They used to have a nice synergy with heavy armour and also a couple of nice skills, one got nerfed to the ground and the other was replaced with J beam. They were more balanced back then.

Well... The first thing you need to do to survive, as a Templar, is to die a lot. Like a lot lot. And keep tabs on what gets you killed and then start avoiding those things and situations. I used to die a lot, like a lot lot lot. But these days... not so much. But this is due to the fact that I know the limitations of my class, and actively build to counteract those limitations, and avoid situations I know I am not designed to handle.

For example - I never 1v1 if I can avoid it. Chances are that the solo player I meet is specked for it and I am not, and thus would no doubt end up dying once again. I don't think the class is designed for 1v1, and from what I hear, Templars are not all that common in the duelist circles either. 2v2 or 2v3, or hell even 2v4, and I'm all for it and will happily jump into the fray. But 1v1... nah, I'll pass.

I'm not saying it's impossible to put together a decent dueling build for Templar, but if you do so, you sacrifice a lot of versatility for it. And in ESO PVP you need to have lots of utility or you are so much toast. Also... While you can be a good dueler with a Templar, you can be lot better with any other class.

As has been pointed out by lots of folk on lots of threads, Templars excel in support. They are designed for support. Just look at all those bloody synergies build into our skills. They are all designed to work in group. And even when teaming with one other player, you are getting tons more out of your class than just by running solo. This does not mean you have to be a pocket healer or back-line artillery unit, but those are the natural strengths of the class.

I suppose my build is of the artillery variety, but since I run most of the time solo, I have spent a lot of time tweaking it for survivability. I can become surprisingly tanky when needed and can fend off solitary NB gankers. The bad ones tend to die - surprised by the fact that a Templar can actually put up a fight - and the good ones just run to the hills after failing to burst me down. I never chase after them these days, because that would get me killed. Magicka Templars do not have mobility nor the endurance for running after people (also - our gap closer is horribly bugged)

The other thing you gotta learn is that relying on Templar class abilities is a surefire way to get killed. There is absolutely no synergy nor incentive to slot Templar skills on your bar. AS a Templar, my base line skills are Mages Guild skills, because at least with those I get a decent passive that gives me magicka regen and more magicka for each skill I slot. And since the class itself has no passives for those, these are imperative buffs you need to have just to achieve baseline functionality. The skills from Alliance war support line are even better in this regard. You get a huge magicka regen bonus for slotting them, and if you are going for a healer build, I strongly encourage you to use those instead of Templar skills.

For example - The Templar purge Cleansing Ritual requires activating synergy to remove harmful effects from others and is ground based. The Alliance War Support skill Purge just cleanses several targets, does not require activation and is not ground based. Sure it costs tons more, but if you opt for the Efficient Purge morph, the cost is no longer an issue, and just by slotting it you gain +10% magicka regen and that is huge.

So with a Templar, you always need to think twice before slotting a class skill, since chances are that slotting a non-class skill will give you much better passives. It should be the other way around, that the base line assumption is to slot class skills and then carefully consider if non-class skill is worth it. But it isn't - with Templars you need to avoid using class skills as much as possible.

For PVP, my first suggestions is to start by slotting Radiant Magelight on both your bars. You'll get a decent crit buff (which is active all the time - the Temlar skill that gives the same requires activation and a target, and is thus less than ideal for healers.( Also, other classes get similar buffs from simply slotting stuff, but not the Templar - oh no! A sensible design choice and Templar just do not go together.) However, and much more importantly, you will also gain protection from all those sneak attacks by the plethora of NBs scurrying about Cyrodiil.

I'd also encourage you to get into the habit of constantly spamming the skill - especially if you are around other players. 'cause all it takes is one bloody proxdet/tether/viscDeath NB to sneak amidst you and you are all toast. Spamming Magelight will make that harder.

The second thing to do, is to slot Meteor on both your bars. Ignore the Templar Ultimates, they all suck, and have crappy passives or require synergy from other players to be useful. Meteor, on the other hand, gives you decent burst, is ranged, has an AOE effect and can't be reflected. Ir can still be cloaked, because of course ZOS made their little darlings, the NBs, the only class to have a counter for Meteor, but you can nullify that by first hitting Magelight and then meteor. (Now with the added bonus of getting empower for the meteor from you Magelight!)

Those two skills give you your base line bars. Then select you favorite flavor of Entropy put that too on your primary attack bar. If going for support role, swap meteor with Barrier (it's a really good shield and also gives you that +10% magicka regen with passives) and take efficient purge for your back bar too. If going solo, you can also select the Templar purge, but you will lose a lot of sustain for doing so, so think which one fits your play style better.

