I'm curious what the combat team even does around here. PvP has been a frustrating, messy waste of time for a while and it only ever seems to get worse. Trying to do battlegrounds is about as fun as repeatedly slamming my head into a wall. 80% of people are running stamina builds and you're lucky to go ten seconds without a dawnbreaker to the face. Most magicka setups are left in the dust. Good luck killing stamina builds that run around at 140% speed before sprinting without ganging up on them.

As a magicka templar, all I can hope to do is stand behind my team and spam heals. I just can't compete with classes that have incredible utility, ultimates, and survival mechanics. I can't heal them to death. My damage mechanics and survival may be getting slight improvements next patch, but it still won't matter. I still can't compete with people zooming around at twice my speed, dodging every single attack I throw at them, gutting my healing, doing twice as much damage as me, and rooting me repeatedly.

As a magicka class, you're lucky to get a dodge roll or two in during the course of a fight. Templars in particular have no inherent stamina sustain passives, so we're forced into heavy armor (making us useless offensively) or sets with stamina sustain, such as Aamber Plasm. Meanwhile, other classes can sustain their stamina through passives, not having to invest skills, morphs, or set pieces into it if they want to play magicka.

* Battle Roar (DK)
* Helping Hands (DK)
* Daedric Protection (Sorc)
* Executioner (NB)
* Refreshing Shadows (NB)
* Flourish (Warden)
* Nature's Gift (Warden)

Sorcs admittedly don't get much from their passive, but a good sorc rarely finds they need it. Sorcs have enough CC, roots, and escape mechanics to only need their stamina to break free. They rarely need to block or roll. DKs and Wardens need not ever worry about stamina, and magicka NBs are as evasive as sorcs. Magicka templars, on the other hand, struggle to escape. We have terrible CC and we're lucky to ever move faster than base 1.00 speed. We're the easiest class to gang up on because we have little means of getting out of the fray. We need to block, roll, and break free far more often than most magicka users. Yet we are the only class to have no stamina sustain passive. This is why so many magicka templars play vampires for mist form. I guess the sprint cost change on the PTS will help me to not be out of stamina when I enter fights, but it will still be gone in a matter of one or two defensive moves.

Meanwhile, our damaging abilities are clunky and lacking in secondary effects. Sweeps and Jabs should have their snare front-loaded, but it only comes on the end of the attack. Javelins put enemies out of range, though stamplars are getting a long-overdue fix for that on the PTS. Reflective Light / Vampire's Bane are decent, albeit easily avoided. Hopefully the change to how dodge works will help out there. Eclipse hits hard but any competent player can counter it by going on the defensive, which is easy when you're being given free CC immunity. It's absurdly ineffective when you compare it to a simple stun, which it prevents you from using. PoL / Purifying Light are good. I can't complain about them. Beam is back to being good and I'm interested in seeing how the change affects it in PvP. Our charge has been unreliable for four years, and most recently, was made to deal less damage. It's awful.

The biggest problem is our ultimates. Templar ultimates are complete garbage in PvP. They're utterly useless. Crescent Sweep was almost never worth using over Dawnbreaker when you play stamina, and Empowering Sweep was only useful as a defensive mechanic. Giving magicka Crescent Sweep doesn't solve the problem of the ability being generally underwhelming compared to other class ultimates. In fact, it only serves to take away a sometimes-useful defensive ultimate. What you really need to do is increase the range. To 10 meters at least. Trying to hit an enemy with radial is bad enough when they aren't one of the aforementioned 140%+ speed players. Case in point:
https://youtu.be/FewscfOoGWU

We can't block break, making Meteor a waste. Nova and its morphs are expensive and only useful in zergs, making it a no-go in BGs or small scale of any sort. In fact, without another player to pop the synergy, it's generally worse than a destro ult. Then we have our healing ultimate, which can be good but leaves us with only four morphs to work with for offense. Dawnbreaker's stunning morph is decent but falls apart in any CP PvP. So what are templars forced into? Soul Assault, another ultimate that is painfully easy to counter in anything but an outnumbered fight. Soul Assault also fits in well with inferno staves, but our class ultimates and main spammable benefit most from lightning, leaving us in a strange position when compared to other classes, which have more clear-cut staff preferences.

I'm liking some of the changes on the PTS, particularly to sustain for stamplars and giving us a passive minor protection source, but the biggest issues of the class remain unaddressed once again. We're still going to be next to useless without a team standing next to us. We're still going to be outclassed and outgunned by almost everyone.

So instead of addressing the dominance of stamina builds, NBs, and absurd sets, we're giving damage shields a cast time.



Anyway, back to dying instantly to seventeen Dawnbreakers, Spectral Bows, and Incaps repeatedly.