Suggested changes to templar abilities

Lynx7386 · June 2014

Copied from my response to another thread, I think these relatively small changes would go a long way towards improving the areas where templars are really lacking at the moment (those areas being sustained dps, aoe damage, and magicka management):

Aedric Spear Line:

Spear Shards
-Needs a massive damage increase to be competetive as an AoE DPS skill.
-Should snare or immobilize all enemies in the area, instead of disorienting one enemy.

Dawn's Wrath Line:

Sun Fire - Reflective Light
-Remove the 3 target limit, and allow the skill to deal the higher amount of damage to the target you aim at, plus the lower amount to all enemies in a radius around that target. This would help turn the skill into a true aoe skill instead of a half-way skill that cant decide what it's supposed to be good for.
-Make the skill apply the damage over time effect to all enemies damaged by the blast, rather than just the initial target.
-If necessary, remove the snare in favor of this additional AoE damage factor.

Backlash
-Remove the cast time, this ability does no damage up front and in fact does nothing for a full 7.2 seconds (when passives are taken into account), and then only does something if the target actually takes damage and doesnt die beforehand.
-Currently backlash has a hidden damage cap, preventing it from dealing more than a set amount of damage regardless of how much damage the target takes before the time limit is up. This limit is necessary, of course, to prevent exploits that could make it too easy to quickly kill enemies in pve - however, it also interferes with the ability's scaling at higher levels. To remedy this, allow backlash to 'detonate' before the 7.2 second duration if the damage limit is reached before then.

Backlash - Power of the Light
-The weapon damage bonus for this morph doesnt really do enough to be worth taking over the healing morph. My suggestion would be to change power of the light to increase the amount of damage backlash returns after it's duration, and to increase the hidden damage cap.

Backlash - Purifying Light
-Instead of creating a healing pool after backlash detonates, change this morph to heal allies who attack the target afflicted by the ability. This way the heal still remains useful even if the target dies before backlash detonates.

Blinding Light
-Remove this ability. The concept is nice, but miss chance effects are already known to not work properly against bosses, and blinding light offers nothing to synergize with the rest of the skill tree.
-Replace blinding light with something that has an AoE immobilizing effect, perhaps something 'gravity' related to go along with the somewhat celestial theme the rest of the tree has. An aoe immobilize with a damage component would go a long way towards improving our AoE dps viability (and tanking ability as well) - thinking something similar to draconic talons or encase here.

Nova
I love this ability, especially it's visual effect, but let's compare it to the most similar spell in the game, dragonknight standard. Nova costs 100 more ultimate, only lasts 8 seconds compared to 15, provides 30% enemy damage reduction rather than 35%, and does not increase the player's damage by 35% like standard of might does. The morphs are also incredibly uninspired.
-Reduce the ultimate cost of Nova to 200, from 300
-Increase the duration of nova to a max of 15 seconds at rank 4 morphed

Nova - Solar Prison
-Instead of having a "more powerful synergy", make this morph immobilize enemies in the area of effect, more true to it's name.

Nova - Solar Disturbance
-Change this morph to cause the templar to deal 35% more damage with dawn's wrath abilities against targets within nova's radius. Again, more true to the name, and more on par with standard of might (though obviously still weaker, as it only effects dawn's wrath abilities).

Restoring Light:

Rushed Ceremony - Breath of Life
-Increase the heal on the second and third targets to be equal to the first target healed. This is already an incredibly expensive and inefficient heal, but it's usefulness for emergency burst healing would be better served if the amount werent split on each target. Sometimes the target that needs the bigger heal seems to not get it, while the targets next to you that are at 98% health waste the effect.

Healing Ritual
-Reduce the base cast time of this heal to 1.5 seconds, instead of 2. The amount healed does not justify the long cast time, especially in endgame pve situations where standing still for 2 seconds will almost certainly get you (and by association your group) killed.

Healing Ritual - Ritual of Rebirth
-Change this morph to make the spellcast instant, but remove the bonus self healing in exchange.

Healing Ritual - Lingering Ritual
-Change this morph to heal effected allies for an additional X every 0.5 seconds for 8 seconds, rather than having a burst heal after 8 seconds. A heal over time effect is much more reliable.

Restoring Aura / Restoring Aura - Radiant Aura
-Change restoring Aura to grant a 15% increase to stamina and magicka regeneration, instead of stamina and health regeneration. When it comes to returning health, we have heals, this should be a utility spell instead.
-Change the activated effect so that it no longer has its benefit reduced by the regeneration softcap and allies receive the full 80% boost to regeneration for the duration.

Restoring Aura - Repentance
-Change this ability so that it restores magicka and stamina per nearby corpse, rather than health and stamina. Same reasoning above.

