Templars But Again?

MurkyWetWolf198 · February 2023

So, after reading through the answers to my previous thread, here's what I learned;

Pre U35 Jabs relied heavily on Burning Light and their snaring effect to get good damage, but now can't do that
Backlash Morphs are underperforming due to the low scaling and the inability to go fully offensive for 6ish seconds, leading to weak minimum damage and shabby max damage

Is that about right?

Because if so, I would say that a straight-up buff to Backlash by adding something like Major Berserk (if they're giving that buff out so freely this patch I don't see why not here lol) would fix half of that

Honestly though, it sounds like Jabs have always been a bad skill, and only really performed as strong as they did due to niche interactions with a class passive and a snare. Honestly, it sounds like they need a rework so that they aren't a channeled skill (so that damage isn't lost by people blocking/dodging midway through) and aren't AoE (because Evasion hurts it too much and it can't benefit from bonuses like Deadly Aim). Yet, doing those things would kinda kill the entire identity of Templar, which I guarantee a LOT of players would riot over AGAIN.

So how the hell are Jabs supposed to be good while they retain this same functionality? Changing any effects to be more streamlined seems to hinder the classes ability to be itself

nb_rich · February 2023

Only complaints I ever seen about jabs is the damage decreased and the new jabs animation. Simple fix is to buff the damage of jabs. The animation change I'm used to already so don't care about that, but know others still may not like it.

gariondavey · February 2023

They decreased number of ticks from 4 to 3, decreased the damage in general, and also gave it a horrendously ugly animation

Suna_Ye_Sunnabe · February 2023

The animation was the nail in this deep coffin of Templar indignities, in update 35. The changes to backlash just lowered the coffin further in the ground.

K9002 · February 2023

A huge problem with Templars is their lack of buffs and debuffs, which used to be offset by higher raw damage and healing. Damage and healing got a huge reduction according to spreadsheet balancing but the class is still left with fewer (de)buffs than others and it doesn't have a single unique or otherwise hard to obtain effect.

Somewhere along the way ZOS seems to have forgotten the principles of spellcrafting and enchanting as seen in Morrowind and Oblivion. All of it revolved around the concept of a power budget. Spells could hit harder at the cost of lacking additional effects. On-touch (melee) spells could hit much harder than ranged spells. Compound buffs and debuffs were possible. Significant debuffs could be attached to otherwise mediocre attacks. All effects had sliders which made the players pick between intensity and duration. And size, where applicable.

Jabs had the main target damage reduced (twice if you count Burning Light nerf), splash damage slightly increased, snare duration cut in half, then depending on morph: reduced healing or replaced buff. Ability's cost was lowered to reflect the overall reduction in the power budget. But that's not what we needed because the old cost was already sustainable. I'd rather pay more and hit harder.

Something like Radiant Aura has the same problem. It's free to cast but a global cooldown and bar space are much more scarce and precious resources than magicka or stamina. It does far too little to justify taking up the bar slot, and its effects are also provided by Refreshing Path which also heals and throws in additional Major Expedition. Nightblades pay in magicka and they get much greater returns. Wardens also apply the minor regeneration buffs with Enchanted Growth, another skill that does something extra.

Honor the Dead/Breath of Life is another useless heal because it doesn't do anything outside of healing. Bursting Vines do the same thing for slightly less magicka and generate 10 ultimate. Necromancer's burst heal grants unique resistances that stack with Resolve or heals another target for the full amount. Sorcerer's Matriarch outright heals two targets while also being a passive source of damage. Even DK's Cauterize provides Major Prophecy/Savagery for just being slotted.

