Shielded by Impotent

Zama666 · February 2021

Hello,

I tried putting Blazing Shield, Spiked Bone Shield and Brawler on my front bar, along with Stampede and Breath of Life. DawnBreaker as my ultimate

Using a 2h Maul, I usually fire up the Bone Shield, Stampede in, swat with brawler, then Blazing shield. A few light attacks, do it again.
(Breath of life is there because sometimes I just don't pay attention enough)

Stam does not run out to quickly (heavy attacks) , neither does Magicka (Blazing Shield and Breath of life)

Back bar running a bow...

Ran a few dungeons solo (non Vet) and it is fun, but bosses, take forever to take down because I barely do any damage and it takes a long time. In some cases, I could not kill some bosses as the regen'd faster than I could deal damage...stupid troll. But we could do this lovely dance of of standing in front of each other beating each other.

With the set up as is on the front bar, thoughts on how to increase my damage? Weapons? Sets? Weave? Prayers? Potion it up? Drop Breath of Life? Switch up Ultimate?

Just curious!

Tanks!

Fennwitty · February 2021

Generally, your equipment sets and level are big factors. And skills on the backbar also count a lot. Can you provide more detail about your character?

Total health/magicka/stam, CP arrangement, your intended playstyle etc.

I have some thoughts about the skills you've mentioned and those you haven't mentioned, but not much to go on yet.

orion_1981usub17_ESO · February 2021

Are you hoping the enemy kill themselves on your build? Most return damage builds cap out at low damage and are generally inefficient in damage dealing. It's hard to test because you need to be getting hit in a controlled environment, I'd try dueling friends and let them beat on you to see just what the input output damage equals. I wouldn't use more than one return damage skill as any basic dot like consuming trap is still higher dps.

UntilValhalla13 · February 2021

You didn't say what gear sets you're running, but the listed skills aren't really going to do much for damage. I'd just get rid of the damage reflection skills altogether. Run jabs, barbed trap, in their place, and endless hail on the backbar. Light attack before every skill. If you're just doing it for rp reasons, memes, or something, that's not really my forte in the game, and I'm probably not going to be much help then.

Septimus_Magna · February 2021

In most cases skills that consume stamina deal more damage if you have higher weapon damage, max stamina, weapon critical and physical penetration. Scales that consume magicka often scale off spell damage, max magicka, spell critical and spell penetration. Some skills like Blazing Shield scale off max health so if you have high max health you will deal more damage.

In your case you are using a stamina based weapon, a magicka based heal and a health based shield. Its better in terms of efficiency to pick stamina item sets (increase to weapon critical, weapon damage or max stamina) and use a stamina based heal like Vigor. You can still use magicka for buffs or utility, essentially skills that give a certain value regardless of you stats.

Stamina templars can become pretty strong without having to learn a complex rotation, try getting a 5-piece set like Hundings Rage or Briarheart, this will greatly increase your damage output. Biting Jabs is also a really good skill, you can still use Brawler to get the damage shield when you need it. Repentance, Ritual of Retribution and Restoring Focus are nice skills to increase healing and resource sustain.

Zama666 · February 2021

Fennwitty wrote: »

Generally, your equipment sets and level are big factors. And skills on the backbar also count a lot. Can you provide more detail about your character?

Total health/magicka/stam, CP arrangement, your intended playstyle etc.

I have some thoughts about the skills you've mentioned and those you haven't mentioned, but not much to go on yet.

I've been running sort of a tank-heal hybrid and mostly do PVE content. I like to last and do not need to kill everything in one strike. PvP, I never got the chance to fire up all my shield before I lay dead....so sad.

Ran Fungal Grotto, Spindle Clutch, DarkShade Cavern I, but Blessed Crucibile...I could not knock off the troll king. It went on forever and I gave up.

20 Magicka
20 Health
24 Stamina

Don't laugh, but I like Twice Born Star (5 piece heavy) - have two mundus stones and being able to change them up it helpful

Back bar is a bow, toxic barrage, endless hail, magnum shot, venom error, bombard, breath of life

I did finally drop Breath of Life from my front bar and went with the jabs...makes a difference, but not enough.

Would love to hear your thoughts!

orion_1981usub17_ESO · February 2021

Lets start be saying you need someone to teach you the basics of your character and the game. You've gotten as far as the easy stuff allows but you'll never get further with out more specialised knowledge. If you need a teacher, I am happy to help and run a ps4 guild NA for training new and hopeless players. Or else look for a guild that is active and teaches players the game. Reading internet sites and watching video can help but only so much if you dont have folks to ask questions and explain the why's to you.