Next take either Honor the Dead or Breath of life. Personally I'd go with Honor the Dead, since the Magicka regain is really useful and the skill is fairly costly. With the nerf to BoL there really is no reason to use it. And the only reason people used it was due to the smart heal effect tending to not heal yourself when needed, but some schmuck about to be trashed 10 meters away from you. Just accept the sad fact, that your vaunted "most powerful self heal" in the game will often not heal yourself when you really really really need it, but someone else and you end up dying because of it. But still, it's the best option we have so we gotta go with it. I slot it on my primary attack bar (since I dual wild for extra spell damage,) and want to have it on the bar with most spell power.

You also need to slot an armor buff and perhaps a shield in order to not die. We used to have a cool shied, but it's been nerfed so badly that no-one uses it anymore. It's been months since I even saw someone use it in Cyrodiil. It's just that bad. Your choices are either going with bone shield and or annulment from light armor. I'd go with Annulment since so much of incoming damage is magicka based anyway these days, and the rest I can just heal. Also bone shield is stamina based and I need all my stamina for roll dodges and break frees. Going with barrier works fine too, but since it's an Ultimate, it
isn't as reliable as Annulment. Another option is to have resto staff and use Healing Ward - it also can serve as a replacement for HtD or BoL. But does require that you use resto staff, and thus you negate one of the key points of being a Templar, the idea that you do not deed to rely on resto staff to have decent heals. I don't use resto staff myself, except when I run as a group healer and want to use Blessing of Protection.

As for the armor buff... Well Channeled Focus may seem like the obvious choice, but... Well the thing is that the Magicka regen you get from it is nice, but its actual impact depends on your build. If you spec more for offense and less for healing, then chances are your magicka regen sucks anyway (all those mage guild and Support skill passive can do, is to give you baseline functionality, not excessive amount of sustain. For that you'd need to have sustain gear and doing so would sacrifice spell damage) So getting a bit more magicka is not all that useful - keep in mind the drawback of the skill: It's ground based and has a really short duration. Before Thieves Guild, slotting Channeled Focus was a good way to get sustain since the magicka regen was active for full duration of the skill and did not tie you down to the rune. But now... Well going with Restoring focus might be the better option.

Or you could just slot Immovable from heavy armor. It gives the same armor buffs and also immunity to CC which is super important in PVP. And it has a lot longer duration. Sure it costs stamina, but if you think of that cost as pre-emptive break free, then the armor buff is just a free extra feature. And with little practice you will learn how to time your casting to make most of the short window of immunity to CC. And with both Immovable and Annulment slotted you might think about getting 5 pieces of Armor Master gear.

The next step is potions - brew your own and never leave a fort without them. You need three types; An escape potion, a defensive potions and an offensive potions. There are many ways to do these potions, but some require expensive ingredients like Columbine. So depending on your finances, or your predilection to picking up flowers, you may need to settle for less than ideal versions. But in a nutshell, an escape potions needs to give you invisibility. It also should give you a speed buff. Use it when you realize that you are about to hit *** creek. Once you are in the thick of things it's useless. The invisibility will be broken and you will be pummeled to death. That's where the defensive potions comes in handy. It should give you immovable. Being immune to CC is the number one thing you can have as far as increasing your odds of survival go. This game is so full of CC effects, and everyone is constantly spamming them (me included) that if you do not have a way to deal with them, you are asking for an ass whooping. I also like to add stamina boost to my defensive potions along with a speed buff, since I can then use them as an escape potion when I am being swarmed. It doesn't work always, but it does at least give me a chance to survive. The final potion you need is an offense one - this should add spell power and what ever else you want, but really - the reason you want this is to have a way of getting major sorcery without having to attack someone with Entropy.

Finally - if you are playing on the PC that is - get yourself a few addons. Get a gear set changer and skill bar swapper, and learn to switch bars and gear as the situations dictates. I myself have a two sets of gear, one based for small sacle PVP and the other being Vicious Death build for zerg surfing. For skills I have a travel bar I switch to when ever I move from battle to battle (it has Rapid Maneuvers slotted on it) and several different types of battle bars for sieges, for small scale, for dealing with zergs ,for healing others and so on.

It's a lot of work, but if you want to survive and flourish as a Templar that's what you gotta do. And that is the reason I voted that Templars need help. Our class is a mess. We can have outrageous DPS when the stars are right, but its situational and most of the good stuff we have can be easily countered by skilled players. We have glaring gaps in our defensive capabilities and in general are forced into couple of specific roles - both of which are hated by non-templar players (i.e. the pocket healer spamming BoL or the backliner finisher spamming Radiant.) But trying to do something else will just end up with you being dead and not having a meaningful impact on the battle.