Backlash was nerfed even in PvE with the new scaling formula. It's often compared to Daedric Curse, Shalks and Blastbones. All three of these skills are AoE, it's only Backlash that hits a single target and can't affect more than one target at a time. That alone would suggest that it should do stronger single-target damage, but it doesn't.
All three abilities have one or more additional effects. Neither of them requires an unrelenting flurry of attacks to enable their damaging potential. For only slightly higher cost, Deep Fissure hits twice and applies not just Minor Breach but also Major Breach. Daedric Prey is unique in that it improves a class ultimate's damage by 45%. Blastbones deals equivalent damage upfront and has potential for further scaling with distance from the enemy. Anyone who claims that Backlash is fine in PvE isn't mentally sound for me, they got Stockholm'ed hard by ZOS.

virtus753 · February 2023

The subliminal issue with Jabs is that by reducing the damage/power of the main class spammable, which felt powerful and had clearly defined stam and mag morphs, and instead funneling that power into a magicka-only execute-only skill, they made stamina templar disappear. There is no such thing anymore worthy of the name. It’s a magplar with stam glyphs when a magicka class skill is the plurality of damage done, when our two class stam skills worth considering don’t feel powerful, and we rely on generic stam and mag skills to make up the rest of our bars.

The_Titan_Tim · February 2023

Forgot to mention that our unique class purge that removes 5 negative effects for 5000 magicka as a stage 3 vampire which has become a necessity for PvP due to Undeath, is completely useless with everyone running around with Elemental Susceptibility, applying 3 status effects at once, for free.

All it takes is one Ele and a double dot poison proc and your entire purge was wasted. As a Stamina Templar, you can’t afford to keep wasting 5,000 magicka so you inevitably get run down by dot builds because everyone and their mother are running Vateshran Destro this patch.

The_Titan_Tim · February 2023

Honor the Dead and Breath of Life, our burst heal, being the class known for heals, you would think it would be incredible, yet this ability was trashed patches ago with the lowering on targets with Breath of Life and the missing health aspect gutted, the secondary heals do minimal now too, and you have to be facing where you’re healing, there are much better heals that other classes have access to.

Coagulating Blood gets an additional scale off of missing health like our ability used to.

Healthy Offering is significantly stronger too, and Dark Cloak is busted… right now Nightblades are playing “house” a lot better than Templar.

Twilight Matriarch provides 3 full power burst heals without having to turn your screen to face them.

Resilient Flesh gives a massive boost to mitigation when you heal for a few seconds as a buffer.

Warden’s burst heal stuns…

Our heal gives back minimal magicka or heals one other person for not even half the value? It’s a joke, really.

Syiccal · February 2023

The_Titan_Tim wrote: »

Forgot to mention that our unique class purge that removes 5 negative effects for 5000 magicka as a stage 3 vampire which has become a necessity for PvP due to Undeath, is completely useless with everyone running around with Elemental Susceptibility, applying 3 status effects at once, for free.

All it takes is one Ele and a double dot poison proc and your entire purge was wasted. As a Stamina Templar, you can’t afford to keep wasting 5,000 magicka so you inevitably get run down by dot builds because everyone and their mother are running Vateshran Destro this patch.

It's not 3 it's 5 applied if using an ice staff , on a free to cast ability making extended ritual not worth the bar space anymore imo..I dropped.it ages ago now and rely on mara purge all every 15 seconds.
What's the point of spending 4-5k mag just to have everything instantly reapplied at no cost to the attacker.

ketsparrowhawk · February 2023

Templars were happy before U35. All that needs to happen is a rebalance of their toolkit to resemble pre-U35 Plars. Too much of the power budget was put into the beam at the expense of the rest of the offensive kit. There is little incentive to use any other ability when I can just keep spamming beams on low health targets and finish a BG 20-0. Like I'm actively giving up kills by trying to use any other ability.

xthrshx · February 2023

I was enjoying magplar in U34. Even then, Templars were at the lower end of the damage ceiling and had extremely limited raid utility, but they were killer in four-man and at least fun to play. Plus they had some unique class identity with Azureblight, Plaguebreak, and Deadly. Now the class is trash. Three patches in a row of nerfs and even less class identity or group utility.

