INTRODUCTION

So you are new to the game or new to the Templar class and want some pointers on how to make a beginner friendly build ?

There are other builds around if you choose to go looking but they are far more useful to players who have collected rare items and know how to get through the challenges offered by the game and look good doing it at the same time.

What this build is intended to do is give you something to add to as you become more experienced in playing the game.

In practice this should be more then enough to help you get to level 15 by which point you should have some idea what you are doing and can then continue following the guild while adjusting to suit your personal tastes.

This build is designed to be effective in most solo player vs environment content because of the fact it functions as all three parts of the trinity: Damage per Second, Tank & Healer.

However there is a catch to this - as with all jack of trades builds you ether need to invest a lot of time and/or deal with the fact that you will not excel in any single area of the trinity.

This build is a health tank first, healer and damage per second roughly equal second and is an advantage to play in groups to speed up questing.

This is a beginner build so it does not go into detail on everything but does have some advanced choices with will require some time and effort to acquire - should be fairly obvious which choices those are (Hint: the ultimate and some passives).

CHOOSING THE RACE

As I do not have access to the imperial race I will not be recommending that race due to my inexperience however from what I have read it is a decent choice of you have access to it for this.

All races have racial passives that are unlocked using skill points with the exception of the first racial passive which generally makes it slightly faster to level a specific skill.

The Daggerfall Covenant

Breton
Offers additional maximum magicka, spell resistance & reduced magicka cost of ability's.

Redguard
Offers Additional maximum stamina & increased stamina regen from not using it and performing melee attacks (with a 5 second cool down)

Orismer
Offers increased maximum health & stamina, gains more health from healing, increased health recovery, More melee damage, reduced sprint cost & sprint speed.

From the Daggerfall Covenant each race could be an advantage to this build - Redguards can use more stamina skills, Orismer is tougher and deals more melee damage but Breton increases magicka, which is used for healing, and spell resistance, generally anything not a weapon attack and includes resisting fire damage which I will get to later.

Personal recommendation from these three is a Breton.

The Ebonheart Pact

Nord
Similar to the Orismer, Nords get increased health, stamina & health recovery but unlike the Orismer they get frost resistance & a damage resistance which reduced damage from all sources if what i have red is correct,

Argonian
Useful racials for this build are increased health & healing received. They also can take advantage of potions to restore a percentage of health, magicka & stamina.

Dunmer
More magicka & stamina will be an advantage along with a resistance to fire damage will prove useful.

The Ebonheart Pact offers some races that can be adapted to all classes is some form but for this build we ideally want a fairly narrow selection of racial passives - Nords like the Orsimer of the Daggerfall Covenant are a solid basis for a warrior supported by other classes but offers little of value here, Argonians have potential here if you want to branch out into alchemy but are not ideal, Dunmer offer additional magicka & stamina, which will be in short supply and a resistance to fire damage which could be more useful then a Bretons spell resistance.

Personal recommendation from the pact is a Dunmer.

The Aldmeri Dominion

Khajjit
Additional stamina regeneration & weapon critical is what these felines can offer.

Bosmer
Additional stamina & satmina recovery is what these skilled marksmen from lore can provide.

Altmer
Additional magicka & magicka recovery is the important racials shared by the high elven race.

At a glance the Aldmeri Dominion has a dagger assassin, a bow assassin and a wizard race available to choose - if you want to experiment with a sneaky crit templay later a Khajiit would make a good choice, If you want to add some archery to your build later then a Bosmer with make that more simple while the altmer offer the chance to take advantage of your magicka based skills more often.

Personal recommendation here is a Altmer.

Overall a Breton beats a Dunmer here for the spell resistance being effective at reducing all incoming spell damage - however later on your opinion on that may change depending on how closely you choose to follow this guide - with the Altmer trailing in third place.

GAMEPLAY BASICS

If an item is equipped then you will get experience to the related skill line.

This takes a few different forms:

In the case of weapons: hitting a valid target until it is defeated with give some experience.

In the case of armor: Equip the armor and then getting hit with a valid attack will give experience.

In the case of skills & Spells: Equipping them to a slot and using them on a valid grants experience.

