What do we want to see in the Templar Refresh?

Mascen · January 25

Magplar main here. Been thinking about this for a while ever since I saw the DK refresh.

I'm interested in seeing where things go for us considering that Templars need some long overdue reworking. As far as the mechanics go, I'm not that well versed but I recognize that our beam needs to be reworked considering how the arcanist beam has become the standard since multi classing dropped.

Graphics and animations is a whole other beast as we've been stuck using the Nighthollow Staff ever since the original spear was removed for jabs. Personally I think we need a custom made spear or at least an elongated version of the staff from the IA weapon set.

But what does everyone else think?

Illmatic · January 25

#BringBackRealJabs

Is all i want.

xylena · January 25

Original Jabs animation.

coop500 · January 25

Better sustain. Most classes have tools for good sustain but templar is lacking.
I also think they could use some utility to be stronger healers again.

Overall, I am a little concerned with the devs' focus on Templars creating like, bastions of protection or whatever. The problem with this is that in harder content, very rarely are you able to sit in a safety bubble that someone put down. The fights are chaotic, fatal AOEs are being tossed everywhere, mechanics scattered across giant rooms are everywhere, players have to constantly reposition themselves and the like. Sure, such abilities could be good for 'tank and spank' fights, but harder content I see uptimes of stationary abilities falling flat.

If they want templars to be a bastion, it needs to be attached to them or mobile in some way.

Mascen · January 25

coop500 wrote: »

Better sustain. Most classes have tools for good sustain but templar is lacking.
I also think they could use some utility to be stronger healers again.

Overall, I am a little concerned with the devs' focus on Templars creating like, bastions of protection or whatever. The problem with this is that in harder content, very rarely are you able to sit in a safety bubble that someone put down. The fights are chaotic, fatal AOEs are being tossed everywhere, mechanics scattered across giant rooms are everywhere, players have to constantly reposition themselves and the like. Sure, such abilities could be good for 'tank and spank' fights, but harder content I see uptimes of stationary abilities falling flat.

If they want templars to be a bastion, it needs to be attached to them or mobile in some way.

I can see that, either make the abilities mobile or ridiculously strong but static defense points like the Void Titan bubble from Destiny

ViggyBoi · January 25

I made a massive post about this topic somewhere and I don't feel like reposting it so I'll just mention my biggest desired fixes.

DELETE. HEALING. RITUAL.
Hate that skill. Replace it with literally anything else. Both morphs, into the garbage.

Make 1 morph of Nova a genuine DPS ultimate, that way templars don't have to outsource power.

Fix jabs, that it. Animation aside, sweeps is fine, but remove major brutality from jabs and replace it with major breach. If that skill is going to have one redundant buff/debuff let it be the one that provides more damage. Otherwise allow it to have a different secondary effect entirely.

Allow luminous shards to have its own cool down separate from orb.

Class Script is very mediocre. I like the idea of tying in Sacred Ground but it just feels really half assed to get a slight 5 second minor buff to offense and defense which is SLIGHTLY stronger if you cast it in your sea bear circles. There could be more there, or heck even throw burning light into the mix. Make the class script generate 2 stacks instead of one along with sacred ground.

Remove useless morphs:

Reflective Light - make it a molten weapons/ expansive frost cloak style skill but for Major Crit for your group. Rename it Illuminating light or something.

Blazing Shield - has NEVER been good. Its a worse shield, it deals no damage, it has no range.

Purifying Light - Costs MORE, deals LESS damage, has a tiny STATIONARY HoT as its bonus. This morph would be the poster child of dead morphs if Blazing shield hadn't always been bad.

Dark Flare - My candidate for the "beam" skill (runecarver/engulfing dragonfire) its just a worse spammable that only has niche applications in pvp.

Radiant Aura - Doesn't do much of anything but providing potion buffs passively. Could be made into a channeling style skill since plars get cool synergy with channeling skills.

Remembrance - Ever since charge got major protection this ultimate hasn't been worth much of anything. It heals less, and you are stationary = sitting duck. Practiced Incantation use to be situationally better since it allows you to move but now its just superior.

KiltMaster · January 25

I just miss my pre u-35 templar

Hasn't felt the same since

Major_Mangle · January 25

Less survivability better damage

Orbital78 · January 25

the beam buffs were great, it basically carries the class now. I want jab builds to be fun again though.

Soarora · January 25

Most likely, all the light spears will be changed since all animations seem to get changed. But I hope that its not “this is a “spear” with an effect over it” like jabs currently is but rather more like what the original spears are like— not flat out spear-shaped but rods of light. Like how Zeus is depicted as throwing lightning.