Turtle_Bot · February 2023

The_Titan_Tim wrote: »

Honor the Dead and Breath of Life, our burst heal, being the class known for heals, you would think it would be incredible, yet this ability was trashed patches ago with the lowering on targets with Breath of Life and the missing health aspect gutted, the secondary heals do minimal now too, and you have to be facing where you’re healing, there are much better heals that other classes have access to.

Coagulating Blood gets an additional scale off of missing health like our ability used to.

Healthy Offering is significantly stronger too, and Dark Cloak is busted… right now Nightblades are playing “house” a lot better than Templar.

Twilight Matriarch provides 3 full power burst heals without having to turn your screen to face them.

Resilient Flesh gives a massive boost to mitigation when you heal for a few seconds as a buffer.

Warden’s burst heal stuns…

Our heal gives back minimal magicka or heals one other person for not even half the value? It’s a joke, really.

just to clarify, matriarch gives 2.5 burst heals (it heals itself for half value + 2 allies for full value). It's strong in pve and if you have a group to protect it it's good in pvp, but it does die far too easily and with a 1.5s summon time that is severely punishing when under pressure.
Not disagreeing with you, plar definitely needs a lot of love, but sorc heal while having some nice aspects, particularly for pve, is not all sunshine and roses, especially for pvp.

mmtaniac · February 2023

If they don't care about templar and don't want to improve them then just lock this class out of pvp completly and buff his pve tools. But at the same time give us class changed token, so people can change class for something more usefull for they playstyle. Class changed token is good thing ,this way you can see how many people change class because it's just useless for they playstyle or it's weak right now.

Syiccal · February 2023

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

The_Titan_Tim wrote: »

Honor the Dead and Breath of Life, our burst heal, being the class known for heals, you would think it would be incredible, yet this ability was trashed patches ago with the lowering on targets with Breath of Life and the missing health aspect gutted, the secondary heals do minimal now too, and you have to be facing where you’re healing, there are much better heals that other classes have access to.

Coagulating Blood gets an additional scale off of missing health like our ability used to.

Healthy Offering is significantly stronger too, and Dark Cloak is busted… right now Nightblades are playing “house” a lot better than Templar.

Twilight Matriarch provides 3 full power burst heals without having to turn your screen to face them.

Resilient Flesh gives a massive boost to mitigation when you heal for a few seconds as a buffer.

Warden’s burst heal stuns…

Our heal gives back minimal magicka or heals one other person for not even half the value? It’s a joke, really.

just to clarify, matriarch gives 2.5 burst heals (it heals itself for half value + 2 allies for full value). It's strong in pve and if you have a group to protect it it's good in pvp, but it does die far too easily and with a 1.5s summon time that is severely punishing when under pressure.
Not disagreeing with you, plar definitely needs a lot of love, but sorc heal while having some nice aspects, particularly for pve, is not all sunshine and roses, especially for pvp.

Fair point about sorc heals but in pve they rely on shields that are actually half decent, it's in pvp shields suck donkey ***.

TechMaybeHic · February 2023

Backlash is bad right now because I think it is getting double dipped by Battle Spirit.

That said; I don't think fixing it alone will matter. I ran my templar some with my guild and without. With a large group, fighting another group (ie Zerg vs zerg) I still can destroy players you find there. Just chew right through them. Go to fight a good player off to the side, not any big names maybe, but someone who just has the moves and the meta; Maras would heal 1-2k every set of jabs after the first, and my first POTL when I bother trying it; is purged away automatically often. Now I can get the 2nd one to go if the fight lasts that long, due to maras cooldown; but when other classes burst takes 3 to 5 seconds vs 6, They get 2 to 4 more in to my one to take a shot on me; and currently theirs hit 3 to 5 times harder. But even if its fixed, Im look at 1 to 1.5 times harder and still 2 to 4 more chances just because it is getting passively purged, and even without evasion, my total jabs after battle spirit and armor is getting almost halved.