When you craft / deconstruct items: You get crafting experience and maybe crafting materials.

Kind of what you would expect.

Now the trick to effectively level multiple skills fairly quickly:

Whenever you turn in a quest one of the rewards is experience - everything equipped that the time gets
some of that experience - armor, weapons & skills (but not crafting skills)

So to effectively level multiple skill trees - like what you will want to do for this build - you will want to have multiple things equipped:

At least one piece of medium armor (a helm for example)

At least one piece of light armor (a belt for example)

Multiple heavy armor parts. (Anything not covered by medium or light armor)

A skill from your chosen weapon skill (one handed & shield in this case)

A skill from any class skills you want to efficiently train

IMPORTANT SKILLS

So by now you should have decided what race you want to play as (along with the hard part of picking a name and appearance) and are now wondering what skills to work towards.

You have access to a Quick slot item (which could be a potion) 5 skill slots & a single ultimate slot.

Due to the shortage of resources, as a trade off of being able to DPS, tank & heal on a single character, this was what appeared to be the best solution to limited resource pools.

This build uses stamina skills to increase damage per second and magicka skills to allow healing.

If you follow this guide closely then you will have plenty of spare skill points to try out skills that you think may be an advantage to your playstyle.

Skill one: Puncture to Pierce Armor
This skill doubles as a training aid for one handed and shield and and also sets up the target to take more damage from both physical & magical sources.

Skill two: Puncturing Strikes to Biting Jabs.
Another multipurpose skill offering area of affect damage in a cone shape alone with decent damage and helping to train the related skill line.

Skill three: Rushed Ceremony to Breath of Life
Instant healing for you and one other player. Not the strongest heal but as we only need magicka for healing that can be casted multiple times for a full heal if needed.

Skill four: Restoring Aura to Repentance
Backup heal, this one restores both health and stamina for zero stamina or magicka cost but requires corpses to function. Also increases recovery of magicka, health & stamina by being slotted.

Skill five: Sun Fire
This is only needed to train the related skill line for a passive skill later. Once you have that passive mastered, which will take awhile, you can swap sun fire out for another skill.

Ultimate: Dawnbreaker to Flawless Dawnbreaker
This build is more interested in the slotted bonus of additional weapon damage but can be used for variety whenever its charged.

For the passive skills I'm going to be writing the guide as if you choose to be a Breton, if you choose a different race then scroll back up the guide to the choosing the race section and have a look at my comment to get an idea of what I think are useful racial passives for each race when combined with the build.

I'm not going detail on what each passive does as when picking passives for this build I was looking for one that are not restrictive & offer a reasonable bonus that can be taken advantage of most of the time.

Layout is: Passive name, Source of Passive

Gift of Magnus, Breton Racial
Spell Resistance, Breton Racial
Magicka Mastery, Breton Racial
Evocation, Light armor
Recovery, Light Armor
Spell Warding, Light Armor
Wind Walker, Medium Armor
Juggernaut, Heavy Armor
Fortress, One Handed & Shield
Sword and Board, One Handed & Shield
Spear Wall, Aedric Spear
Balanced Warrior, Aedric Spear
Restoring Spirit, Dawn's Wrath
Slayer, Fighter's Guild
Undaunted Mettle, Undaunted Guild
Supernatural Recovery, Vampire
Undeath, Vampire

HOW TO SPEND YOUR ATTRIBUTE POINTS

Well this is easy...

Put all attribute points into health as this is a health tank with the ability to do some DPS & healing as mentioned before.

EQUIPMENT SETUP

When designing this build I wanted to go for a battlemage or magic knight look so the following is what you can try out.

Head & Belt: Light Armor
Torso, Shoulders & Gloves: Heavy Armor
Legs & Boots: Medium Armor
One handed weapon of choice - sword or mace look better to me but if a dagger or axe offers better damage use that.
Best looking shield you can find, bonus if it has useful traits & enchantments

To get the best out of this you will want to look into crafted set items which offer additional bonuses when equipped together and sometimes unique extras.

To do this yourself with will need to find the right crafting stations in the wild and have enough crafting skill & materials to make these items.

The other option is to pay someone you trust to make the items for you - joining a player guild may be the safest way of using this method.