(Note: I use repentance as a free heal, which I dont think the devs really intended. It's incredibly powerful right now as a heal that can be practically spammed for no cost in any aoe situation or boss encounter that includes adds. I think it would be better off as a way to regenerate magicka for templars, helping to alleviate our magicka issues, but I'll definitely be sad to see my free heal go

Enkil · June 2014

Great suggestions!! A lot of these would help bring Templar up to par.

Baphomet · June 2014

There are a lot of small tweaks that could b e made to the existing abilities, which would make the class much more appealing. I don't even think Zenimax needs to change a lot of mechanics but just tweaking some numbers, durations and maybe cast times would go such a looong way.

For instance, having restoring aura generate stamina and magicka is a no-brainer. This one needs to change, Zenimax.

Backlash must have its duration decreased. 7+ seconds are way too long and makes this ability unreliant and akward to use.

Spearshards should be an AoE snare instead of only hitting one target. If you can slow down your targets in it theres a much better change the passives can do their job and increase the damage of this ability.

Blinding light should have same duration as lightning form - 6 seconds.

Nova of course needs to be lowered to 200 ult. Its crazy that it costs 300 for what you get.

Kegero · June 2014

VR12 Templar here (heal spec).

Spear Shards: I agree, but no immobilize/snare. This would just become a stronger version of dark talons!

Sun Fire: I agree, but the dot damage should be reduced if it affects 6 targets. The snare should stay.

Backlash: Nope, if this would become instant the spell would be too strong. Furthermore, making it detonate as soon as the damage threshold is reached would be wrong, too. FYI, you can apply it multiple times already. Just put a heavy staff attack in between the casts.

Backlash Morphs: Totaly agree

Blinding light: Nope, currently is a somewhat nice ability for a healer to limit the damage on your group during trash mob fights. Also, it gets a longer duration with patch 1.2, hence makeing it a viable choice

Nova: Agree, but the duration of 15 seconds is too long. 10 would be ok, though
Nova Solar prison: Nope, immobilize would be too strong.
Nova Solar disturbance: Nope, with the costs of 200 and the ability to pbaoe with solar barrage, a damage boost would be insanely op. Instead, shield players within the nova effect so their receive 10% less damage from enemies

Rushed ceremony -BoL: Nope, nope and nope. It is my main heal and only costs 256 mana (currently). It crit heals for 1200 on the main target, hence 600 on the secondary ones. 256 mana for a total of 1600-2400 health points is ok. If a change is required change it so that instead of healing two secondary targets make it that it heals everyone (hence 5 people) in a radius of 5 meters around you with the secondary heal value. That way, it would always heal you and prevents situations where your heal chooses other players while you need a heal, too.

Healing ritual: nope
Healing ritual RoR: nope, never. making this skill instant would allow for insanely efficient healing in large goup fights in PvP (and PvE). Reducing the cast time to 1 second would be ok, though.
Healing ritual LR: would be ok, too.

Restoring aura: Never used it but it feels not ok to let this ability recover magicka.

Lynx7386 · June 2014

Backlash must have its duration decreased. 7+ seconds are way too long and makes this ability unreliant and akward to use.

I'm not sure I agree on this. If you decrease the duration, you wont be able to store up as much damage with the ability.

Think about when you're soloing - you cast backlash, you then cast dark flare, you're already 1.5-2 seconds into the duration without taking lag into account. You might be able to cast 3 more instant spells (like reflective light) before the duration is up, and 36% of that damage really isnt a lot.

Then again, in group situations 7 seconds is long enough that you're hitting the damage cap for the ability within a couple of seconds, which makes the next 4-5 seconds useless.

In pvp, backlash is all about generating as much burst as possible following a series of attacks. The point is to create enough damage return from backlash that the enemy cant recover from it.

The ability in general needs some mechanical changes, but there's no good way to go about it without ruining it in one or more areas of the game.

Sun Fire: I agree, but the dot damage should be reduced if it affects 6 targets. The snare should stay.

What's your reasoning behind this? the DoT doesnt stack up multiple times on any one target, and it doesnt really do a whole lot of damage over the duration.

FYI, you can apply it multiple times already. Just put a heavy staff attack in between the casts.

This is incorrect. When backlash is cast on the same target before it detonates, the original backlash is overwritten. This has become a problem when more than one templar with the ability are in a raid group; the effects do not stack, even from multiple templars, rendering it useless for all but one of them.

Nova: Agree, but the duration of 15 seconds is too long. 10 would be ok, though

So 15 seconds is ok for a dragonknight standard (one that can be morphed to either be movable, or provide a larger increase to damage and damage resistance), but 15 seconds on nova is overpowered?