So lesson one Attribute points.

There is never a good reason to so evenly spilt your attributes since your base stats are skill damage. Your attributes are completely inefficient, you are literally doing 1/3rd the damge you could be. Pick an attribute and put most into one. This is where folks decide whether they are stamina(dps), magicka(heal or dps) or health(tank). Your race often guides people upon their path but doesn't have too. You can still hybrid but don't use attribute points to do so.

Lesson two
You have 12 item set slots. Three jewelry, two weapons and 7 body pieces. How you use the slots truly defines who you are in game, what skills you'll use and why they'll work better for you.
Twice born star is a mediocre set currently because base Stat sets do not give as much damage as proc sets currently. Mundus stones are best used to shore up a weak Stat or as a cherry on the top, you don't gain nearly as much by having two as the many better sets that drop 10k+ damage.

So before you go any further, stop and think about what type of character you want to play. Picture that character in your mind and come yell me about that character, who it is, how they fight and why you like them. And then we will start building and I'll explain the how's and why's.

Zama666 · February 2021

orion_1981usub17_ESO wrote: »

Lets start be saying you need someone to teach you the basics of your character and the game. You've gotten as far as the easy stuff allows but you'll never get further with out more specialised knowledge. If you need a teacher, I am happy to help and run a ps4 guild NA for training new and hopeless players. Or else look for a guild that is active and teaches players the game. Reading internet sites and watching video can help but only so much if you dont have folks to ask questions and explain the why's to you.

So lesson one Attribute points.

There is never a good reason to so evenly spilt your attributes since your base stats are skill damage. Your attributes are completely inefficient, you are literally doing 1/3rd the damge you could be. Pick an attribute and put most into one. This is where folks decide whether they are stamina(dps), magicka(heal or dps) or health(tank). Your race often guides people upon their path but doesn't have too. You can still hybrid but don't use attribute points to do so.

Lesson two
You have 12 item set slots. Three jewelry, two weapons and 7 body pieces. How you use the slots truly defines who you are in game, what skills you'll use and why they'll work better for you.
Twice born star is a mediocre set currently because base Stat sets do not give as much damage as proc sets currently. Mundus stones are best used to shore up a weak Stat or as a cherry on the top, you don't gain nearly as much by having two as the many better sets that drop 10k+ damage.

So before you go any further, stop and think about what type of character you want to play. Picture that character in your mind and come yell me about that character, who it is, how they fight and why you like them. And then we will start building and I'll explain the how's and why's.

Wow, that was SOLID!

A little more advice if you don't mind.

Attribute Points

I want to heal and tank, so where do I dump everything into? Go 64 into just one of them?

Lesson two

Why a proc set? Am I not leaving it up to chance?

Thoughts?

Tanks!

Oreyn_Bearclaw · February 2021

Zama666 wrote: »

orion_1981usub17_ESO wrote: »

Lets start be saying you need someone to teach you the basics of your character and the game. You've gotten as far as the easy stuff allows but you'll never get further with out more specialised knowledge. If you need a teacher, I am happy to help and run a ps4 guild NA for training new and hopeless players. Or else look for a guild that is active and teaches players the game. Reading internet sites and watching video can help but only so much if you dont have folks to ask questions and explain the why's to you.

So lesson one Attribute points.

There is never a good reason to so evenly spilt your attributes since your base stats are skill damage. Your attributes are completely inefficient, you are literally doing 1/3rd the damge you could be. Pick an attribute and put most into one. This is where folks decide whether they are stamina(dps), magicka(heal or dps) or health(tank). Your race often guides people upon their path but doesn't have too. You can still hybrid but don't use attribute points to do so.

Lesson two
You have 12 item set slots. Three jewelry, two weapons and 7 body pieces. How you use the slots truly defines who you are in game, what skills you'll use and why they'll work better for you.
Twice born star is a mediocre set currently because base Stat sets do not give as much damage as proc sets currently. Mundus stones are best used to shore up a weak Stat or as a cherry on the top, you don't gain nearly as much by having two as the many better sets that drop 10k+ damage.

So before you go any further, stop and think about what type of character you want to play. Picture that character in your mind and come yell me about that character, who it is, how they fight and why you like them. And then we will start building and I'll explain the how's and why's.

Wow, that was SOLID!

A little more advice if you don't mind.

Attribute Points

I want to heal and tank, so where do I dump everything into? Go 64 into just one of them?

Lesson two

Why a proc set? Am I not leaving it up to chance?

Thoughts?

Tanks!