The class is in a serious need of a work over, not the useless little tweaks we got with Thieves guild or the totally pointless and superfluous buff to Dark Flare damage. But upping DPS seems to be the only thing the Combat Team knows so that's what we got, and thus Templars are even more shoehorned into those two specific roles.

Eshelmen wrote: »

OP, when you get ganked....

Immediately pop your channelled focus(increased spell and physical resistance) and purifying ritual, pop an immovable potion, drop shards immediately on top of you.(This automatically disorients/stuns those who come too close)
Tag ranged enemies with total dark(reverses projectiles),vampires bane(increased spell power, excellent DOT and massacres vampires), aurora javelin(keep em off of you) dark flare, dark flare, toppling charge, jabs, dawnbreaker(also stuns) and then radiant .

If your Spell power is decent, I don't know many people who can survive this.

Wow are you saying you use no healing?
No BoL or Healing ward? You don't even use Magicka Det?

think this is a l2p issue magicka Templars survive just fine. are they the best? no however when played right they will be ok. they do have issues but they can survive quite well if built right.

Templars are boring. Try a DK they are way more fun.

GoodOlPinkly wrote: »

Eshelmen wrote: »

OP, when you get ganked....

Immediately pop your channelled focus(increased spell and physical resistance) and purifying ritual, pop an immovable potion, drop shards immediately on top of you.(This automatically disorients/stuns those who come too close)
Tag ranged enemies with total dark(reverses projectiles),vampires bane(increased spell power, excellent DOT and massacres vampires), aurora javelin(keep em off of you) dark flare, dark flare, toppling charge, jabs, dawnbreaker(also stuns) and then radiant .

If your Spell power is decent, I don't know many people who can survive this.

Wow are you saying you use no healing?
No BoL or Healing ward? You don't even use Magicka Det?

Yeah, the whole "use total dark" piece of advice made me suspicious of this post.

Though I would like the Sun Shield to be longer than 6 seconds to bring it in line with other class' shielding, I actually changed my Templar from Stamina, and am having a blast. Granted, you might need to be a little bit more creative in order to have sufficient magicka recovery, but that is fine with me, being an unconventional sort anyway.

Most people who think certain classes are weak compaired to others are either not at max champion points or have them in the wrong trees.

If youre a dps at least 70 points into elemental expert/mighty, 50 points into elfborne/piercing strikes, and 30 into Tharmaturge. The rest don't matter to much for that tree, little healing is nice, but with that set up combined with shadow mundus will help you immensely.

Now red tree, get hardy and elemental defender to 15% each and allocate points to get your crit resist to about 1800 points. You can do this with both gear and champ points, suggest more gear because you might want to non- champ point campaign at some point. The rest dump into quick recovery.

Green tree, figure it out. Hopefully this helps.

Lokey0024 wrote: »

Most people who think certain classes are weak compaired to others are either not at max champion points or have them in the wrong trees.

If youre a dps at least 70 points into elemental expert/mighty, 50 points into elfborne/piercing strikes, and 30 into Tharmaturge. The rest don't matter to much for that tree, little healing is nice, but with that set up combined with shadow mundus will help you immensely.

Now red tree, get hardy and elemental defender to 15% each and allocate points to get your crit resist to about 1800 points. You can do this with both gear and champ points, suggest more gear because you might want to non- champ point campaign at some point. The rest dump into quick recovery.

Green tree, figure it out. Hopefully this helps.

I put 70 points in Tharmaturge to get a boon in exploiter passive,59 in elemental expert, 30 in elfborn and the rest in blessed.

My DPS is good ( I will have to use shadow mundus to get a boon)

But survivability is poor.

nimander99 wrote: »

Ummmmmm.... I play only a Magika Templar and although its virtually impossible for me to kill a Mudcrab, it's takes a battalion to drop me in pvp... I'd check your gear/build/etc if I were you.

So you are suggesting that the OP should run a build that can't kill a Mudcrab and will die slowly but surely?

Strider_Roshin wrote: »

Didn't see an OP option. Yes it must suck to have the strongest heal in the game, have your major defense buff provide you minor mending and minor protection while having the only class purge. Oh woe is you.

One would think they would give a stationary class these who can't run in and out of stealth all day long, can't streak, pop good shields, summon, wrecking blow, etc...

Eshelmen wrote: »

Strider_Roshin wrote: »

Didn't see an OP option. Yes it must suck to have the strongest heal in the game, have your major defense buff provide you minor mending and minor protection while having the only class purge. Oh woe is you.

One would think they would give a stationary class these who can't run in and out of stealth all day long, can't streak, pop good shields, summon, wrecking blow, etc...

What about dk? They have a receive 10% less dmg when blocking passive and are therefore the very tanky class... Where is their good class heal/purge? Where is their high dps skills/ very high ranged dps skill/ strongest execute in the game?

Go play a magicka dk then come back.