Focused charge should stop taunting.

I commented in the feedback survey that I like that plar doesn’t have a health based burst heal but it is missing one so I suspect we might get one.

USEFUL! GROUP! BUFFS/DEBUFFS! I don’t know which ones but give us something so plar support isn’t a complete meme.

katanagirl1 · January 25

I really loved my PvP stamplar back in the day. I still play pure classes and would like to see whatever it needs to be viable again. PoTL needs to be on par with beam at the very least.

Erickson9610 · January 25

I want Burning Light to remain the same. I don't want to see any "while ability slotted" conditions added to it.

Additionally, the Templar Class Mastery should drop the bonus for having Sacred Ground active on you. Currently, if you don't have access to Restoring Light, you can't get that bonus. The bonus should instead be removed entirely or baked into the base amount of WD/SD and Armor you get.

It'd also be cool to see Radiant Aura be like a Magicka version of Repentance.

Red_Feather · January 25

A cool class mechanic that makes them stand out.

tsaescishoeshiner · January 25

I mainly think a few lesser-used skills could use buffs. Healing Ritual is just used and redundant with other skills available, and Sun Shield could use further functionality for tanks or DPS.

Nova also isn't too helpful as a DPS ability or for tanks, and even in PvP rarely sees use.

Ruthless · January 25

OLD JABS should be a Skill Style mod

Lord_Hev · January 25

A new refresh of templar jabs, making jabs the record holder for most altered skill in the game, and rivaling nightblade overall for most total skill changes in the game.

Bring back blinding flashes and make blazing shield awesome like it once was before being wrongly nerfed.

Templar beam non-dodgeble

And they definitely need to do something with dark flare, at this point I wouldn't even complain if they completely "refreshed" it despite how usually against I am for that sort of thing.

Hapexamendios · January 26

Illmatic wrote: »

#BringBackRealJabs

Is all i want.

xylena wrote: »

Original Jabs animation.

Dreadwar · January 26

Jabs - Old animation, remove Major Brutality/Sorcerery and add Major Breach as ViggyBoi suggested would be top of the changes list.

Radiate77 · January 26

Blinding Flashes.

LunaFlora · January 26

i want one of the Radiant Oppression morphs to be more like Fatecarver and Engulfing Dragonfire, a channeled area of effect.

i hope all Templar skill morphs are more distinctly different. Similar to Cleansing Ritual which already has good morphs, one heals and the other damages.

no other specific desires.

Radiate77 · January 26

I can’t wait to see what they’re talking about by “blinding power”.

BXR_Lonestar · January 26

Illmatic wrote: »

#BringBackRealJabs

Is all i want.

This. I want to see jabs be back to being as strong as it used to be. Back before Malacath's band got nerfed, I remember seeing jabs of 11-12k hits in PVP, and now, my jabs hit for like 2k for non-crits and 4k crits per tick, but that is only if they actually aren't blocking/dodging such that all the ticks of Jabs are going to hit. Instead of being a primary damage dealing tool, Jabs is basically just a skill you throw on to keep the pressure on your target, but you have to run it in conjunction with an execute or you are just not going to get many kills.

This was all fine IMO when Radiant oppression was almost instant damage and worked like a sniper beam, but this was screwed up when they made more emphasis on maintaining the channel to maximize the damage on radiant oppression, which is nearly impossible to do unless you are in an open field combat situation and there is little cover to hide behind. For me, the radiant oppression change made it unusable, and forced me to try to find a different execute, none of which I really liked the feel of - I hated the melee executes (spin 2 win, 2 hander execute), and had difficulty targeting players with the single target executes (mage's wrath, hidden blade [or whatever the NB execute its called]). Lightning staff doesn't have an execute. So there really wasn't a lot of options that felt good playing with.

The_Isatope8 · January 27

Oh boy, where to begin.

Lets start on the visual and thematic side of things. Too many of their skills look similar to each other and their icons are just unimaginative yellow blobs on the skillbar. The fact that the nighthollow staff style is used for jabs is a travesty (vampire style on the holy-type class) and is the only place in their kit it is used makes it feel very out of place. Ideally a unique spear model would be created for the class that all of their spear skills use. Their theme is also kind of weird. They are obviously influenced by the paladin and cleric character archetypes and have a very 'lightbringer' aesthetic, but skills like dark flare makes it seem like they can corrupt their light magic. Living dark is a skill with a name that seems anathema to Templars usual themes as well. It just lacks thematic cohesion in places. Maybe bringing in some sunset orange and white into their colour pallet would help with visual distinction instead of almost everything just being yellow.