Are you trying to play solo or be part of a group? If solo, well, you cant heal/tank your way through content. You need to spec into really all three roles to some degree (DPS, Tank, Heals). If you want to play in a group, you should pick one role and go all in. You can build a pretty effective group Tank/Healer to run with 3 damage dealers, but you wont be able to kill much on your own.

Proc sets really arent used by Meta DPS other than monster sets, but they can be good for tankier solo builds because they allow you to passively damage while you focus on survival. The issue is that they dont typically offer much in the way of sustained damage, so some fights are going to take a LONG time. True DPS checks are pretty rare in ESO, but they do exist, and those will certainly give you issue as well.

Most players, other than pure tanks, are going to put all their attribute points into either magic or stamina. This is because almost every skill tooltip scales off of your max stats (as well as either spell/weapon damage). You will hear people talk about stam or magic DPS, and healers generally spec at least similarly to a magic DPS (mostly or all magic). Tanks generally put most points into health, but true tanks dont do much damage.

orion_1981usub17_ESO · February 2021

Your a Templar so you can heal and be fairly tanky with all your points in magicka or stamina wearing light or medium armorand using the right skills and sets. Magicka is all about staffs but it sounds like you want to use weapons... thats stamina, it can self heal too but generally isn't good as a group healer.

Solo Tankiness is about armor/ shields/health pool/self healing. Armor is the most simple to understand. Using rune focus gives you major resolve (armor) and standing in it increases that buff 50%. It's a must have Templar skill and allows medium and light armor to act tanky. I also use it with the set winter respite which is a magicka self heal set. These two in tandem just covered two bases in solo tankiness.
Shield are good for halting damage spikes to let healing over time works its magic. Heavily armored folks generally don't need them. But blazing shield or the better spiked bone shield are meant for returning some damage, useful in large mob groups but not much else.
Health pool, its as simple as putting a few health enchants on your large item pieces (head, chest leg) to get the amount that feels safe enough for you to react to. If your health never gets low... you have too much. And you can swap enchants for the more useful stats.

So have as much health that you have time to react by healing or using a shield to give more time to heal. High armor increase time to react but doesn't need to always be high if you have buffs that improve it. Many skills also heal while doing damage, or skills like repentance which makes each corpse a little heal on demand.

orion_1981usub17_ESO · February 2021

Proc sets do a thing when a condition is met. Such as do damage or do healing or restore resources, ect. Most sets in the game are proc sets in some form. They generally have a cool down and possible a duration
On the flip side base Stat sets simply increase a base Stat. They can do nothing else and are understood to be underperforming when compared to proc sets.

Think like this castle thorn crimson armor set is heavy armor that does aoe 9k damage and heals you for that damage every 8 seconds. You can plan your entire skill rotation around that one proc and add champion points to increase the power of that proc. It's a set that hands down simply spanks any base Stat set. It's an example of how you visualize your character by what item sets you are gonna use.

Zama666 · February 2021

orion_1981usub17_ESO wrote: »

Your a Templar so you can heal and be fairly tanky with all your points in magicka or stamina wearing light or medium armorand using the right skills and sets. Magicka is all about staffs but it sounds like you want to use weapons... thats stamina, it can self heal too but generally isn't good as a group healer.

Solo Tankiness is about armor/ shields/health pool/self healing. Armor is the most simple to understand. Using rune focus gives you major resolve (armor) and standing in it increases that buff 50%. It's a must have Templar skill and allows medium and light armor to act tanky. I also use it with the set winter respite which is a magicka self heal set. These two in tandem just covered two bases in solo tankiness.
Shield are good for halting damage spikes to let healing over time works its magic. Heavily armored folks generally don't need them. But blazing shield or the better spiked bone shield are meant for returning some damage, useful in large mob groups but not much else.
Health pool, its as simple as putting a few health enchants on your large item pieces (head, chest leg) to get the amount that feels safe enough for you to react to. If your health never gets low... you have too much. And you can swap enchants for the more useful stats.

So have as much health that you have time to react by healing or using a shield to give more time to heal. High armor increase time to react but doesn't need to always be high if you have buffs that improve it. Many skills also heal while doing damage, or skills like repentance which makes each corpse a little heal on demand.

I am taking a look at the Templar skills a bit harder...might have to dump it all into stam.
Is it wrong I don't want to be one of the big 3? But I guess I can't thrive without being so?

orion_1981usub17_ESO · February 2021

I dont understand what you mean by you don't want to be one of the big three? If you mean stats, then imagine you have three cups you can put the water in any cup you want but can only drink from one of them to quench your thirst. Kind of like the old Indiana Jones holy grail scene "you must choose wisely"

Luckily stats can be changed any time for in game gold at the temples. Far cheaper than skills but not as cheap as champion points. So if you feel you made a mistake, it takes gold to correct it.