Nova Solar disturbance: Nope, with the costs of 200 and the ability to pbaoe with solar barrage, a damage boost would be insanely op. Instead, shield players within the nova effect so their receive 10% less damage from enemies

And again, a standard of might that reduces damage taken by 35% (5% more than nova) and increases damage for -all- abilities and attacks by 35% is ok, but having solar disturbance increase only the damage from dawn's wrath abilities by 30% would be overpowered?

They're nearly identical abilities, but standard is vastly superior right now - costs less, has a more potent effect, and synergizes better with DK passives. Why are you so against making nova even somewhat similar in performance (though still, as suggested, weaker than standard)?

You play a dk, dont you?

Rushed ceremony -BoL: Nope, nope and nope. It is my main heal and only costs 256 mana (currently). It crit heals for 1200 on the main target, hence 600 on the secondary ones. 256 mana for a total of 1600-2400 health points is ok. If a change is required change it so that instead of healing two secondary targets make it that it heals everyone (hence 5 people) in a radius of 5 meters around you with the secondary heal value. That way, it would always heal you and prevents situations where your heal chooses other players while you need a heal, too.

That would be an acceptable alternative, I think. Either remove the 3 target heal limit and make it a pbaoe heal for the secondary value on all targets, or make it heal all 3 of those targets for the primary value. Either works.

Restoring aura: Never used it but it feels not ok to let this ability recover magicka.

So while healers of every other class have ways to efficiently recover magicka without relying solely on the restoration staff's heavy attack return, it's not ok for templars to have the same functionality?

We have no way to return magicka to ourselves right now, especially with honor the dead not working properly.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with changing restoring aura to recover magicka and stamina instead of stamina and health. It's redundant with our healing abilities right now, and would be better served as a way to manage magicka.

Dralik · June 2014

Clap my friend +1

Kegero · June 2014

Lynx7386 wrote: »

FYI, you can apply it multiple times already. Just put a heavy staff attack in between the casts.

This is incorrect. When backlash is cast on the same target before it detonates, the original backlash is overwritten. This has become a problem when more than one templar with the ability are in a raid group; the effects do not stack, even from multiple templars, rendering it useless for all but one of them.

If they did not change it with the last patch try the following in a group boss fight:
1) Cast backlash
2) As soon as the cast starts hold down the left mouse button for the heavy attack
3) As soon as the heavy attack starts cast backlash (do not let go of your left mouse button)
4) Wait for backlash to be cast while still holding the left mouse button
5) Go back to 3)

You should see backlash detonate approx. each 3 seconds.

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Nova: Agree, but the duration of 15 seconds is too long. 10 would be ok, though

So 15 seconds is ok for a dragonknight standard (one that can be morphed to either be movable, or provide a larger increase to damage and damage resistance), but 15 seconds on nova is overpowered?

Nova Solar disturbance: Nope, with the costs of 200 and the ability to pbaoe with solar barrage, a damage boost would be insanely op. Instead, shield players within the nova effect so their receive 10% less damage from enemies

And again, a standard of might that reduces damage taken by 35% (5% more than nova) and increases damage for -all- abilities and attacks by 35% is ok, but having solar disturbance increase only the damage from dawn's wrath abilities by 30% would be overpowered?

They're nearly identical abilities, but standard is vastly superior right now - costs less, has a more potent effect, and synergizes better with DK passives. Why are you so against making nova even somewhat similar in performance (though still, as suggested, weaker than standard)?

You play a dk, dont you?

Nah, my only char is a Templar. My reasoning for the above is that I do not want an OP ability for my templar. I want abilities that are in line with the game difficulty.
Also, the standard is nerfed with patch 1.2 and reduced to 20% from the 35% bonuses. If your suggestion would go live, then the Templar would also have an OP ability, 75% of the forum community would b..ch about it and demand a nerf. Also, with the new puncturing strikes morph regenerating health with each attack, one OP ability is coming right our way.

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Restoring aura: Never used it but it feels not ok to let this ability recover magicka.

So while healers of every other class have ways to efficiently recover magicka without relying solely on the restoration staff's heavy attack return, it's not ok for templars to have the same functionality?

We have no way to return magicka to ourselves right now, especially with honor the dead not working properly.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with changing restoring aura to recover magicka and stamina instead of stamina and health. It's redundant with our healing abilities right now, and would be better served as a way to manage magicka.