As a tank, Templar lacks meaningful buffs for the team and debuffs for their enemies. Of course, their sustain is also notoriously bad which is one of the reasons we never really saw many Templar tanks. Their kit isn't really built for tanking, sun shield serves almost no purpose since scribing and subclassing, their class taunt is just tacked onto a skill rarely seen outside of PvP and they don't even have a dedicated self heal since Rushed Ceremony can go to other players and Healing ritual is insanely expensive. I think that Templar should lean more into the paladin archetype in that it should empower allies just by being near them with aura like effects via skills and team buffs built into their passives. The lack of great debuffs could be remedied by giving them decent tank skills that also have a damage component, thereby making up some of the lost dps. such a change could give them a more unique playstyle as a tank when compared to the other classes.

Templar is simultaneously a great and not great healer. They're great because they have some of the highest numerical healing per second in the game, but lack many buffs and useful effects for their allies to make use of. They were much better long ago when they could still restore a ton of resources, but that's been stripped away. Maybe they could get this back in a different way by making it so that one of their skills makes themselves and allies restore more resources whenever they get resources back, be it from their normal recovery, passives, weapon enchants, sets or heavy attacking.

Templar dps is the wonkiest out of any class since it is so bottom heavy. They do middling damage right up until a boss reaches about 10% health, and then suddenly have the highest dps in game by far. This is fine if they are in a group since executing a boss quickly is very useful, some fights more than others though. This issue is very clear in solo content, however, where it feels like you're doing little damage up until you can use BEAM and the then the fight is pretty much over. I would like to see them get some kind of way to boost their up front damage, but still retain some of that power in execute. maybe they could have a Smite mechanic where their light and heavy attacks deal more damage. This would allow them to get some more up front damage when weaving and still get the damage of the beam, but not benefit from the bonus due to it being a long channel.

Most other classes, especially arcanist, have multiple effects on a single skill or have skills that function in unique ways. Templars skills are typically very one note and boring. Most of their healing skills are just straight heals and most of their damage and utility skills are uninteresting. This is why Templar is infamous for struggling with bar space since their good effects and self buffs are spread too thin across too many skills. This usually ends up forcing them into subclassing or scribing to make builds work without sacrificing a lot in areas like damage or sustain. Their stand out skills with interesting effects are pretty much just Backlash, Living Dark and Rune Focus, the rest are just really uninteresting or one note.

Their ultimate's are some of the worst in the game for a class and are typically replaced with skills from subclassing or ones from the generic skill lines that everyone normally has access to. Radial Sweep and Rite of Passage are only really see use in PvP and Nova is pretty much a dead skill. I mentioned in the previous paragraph that Templar lacks interesting effects on most of their skills and that is made very y obvious by their ultimate's really would like it if Nova got a sort of gravity well effect that can pull enemies to the center in a massive radius with a massive burst of damage. Rite of passage could become like a massive aura effect and Radial sweep could be given some dps utility by having an effect similar to that of isobel's Baneslayer ultimate.

Templars passives are very out of date and need to be reworked. I believe that they should be the class that provide the most buffs to the group via their passives. They already give the group Minor sorcery with their passives, so why not let Spear Wall also give allies Minor Protection and Minor Berserk?

Overall I just want to see Templar embody that classic Paladin archetype with some sweet elder scrolls flavor. Theres a lot of potential and judging by what's happening with DK, Templars will be remade into something wonderful.

wolfie1.0. · January 27

Other than jabs comming back with a better animation...

I think the largest change that I want is sacred ground to be changed completely. Rather than it attaching to AOE ground effects I would prefer it become an aura attached to the player. More like a Paladin being empowered vs being on hollowed ground.

My reasoning is simple. In most of the newer content mobility often is more required than stand and fight. Even in pvp you survive more by moving around.

I know for the longest time the idea was that templars are supposed to be able to just stand and fight
...

But that hasnt been true in ages. And if DKs can lose poison then the stand and fight thing needs to go too.

Rev Rielle · January 27

As others have said/suggested, I think the primary requirement to remain still, or on one spot, should be all but removed from the game as a whole. That mechanic is very 15-20 years ago, and games and game-play has move on a lot since then.