The class skills require morphs to use stamina, not every class skill has a stamina alternative. It's not wrong to have a magicka class skill or two that offers utility(not damage) to make use of your minor magicka pool. Most stamina builds skills come from weapons, class, fighter guild, pvp, and undaunted. The pvp skills are very useful for the main stamina heal and haste so suffer a few sieges to unlock them.

To truly make a hybrid, if you must, is not based off attribute points, but the crafted set "pelinal appitude" which sets both weapon and spell damage to an equal amount.

Of course I don't think this is what you actually want, if I'm not mistaking we are talking playing solo, so you need a character that can take the hits, stay healed up and kill bosses on your own. There are many youtubers or websites that specialize in solo pve builds, I suggest taking a peek. If you dont like their builds, it's still good to understand how they theorycraft so you can make effective builds of your own.

Zama666 · February 2021

"you must choose wisely" (time to start doing that)

Big Three - DPS, Tank or Healer.

Yeah, I have to understand the theory crafting a lot more....there is so much detail

And juggle attribute points for the circumstances I wan to be in.

Happened again, Arx Corinium killed off everything, but (non Vet) that snake...500k and regened. Could never get it down low enough. I ended up basically walking out as it attacked me all the way to the door. With full hp.

When I do run dungeon with others, I almost exclusively heal. Staying back, dealing heavy attacks to keep my ultimate up. I'd like to kick some ass.

Thanks all!

orion_1981usub17_ESO · February 2021

You have to be out of the snakes aoe circle or it heals, step out of it and do ranged attacks. It won't heal. Playing healer is more about buff others and debuffing mobs these days, and Templar is not the best class for that. Self healing is insanely high for those that understand the mechanics so most normal dungeons don't need a healer at all. It's more important to know how to dodge aoe, block the big hits and bash the boss at the appropriate times. If you do wish to be healer go magicka and get to work on your restro/destro skill lines. You want to debuff bag guy armor and cast magicka and life steals. You just became better than 30% of healers in the game that think a regeneration is all they cast and do.

etchedpixels · February 2021

Zama666 wrote: »

20 Magicka
20 Health
24 Stamina

If soloing is your thing then:

Pick the stamina or magicka path. The 20 health is going to slightly limit your DPS but if you also want to be tanky it's about minimum - and templars have good shield skills. If you try and split stam/magicka them the way the game works you end up being a crap magic user and a crap weapon user - some tanks do split it to balance resources but they are not damage focussed.

If you pick the magicka path look for magicka sets - mostly light. If you pick the stamina one look for stamina sets - mostly medium. For defensive solo 5 pieces of a suitable set with 5 pieces of heavy and a monster helm/shoulders or two pieces trainee. For more offensive consider one set crafted so you've got 2 pieces heavy on chest/legs. For below level 50 its easy as no monster helm means you run 2 5 piece sets and heavy trainee chest/legs.

If you like soloing dungeons I'd also look at the PVP builds. There is a lot of similarity between the two except that some skills are more useful in each realm (mobs don't stealth, heal that much or run around like headless chickens)

Templar has some nice skills for soloing dungeons - strong self heals, strong shield skills, gap closers, and also a bunch of buffing and damage skills like power of the light you can use to deliver some damage even when on your defensive bar.

I suspect if you walk to a shrine, respec as 20 health, 44 stam, use 2H and put on deadly or venomous smite and hundings rage (heavy chest/legs medium other) plus monster helm you'll find your DPS goes way higher, especially if you set your front bar up as per the various 'one bar templar' builds and your back bar with defensive skills and dot casts (shields etc). Also make sure your skill morphs are stamina where appropriate. You'll still have enough magicka for shields and it's sometimes a useful balance trick to keep the odd skill magicka.

Likewise do the same 20 health. 44 magicka, mother's sorrow and a crafted mixed heavy/light magicka set pick up a destro staff and you should get similar results. For a strong healer/tank you may have to go this path because the restro staff skills are magicka oriented. For solo healing restro staff is kind of irrelevant.

After all that if you find you keep running low on one resource look at how you balance your jewellery enchants, particularly focussing on regeneration rate. For most things the problem is not maximums but sustain.

Fennwitty · February 2021

Healers these days are kind of the all-rounder. You heal and buff, and you also provide dps.

You can outfit a healer the same way as a magicka dps and perform perfectly fine in most 4-person content.

