Vajrak wrote: »

ArRashid wrote: »

The saving grace of the off-balance Magplar in Scalebreaker was the buff to Splitting Soul Trap. Since that got reverted in Dragonhold, AND they nerfed Blazing Spear by like 60% (AGAIN, twice in a row now), but we can't afford to just NOT use it since it's needed for group synergies.

It's a lose-lose situation. I have 90% yellow gear, yet my DoTs show less than 900 dps on tooltip. Not to mention magicka costs went up again and Overwhelming Surge was stealth-nerfed so I literally lose 80% of my magicka pool in a single rotation. I now can't afford to wait for off-balance to heavy attack for magicka return.

It's just a HUGE mess.

Can't drop Solar Barrage because we need the 40% to light attacks buff.
Can't drop Blazing Spear because we need the synergy.
Can't drop Unstable Wall of Elements because just weapon attacks don't proc off-balance reliably enough.
Can't drop Barbed Trap because I want a source of Minor Force (and this one deals damage, however pathetic it may be on a mag character, rather than the Psijic variant - that one gives you access to a damage shield on block tho).
Can't drop Puncturing Sweeps because it's the only thing I can spam with.
Can't drop Radiant Glory because it's my only execute skill.

That's 6 of 10 skills practically hard-locked into my skillbar (only replacing trap with charge for questing). Solar Barrage, Blazing Spear, Unstable Wall of Elements AND Barbed trap were all nerfed AGAIN in Dragonhold by FURTHER 40% per tick on average, leaving them doing NO EFFIN DAMAGE AT ALL (or not even 40% of the damage they had half a year ago. WITHOUT compensating for the loss with any other skills receiving buffs).

Soul Trap and Entropy were nerfed in Dragonhold so much, that it practically negated any buffs they received in Scalebreaker, so those are the only two I can switch (which is right stupid. They buffed them in the first place because they nerfed class abilities, now they nerfed both them AND class abilities AGAIN this time. That's..... I don't even know what to say at this point... ). The other 2 are utility/defense I'd rather not touch either.

The problem is, THERE ARE NO ABILITIES WORTH USING. Everything deals the same kind of normalized c rappy damage. It's maddening. I can't do anything to increase my dps by this point other than getting the Maelstrom shock staff, so I feel every hit to the dps these patches make. and I dropped under effin 30k. I'm trying not to cry at this point, just hoping they stop nerfing magplars for once. Fat chance that tho. Even the youtubers who were theorycrafting the builds just gave up on templar in 5.2.5. It's just not worth trying to make work.

I swear I'm this close to just giving up. At this point I'm just playing for quests, and that's pathetic thing to say of an MMO game.


PS: PvP templars probably just laugh about the patches because they want to use direct damage for bursts, rather than ground targeted abilities their prey can evade or long DoTs that deal pathetic damage. As far as I know, main PvP skills like Puncturing Strikes and Eclipse were nor nerfed, and the Piercing Javelin was even buffed somewhat (even if it got range nerfed slightly)

Solar Barrage is fun -- not absolutely needed, just nice to have. Depends on how strong your weaving is.

Blazing Spear -- the DoT component lowered, the on-hit damage increased. There is a build up from quite some time back, when Blazing was much weaker on-hit...doing 40k DPS. No need to drop it, as it: provides good initial damage, okay DoT, the synergy, passive proc chances on Burning Light.

Unstable Wall -- DoT reduced, but the final explosion is direct damage...so was increased.

Barbed Trap -- mileage may vary, I actually don't mind overcasting the psijic variant slightly to get that spell-orb out.

Sweeps -- the spam is great, as is the Burning Light procs--which is why the spam is great.

Radiant Beam (Oppression or Glory) -- yep. Not even anything else can say about it, just miss the days of it being 200k+ ticks. But the new one on the shorter channel isn't so bad.

You are really poorly ignoring that, with adjustments to your CP: Blazing Spear and Unstable wall are capable of doing more damage than they did prior, since Master-at-Arms effects the initial hit on Blazing and the final explosion on Unstable (and that you can force that explosion by recasting it).

Find a build that works, and stay with it, fine-tune as needed. Seriously, the need to change things this patch has been "shift CP from Thaum to MaA" -- that was about it for Magplar.

Vajrak wrote: »

Right now I have a lazy "catch all" spread:
Elfborn 61, Spell Erosion 41, Elemental Expert 64, Master-at-Arms 81, Thaum 23
For trial:
Spell Erosion 11, Staff Expert 16, Thaum 37

The MaA distribution moves the loss of the DoTs into all of the Direct Burst options (all 4 hits of Sweeps, Burning Light procs, initial hit of Blazing Spear, Initial and Burst of Purifying Light if you use it, LA boosts and Enchantment, Unstable wall pop) and still leaves a good boost on Radiant Beam.