Mana for my as healer is rarely a problem in trash fights unless I also fill the role of CC (volcanic rune spam) and AoE DD (impulse and solar barrage). The mana problems occur during boss fights. Here, you rarely have any mobs where you could drain mana/hp/stam with restoring aura.
If you use the other morph with the +80% boost to mana regen (without softcap) it will still regenerate very few magica points for you (if at all)
- The normal cost is 360 magicka.
- It lasts for 6 seconds
- I assume you have aroung 90 magica recovery
- While activated you receive 486 magica instead of 270 =216 additional magica

To not lose magicka you need a magica cost reduction of at least 40%. Thats a value that I currently do not have with seducers (3%), worm cult (8%), breton (3%), Templar passive (4%) and 7 light armor pieces (21%) (total 39%). Even with your suggestion, I would lose magicka.. although my group would benefit.

My suggestion:
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/106174/suggestion-first-step-to-increase-templar-viability-in-solo-group-situations#latest

Sidrath · June 2014

Kegero wrote: »

If they did not change it with the last patch try the following in a group boss fight:
1) Cast backlash
2) As soon as the cast starts hold down the left mouse button for the heavy attack
3) As soon as the heavy attack starts cast backlash (do not let go of your left mouse button)
4) Wait for backlash to be cast while still holding the left mouse button
5) Go back to 3)

You should see backlash detonate approx. each 3 seconds.

This doesn't work for me. I've managed to get it to (buggily, unreliably) proc the occasional additional Backlash/PotL blast in between the intended 7.2s ones, but the damage store doesn't work properly on those. I've had many of those 'fake' detonations hit for 0 damage (despite having a steady stream of damage on target). Scarily, I've also had it occasionally deliver two Backlashes for 1.5k apiece within 2 seconds of each other. This is obviously an unintended bug-out of this ability, not its intended use (and your above method of using heavy attack animation windows suggests you may have a more refined version of it, but it's still a bug-out). Let's not balance Backlash around our ability to bug the crap out of it, please.

All that aside, even if I could spam Backlash this does not overcome the basic problem of Backlash capping at 1500 for a roughly 2s ability (cast time + animation window), contingent on others dealing 4200 in that timeframe. A 750 DPS ability, where a lot of other classes are able to sustain 800+. There's nothing OP about removing the cast time on this ability (keeping it as a once-per-7.2s ability, of course), all it'd do is give Templars an action with roughly the same DPS efficiency as a DK's Unstable Flame DoT (and still, contingent on the group doing that 4.2k damage!).

PS: I've been wondering. Assuming a Trial Group is putting out solid DPS, isn't 6 seconds more than enough to store up 4.2k and thereby release the capped detonation? If so, doesn't Enduring Rays' +20% ability duration (making it a 7.2s DaT instead of a 6s DaT) actually nerf the ability's effectiveness rather than augment it? Par for the course given it nerfs Sun Fire / Reflective Light too, but just thought I'd ask...

Lynx7386 · June 2014

Right. It's stupid to claim an ability is fine because an exploit of game mechanics allows it to deal almost as much damage when spammed as other classes can

Lynx7386 · June 2014

What if backlash were changed to something entirely different? What if, instead of casting it on a target and then having the target store up damage for the detonation, it cast on yourself, and stored up incoming damage, then detonated after the duration and caused a percentage of that damage taken to hit nearby enemies?

madangrypally · June 2014

The suggestions look great.

Would like to add 2 other changes:

1: Radial Sweep: Base Ultimate Cost stays the same but it now scales off of the Ultimate Charge like NBs Death Stroke.

2: Buff Nova to either do more damage or give some other types of benifit. Currently Negate and Standard are light years ahead of it.

3: Add a passive that restores Magicka when using an Ultimate. This needs to be enough to make it worth it.

Here is how I would set up the Passive:

Light Bringer Passive:
Activating Radial Sweep restores ??% max stamina of player depending on amount of Ultimate used.
Activating Nova: Absorbs 1% max health, stamina, and magicka per second per enemy in nova and restores players health, stamina, and magicka the amount absorbed.
Activating Rite of Passage: Restores ?? max magicka to player every second while channeled. This needs to restore enough to make fix magicka issues of templars.

Lynx7386 · June 2014

Another option would be to make backlash an execute like mage's fury or hidden strike, which I think would be more useful overall. Give it a damage amount and scaling bonus damage up to 300% when the target gets below 50% health.

Kegero · June 2014

Lynx7386 wrote: »

What if backlash were changed to something entirely different? What if, instead of casting it on a target and then having the target store up damage for the detonation, it cast on yourself, and stored up incoming damage, then detonated after the duration and caused a percentage of that damage taken to hit nearby enemies?

That sounds like a nice idea. Maybe, backlash could also be changed so that it immediately reflects incoming damage.
Let's say, 10% of the damage from within an 8 meter radius is reflected to the source (both magica and physical single target damage)