This is to say that not only did the devs directly wreck templar; they also created a meta where a traditional templar does not fit.

Billium813 · February 2023

Based on the recent developers comment, it seems like the devs REALLY want Templars to drop PotL and pickup Solar Flare. Anyone else getting this feeling?

Except... IMO, there are two issues with Solar Flare:

Dark Flare - Major Defile is a GREAT solution to help with the healy meta in PvP. However, 16% isn't enough. I think they should try upping Major Defile to something like 30%. Or maybe have it grant Major & Minor Defile? It just needs a shot in the arm for what its supposed to do: shut down healing on the enemy.
Solar Barrage - I want this to work! I keep slotting this for PvE, but it just under performs all other options! It hits like a wet blanket. I'd like to see it scale up in damage over time, like how Ritual of Retribution does. That makes it more skill oriented as early refreshes are punishing to new players, but gives those players an avenue to become better as they learn to play the class.

TechMaybeHic · February 2023

Billium813 wrote: »

Based on the recent developers comment, it seems like the devs REALLY want Templars to drop PotL and pickup Solar Flare. Anyone else getting this feeling?

Except... IMO, there are two issues with Solar Flare:
Dark Flare - Major Defile is a GREAT solution to help with the healy meta in PvP. However, 16% isn't enough. I think they should try upping Major Defile to something like 30%. Or maybe have it grant Major & Minor Defile? It just needs a shot in the arm for what its supposed to do: shut down healing on the enemy.

Solar Barrage - I want this to work! I keep slotting this for PvE, but it just under performs all other options! It hits like a wet blanket. I'd like to see it scale up in damage over time, like how Ritual of Retribution does. That makes it more skill oriented as early refreshes are punishing to new players, but gives those players an avenue to become better as they learn to play the class.

What comments lead you to believe that?

Billium813 · February 2023

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

Billium813 wrote: »

Based on the recent developers comment, it seems like the devs REALLY want Templars to drop PotL and pickup Solar Flare. Anyone else getting this feeling?

Except... IMO, there are two issues with Solar Flare:
Dark Flare - Major Defile is a GREAT solution to help with the healy meta in PvP. However, 16% isn't enough. I think they should try upping Major Defile to something like 30%. Or maybe have it grant Major & Minor Defile? It just needs a shot in the arm for what its supposed to do: shut down healing on the enemy.

Solar Barrage - I want this to work! I keep slotting this for PvE, but it just under performs all other options! It hits like a wet blanket. I'd like to see it scale up in damage over time, like how Ritual of Retribution does. That makes it more skill oriented as early refreshes are punishing to new players, but gives those players an avenue to become better as they learn to play the class.

What comments lead you to believe that?

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Templar
Aedric Spear
Radial Sweep
Empowering Sweep Everlasting Sweep:
Increased the duration of the pulsing Damage over Time to 10 seconds at base, up from 6 seconds.

This morph no longer grants Empower, as Solar Flare and its morphs already grant this buff. As such, the name has been adjusted to prevent confusion.

As well as the nerfs to PotL they have been doing over the last 2 patches.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7649203/#Comment_7649203
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7683902#Comment_7683902

It seems to me like they want players to use PotL less and more Solar Flare or Jesus Beam. Except, instead of incentivizing us by buffing the others, they are just nerfing PotL and making excuses that "the other 2 skills have some good things, go play with those".

I don't fault them for trying to get players to use more skills and to make it so that one skill is not an obvious "go to". But they have two options to do that: Carrot and Stick. They have only chose Stick for the last 2 patches and I think that's what makes players unhappy. They need to stop simply nerfing PotL and start buffing Solar Flare if they really want us to diversify our game play.

CaperGuy · February 2023

Templar has been in a strange place in PvP since the nerfs to jabs and other changes. Rangeplar can be interesting but that’s moreso single target and is a bit awkward. They had been one of the few potential counters to MagDKs with their strong cleanse and ability to heal through some big hits upfront. Now though, getting that counter offensive pressure is difficult so even if you can survive the initial onslaught, the enemy will simply laugh off your damage if you can’t get them into Jesus Beam range.