But healing is mostly a magicka thing. Very few stamina healing options at the moment.

And this game is heavily weighted toward each player fitting in more or less to one of the roles. You can change based on your gear and skill selection even without touching your attributes, but you have to be able to fit *at least* one role in a group.

If you go for DPS, your best defense is a good offense. Kill the enemy faster, slot an emergency heal, and use abilities that either heal directly or grant damage shields while doing damage and use them throughout.

If you don't have the skill Vigor on a stamina character, that's really the best heal available for you. You should be able to just do the noncombat Cyrodiil tutorial and get it.

You also can super buff your defense by changing the colors of enemy attacks. The default reddish can be hard to see. Make it a nice bright pink or blue, and you'll be avoiding attacks with ease.

Banana · February 2021

Homework time
https://alcasthq.com

Zama666 · February 2021

etchedpixels wrote: »

Zama666 wrote: »

20 Magicka
20 Health
24 Stamina

If soloing is your thing then:

Pick the stamina or magicka path. The 20 health is going to slightly limit your DPS but if you also want to be tanky it's about minimum - and templars have good shield skills. If you try and split stam/magicka them the way the game works you end up being a crap magic user and a crap weapon user - some tanks do split it to balance resources but they are not damage focussed.

If you pick the magicka path look for magicka sets - mostly light. If you pick the stamina one look for stamina sets - mostly medium. For defensive solo 5 pieces of a suitable set with 5 pieces of heavy and a monster helm/shoulders or two pieces trainee. For more offensive consider one set crafted so you've got 2 pieces heavy on chest/legs. For below level 50 its easy as no monster helm means you run 2 5 piece sets and heavy trainee chest/legs.

If you like soloing dungeons I'd also look at the PVP builds. There is a lot of similarity between the two except that some skills are more useful in each realm (mobs don't stealth, heal that much or run around like headless chickens)

Templar has some nice skills for soloing dungeons - strong self heals, strong shield skills, gap closers, and also a bunch of buffing and damage skills like power of the light you can use to deliver some damage even when on your defensive bar.

I suspect if you walk to a shrine, respec as 20 health, 44 stam, use 2H and put on deadly or venomous smite and hundings rage (heavy chest/legs medium other) plus monster helm you'll find your DPS goes way higher, especially if you set your front bar up as per the various 'one bar templar' builds and your back bar with defensive skills and dot casts (shields etc). Also make sure your skill morphs are stamina where appropriate. You'll still have enough magicka for shields and it's sometimes a useful balance trick to keep the odd skill magicka.

Likewise do the same 20 health. 44 magicka, mother's sorrow and a crafted mixed heavy/light magicka set pick up a destro staff and you should get similar results. For a strong healer/tank you may have to go this path because the restro staff skills are magicka oriented. For solo healing restro staff is kind of irrelevant.

After all that if you find you keep running low on one resource look at how you balance your jewellery enchants, particularly focussing on regeneration rate. For most things the problem is not maximums but sustain.

If do the 20 Health/44 Stamina - what chances do I have for healing myself (maybe others)?

Tanks!

Fennwitty · February 2021

Staying alive isn't directly dependent on how many points you have in Health. You can put zero points in Health, but with gear and food still have 16k hp or more.

There's much more to staying alive than hp.

You're a Templar, let's assume you stick with Stamina. A lot of abilities keep you alive out of the box.

Any time you use an Aedric Spear skill you get Minor Protection with the Spear Wall passive (Attacking is the best defense for more reasons than one).

Your Balanced Warrior passive gives you a good amount of spell resistance 100% of the time.

You have Repentance skill, which heals you a ton when fighting trash mobs -- providing you keep killing them.

Sacred Ground passive boosts whatever healing you do by 8% and lets you take 10% less damage when you block. It's significant.

Several of your class abilities offer healing morphs. While overall they're Magicka which limits your use, they still help. Radiant Glory for instance.

You'll still want Resolving Vigor from Assault skill line as an emergency heal though. This uses your Stamina to give HP -- so high Stamina effectively also boosts your HP by letting you use the skill frequently.

Putting CP points into appropriate defense skills substantially cuts incoming damage.

Brawler continually gives you a free 3kish HP "heal". If it's up continually it's almost as good as real hp.

If you're Stamina focused and wear lots of medium armor you can now dodge roll way more often. That's zero damage. Heavy attacking restores stamina, and you can keep on dodge rolling. Again offense = defense.

Fennwitty · February 2021

Plus you can use life steal enchants, or life drain poisons when necessary to get steady healing. And hp /healing potions.