Aedric Spear I feel could use a lot of love thematically. Perhaps remove the whole 'Spear' idea from the skill line and have us retain our weapons, using them imbued with Merida's (Or Stendarr's, depending upon morphs) golden light instead or something. Maybe Puncturing Strikes could turn into a bound armaments style of thing visually. Kind of having shards of light fire out at our enemy, rather than conjuring and awkwardly holding a aedric spear. Piercing Javelin becomes visually where we hurl our weapon at our foe (e.g. a spinning golden-aura'd axe flying at our enemy to knock them down). So forth for the other skills and morphs of the major skill line.

Maybe Nova could cost 30 Ultimate per second or similar, lasting until our resource is expired, where we can recast it in a different location for 2x30 ultimate cost. This would make it a little mobile for the dynamic fights. Or, our characters themselves could become the Nova, in doing so changing our 1-5 skills to specific nova-related skills (single-target damage, AoE-damage, Major Main, Synergy skill, and so forth, keeping within the theme of what the current ultimate provides), which we can fire off for the duration.

As others have said; Remove the ground target of Rune Focus, have it apply to us. And have the 'whilst standing in the Rune' effects changed to something like 'whilst standing still'.

Whatever happens it will be interesting to see.
I do hope the graphic update of skills doesn't visually make them any more intense though, I feel they're already bright enough.

KalevaLaine · January 27

I want the old, real Jabs!

James-Wayne · January 27

Paladin animations and visuals from Diablo 4.

MJallday · January 27

Templars have been pretty much the weakest dps for most of ESO, barring 1 or 2 patches

heres what needs to happen

* sort out the jabs animation (ive never had a problem but lots of people have)
* bigger issue is make it a proper dps spanmable at the same tie, it hits like a wet noodle - make it scaleable or stackable
* get rid of the 3 skills that do exactly the same thing and give some variation
* improve the ultimates, sweep is ok in pvp but in pve its meh. nova noone uses now
* * improve the class mastery, its not really used because theres no benefit
* sort out the infinate archive sets, in comparison to other classes, theyre pointeless

whatever you do, and however you do it - give templars some love.
+

tmacedo · January 27

I wrote this somewhile ago in a discord server. First things that came to.my mind at that time, just after subclassing update (i didnt give much thought about numbers yet, bu someone may find this interesting, dunno).

" Ideas i came up with for templar

Aedric Spear
Luminous shards: move the immobilization here, the self synergy of both rss and reduces the dmg singificantly;
Blazing spear; try to adapt some (or all) of burning light effects here, its the dd morph. Remove the common effects with luminous.

Burning light -> Blinding light: when you take dmg with an aedric sprar ability active, gain a stack of blinding light for 3s, When at 5 stacks, gain major evasion for 5 seconds. 1 stack per second (yes something similar with den's winters embrace major maim)

Rework aetheric lancer to function similar to tarnished (dmg by aedric spear ability)
Tried to came up with something for blazing shield too, but nothing came.

Dawns Wrath
Solar disturbance: leave as it is, tank morph;
Solar prison: take power out of synergy and give to the players, to function similar to mystic fabled/vallina/hotdogs meteors but with direct at summon and dot, and some added unique effect;
Living dark: leave as it is, pvp morph
Unstable core: rework to proc overcharged at the enemy and do dmg, the idea is "the sun overloading enemies with magicka). Maybe something like fulminating.
Merge Prism and Illuminate already its due for a long time. For the other passive something in the lines of "increases your magic dmg done by 5%, and the chance of applying overcharged"

Restoring light
Remembrance: along with the healing, gives allies armor or other buff, instead of self major protection, make them immune to knockback for 2sec or something else;
Hasty prayer: leave as it is
Ritual of rebirth: rework to "focus your devotion" to give your allies something, like dmg shields to the three closest or a buff/resist"

BXR_Lonestar · January 27

The_Isatope8 wrote: »

Oh boy, where to begin.

Lets start on the visual and thematic side of things. Too many of their skills look similar to each other and their icons are just unimaginative yellow blobs on the skillbar. The fact that the nighthollow staff style is used for jabs is a travesty (vampire style on the holy-type class) and is the only place in their kit it is used makes it feel very out of place. Ideally a unique spear model would be created for the class that all of their spear skills use. Their theme is also kind of weird. They are obviously influenced by the paladin and cleric character archetypes and have a very 'lightbringer' aesthetic, but skills like dark flare makes it seem like they can corrupt their light magic. Living dark is a skill with a name that seems anathema to Templars usual themes as well. It just lacks thematic cohesion in places. Maybe bringing in some sunset orange and white into their colour pallet would help with visual distinction instead of almost everything just being yellow.