The_Titan_Tim · February 2023

CaperGuy wrote: »

Templar has been in a strange place in PvP since the nerfs to jabs and other changes. Rangeplar can be interesting but that’s moreso single target and is a bit awkward. They had been one of the few potential counters to MagDKs with their strong cleanse and ability to heal through some big hits upfront. Now though, getting that counter offensive pressure is difficult so even if you can survive the initial onslaught, the enemy will simply laugh off your damage if you can’t get them into Jesus Beam range.

Even if you can get them into Radiant range, all it takes is a block-casted Coagulating Blood and they are instantly back at 75% at minimum.

CaperGuy · February 2023

The_Titan_Tim wrote: »

CaperGuy wrote: »

Templar has been in a strange place in PvP since the nerfs to jabs and other changes. Rangeplar can be interesting but that’s moreso single target and is a bit awkward. They had been one of the few potential counters to MagDKs with their strong cleanse and ability to heal through some big hits upfront. Now though, getting that counter offensive pressure is difficult so even if you can survive the initial onslaught, the enemy will simply laugh off your damage if you can’t get them into Jesus Beam range.

Even if you can get them into Radiant range, all it takes is a block-casted Coagulating Blood and they are instantly back at 75% at minimum.

Sure. I’ll chalk that one up to a separate issue though in that healing is overtuned or that we need better counters like stronger defiles/heal absorption mechanics that can be built into - for a cost.

Billium813 · February 2023

CaperGuy wrote: »

The_Titan_Tim wrote: »

CaperGuy wrote: »

Templar has been in a strange place in PvP since the nerfs to jabs and other changes. Rangeplar can be interesting but that’s moreso single target and is a bit awkward. They had been one of the few potential counters to MagDKs with their strong cleanse and ability to heal through some big hits upfront. Now though, getting that counter offensive pressure is difficult so even if you can survive the initial onslaught, the enemy will simply laugh off your damage if you can’t get them into Jesus Beam range.

Even if you can get them into Radiant range, all it takes is a block-casted Coagulating Blood and they are instantly back at 75% at minimum.

Sure. I’ll chalk that one up to a separate issue though in that healing is overtuned or that we need better counters like stronger defiles/heal absorption mechanics that can be built into - for a cost.

I would love to see Templar more of a Heal AND Defile class. It feels like Templar should be the class that plays with Healing and Defiling/Absorbing mechanics more than any other class. Playing with Heals (both ourselves and our enemies) should be the Templar wheelhouse.

I'd like to see mechanics like "Snake in the Stars" baked into Templar. Mechanics that absorb damage yes, but also mechanics that shut down other players healing

CaperGuy · February 2023

Billium813 wrote: »

CaperGuy wrote: »

The_Titan_Tim wrote: »

CaperGuy wrote: »

Templar has been in a strange place in PvP since the nerfs to jabs and other changes. Rangeplar can be interesting but that’s moreso single target and is a bit awkward. They had been one of the few potential counters to MagDKs with their strong cleanse and ability to heal through some big hits upfront. Now though, getting that counter offensive pressure is difficult so even if you can survive the initial onslaught, the enemy will simply laugh off your damage if you can’t get them into Jesus Beam range.

Even if you can get them into Radiant range, all it takes is a block-casted Coagulating Blood and they are instantly back at 75% at minimum.

Sure. I’ll chalk that one up to a separate issue though in that healing is overtuned or that we need better counters like stronger defiles/heal absorption mechanics that can be built into - for a cost.

I would love to see Templar more of a Heal AND Defile class. It feels like Templar should be the class that plays with Healing and Defiling/Absorbing mechanics more than any other class. Playing with Heals (both ourselves and our enemies) should be the Templar wheelhouse.

That is an interesting thought.