar is the one class that I use more of the Class skills on than any other class I play.

Drop Blazing Spear, fire off a Reflective Light or two and then use Jabs to clean up. Mobs are dead. Bosses are dead. Breath of Life if needed. I don't use the Channel abilities of any class I play so I can't comment on those (particularly as I don't want to root myself) so whether those are any good or not, can't comment.

You'll note my comments strongly lean toward pvp issues. I also think Stamina and specifically Tanking have taken a major hit on the Templar. I do the same maneuvers you are discussing when I play mage role. I think to be fair Templar should get an AOE cc back, and blazing spear would be a reasonable choice for that given the reduction they gave to its output (which was already pretty weak). Compare a skill like Blazing Spear to something like Cinders or Talons, and those two skills come out packed with a lot more utility, for a lot of reasons. Jabs is a channel ability so you are using a channel, but you're right in pve its very easy to strafe/circle. In pvp it is significantly harder to do that because players aren't stupid whereas the videogame npc's are. Finally, you talk about reflective light, which can easily be dodge rolled out of or reflected, the same is true of Radiant Destruction which is a DoT execute (that can be cleansed as well), and Aurora Javelin (easily reflected).

munkt0r wrote: »

Wow, that's a lot of info to digest guys...

I guess it's something only someone that has been playing since vanilla can really see.

For me, i've been playing just since the most recent release (Nov 15th) so for me, I don't see it very much.

But I have no comparison yet, as I haven't tried any other classes.

Kinda making me feel like I made the wrong choice haha

@munkt0r PvE Templar healing is fine. I run one for all aspects of end game PvE so don't let anyone tell you they suck. PvP is a whole different story though. Unless you are playing a stamina Templar you really wont be doing much. Healing has been reduced in PvP so you cant keep people up for long. AoE spamming hits like 99999999 targets but heal spam is limited to 6 max targets I believe. Ive heard stories of healers taking on like 3-5 people and not dying.. but that's just it... no one dies. He cant kill them and they are screwing up their combos and cant kill him.

Templars make the best healers, thats it. They can do other roles but they won't be the best at them compare to other classes.

Now pvp is were the issues are at.

Sun shield - nerfed to uselessness
Jabs/Sweeps - Bugs on shield to were it does nearly no dmg.
Radiant dest - Getting a passive actually lowers this skills dmg, also if more than 1 templar is using it only 1 will actually get the execute dmg.
Toppling charge - It's like playing Russian roulette , someone it just kills you.
Theres a lot of skills that just aren't useful anymore because of nerf's

No mobility pretty much means in scenerio's where a nb/sorc will be able to get away or reposition , you'll just die.

Also to be fair the ultimates are terrible for pvp. At least compare to other class ultimates.

Seriously dawn breaker of smiting is just an upgrade of sweep.
The ult heal is only useful for groups and even then, a BoL will have the same effect.
Nova is basically useless for pvp and is only useful in pvp, even then people prefer meteor.

I have to say Stamina Templars can be very powerful if played right but I will agree that other classes are better than a templar. The regeneration is alrightish with repentance on the skillbar etc but the disadvantage of a stamina templar is that there is no getaway like nightblades have or sorcerer's bolt escape. So you either kill the enemy or just die.

DjKahun wrote: »

I have to say Stamina Templars can be very powerful if played right but I will agree that other classes are better than a templar. The regeneration is alrightish with repentance on the skillbar etc but the disadvantage of a stamina templar is that there is no getaway like nightblades have or sorcerer's bolt escape. So you either kill the enemy or just die.

Every class can be powerful if played right no matter how far behind they are in comparison to the other 3, that doesn't mean they don't need buffs.