As a tank, Templar lacks meaningful buffs for the team and debuffs for their enemies. Of course, their sustain is also notoriously bad which is one of the reasons we never really saw many Templar tanks. Their kit isn't really built for tanking, sun shield serves almost no purpose since scribing and subclassing, their class taunt is just tacked onto a skill rarely seen outside of PvP and they don't even have a dedicated self heal since Rushed Ceremony can go to other players and Healing ritual is insanely expensive. I think that Templar should lean more into the paladin archetype in that it should empower allies just by being near them with aura like effects via skills and team buffs built into their passives. The lack of great debuffs could be remedied by giving them decent tank skills that also have a damage component, thereby making up some of the lost dps. such a change could give them a more unique playstyle as a tank when compared to the other classes.

Templar is simultaneously a great and not great healer. They're great because they have some of the highest numerical healing per second in the game, but lack many buffs and useful effects for their allies to make use of. They were much better long ago when they could still restore a ton of resources, but that's been stripped away. Maybe they could get this back in a different way by making it so that one of their skills makes themselves and allies restore more resources whenever they get resources back, be it from their normal recovery, passives, weapon enchants, sets or heavy attacking.

Templar dps is the wonkiest out of any class since it is so bottom heavy. They do middling damage right up until a boss reaches about 10% health, and then suddenly have the highest dps in game by far. This is fine if they are in a group since executing a boss quickly is very useful, some fights more than others though. This issue is very clear in solo content, however, where it feels like you're doing little damage up until you can use BEAM and the then the fight is pretty much over. I would like to see them get some kind of way to boost their up front damage, but still retain some of that power in execute. maybe they could have a Smite mechanic where their light and heavy attacks deal more damage. This would allow them to get some more up front damage when weaving and still get the damage of the beam, but not benefit from the bonus due to it being a long channel.

Most other classes, especially arcanist, have multiple effects on a single skill or have skills that function in unique ways. Templars skills are typically very one note and boring. Most of their healing skills are just straight heals and most of their damage and utility skills are uninteresting. This is why Templar is infamous for struggling with bar space since their good effects and self buffs are spread too thin across too many skills. This usually ends up forcing them into subclassing or scribing to make builds work without sacrificing a lot in areas like damage or sustain. Their stand out skills with interesting effects are pretty much just Backlash, Living Dark and Rune Focus, the rest are just really uninteresting or one note.

Their ultimate's are some of the worst in the game for a class and are typically replaced with skills from subclassing or ones from the generic skill lines that everyone normally has access to. Radial Sweep and Rite of Passage are only really see use in PvP and Nova is pretty much a dead skill. I mentioned in the previous paragraph that Templar lacks interesting effects on most of their skills and that is made very y obvious by their ultimate's really would like it if Nova got a sort of gravity well effect that can pull enemies to the center in a massive radius with a massive burst of damage. Rite of passage could become like a massive aura effect and Radial sweep could be given some dps utility by having an effect similar to that of isobel's Baneslayer ultimate.

Templars passives are very out of date and need to be reworked. I believe that they should be the class that provide the most buffs to the group via their passives. They already give the group Minor sorcery with their passives, so why not let Spear Wall also give allies Minor Protection and Minor Berserk?

Overall I just want to see Templar embody that classic Paladin archetype with some sweet elder scrolls flavor. Theres a lot of potential and judging by what's happening with DK, Templars will be remade into something wonderful.

I actually like some of these suggestions and where you are going with this, but thought I would chime in to build ontop of this.

I would love to see the Plar become the Diablo 2 Paladin where its true power came from auras that either buffed your group or debuffed your enemies. For tanking, they can have an aura that is active on their front or back bar that reduces enemy resistances by between 3-4000 that stacks on top of major/minor breach. That is a tanking buff that makes up for the fact that the Plar doesn't have a class pull/leash. The aura may also help in DPS situations because Plars lack penetration, which is one of the components you need to good dps.

An aura that heals, cleanses, and provides a small renewing shield for the group based on health or max resources would be an incredible healing tool that would address some of its healing shortfalls and at the same time, condense some of its skills and functionality into a more mobile skill (its basically extended ritual + a scribed shield ability in one with no synergy requirement).

An aura that increases the critical attack rating (unique un-named buff) of you and your group would also be a good healer/dps tool to have in their kit and make it very desirable for group play in any role.

frogthroat · January 27

Everyone already mentioned many things I would like changed.

But I would have one thing that has not been mentioned:

I would like that the Catheter Bag skill visuals would be changed back to Living Dark skill. That skill visual change was even worse than changing the old jabs animation to the new one.