PTS Feedback Thread for Templar Balance Improvements

Dracane · January 2017

Fix purifying ritual to be less overpowered before you think of any buffs to Stamina or Magicka Templar please.
It doesn't have to remove FIVE effects and it's questionable, if it should really remove dots, daedric curse and such things. It would be enough if it just removed debuffs, snares, roots or simply removed one or max 2 effects, not 5.

usmcjdking · January 2017

hobicabobjob wrote: »

Erynyes wrote: »

Also my biggest gripe, nothing for STAMPLAR!!!!!

Given what the other classes 'got', it's a good thing to be ignored.

Dracane wrote: »

Fix purifying ritual to be less overpowered before you think of any buffs to Stamina or Magicka Templar please.
It doesn't have to remove FIVE effects and it's questionable, if it should really remove dots, daedric curse and such things. It would be enough if it just removed debuffs, snares, roots or simply removed one or max 2 effects, not 5.

5 effects is OP?

Incap Alone puts 4 on you. Mass hysteria puts two.

White wabbit · January 2017

Fix heavy that would sort out a lot of issues with most classes

Eas007 · January 2017

First impression without any real testing done.

- Blazing Spear: Why remove the stun? Why change this skill at all? Faster animation is good I guess though.
- Radiant Destruction: The problem isn't the dmg, it's the range. Make it gapclosable range so people can bash it.
- Magickasteal: Did we realy need more magickasustain as magplar? All magplars in pvp will be switching from Rune Focus to Restoring Focus making them even harder to kill.

- Sun Fire and morphs could do with a faster animation too.

- Where are the stamplar changes? There are 8 classes in this game no?
- Reduce the cost of Jabs. Just to costly compared to other stam skills.
- Make Explosive Charge a stam morph.
- Give stamplars more ST sustain. Repetance is awesome, but when there are no corpes, like in a ST Boss fight or long duel, it's useless.
- Rework the passives so stamplars get more then 4% cost reduction, and 6% weapondmg.

ZOS_JohanaB · January 2017

A few comments were removed from the thread. We understand not agreeing with every other community member but please do try to be civil with one another.

Izaki · January 2017

Drdeath20 wrote: »

Inner light gives the major sorcery just for slotting as well as a increase to magicka and recovery. It does not stack with the major sorcery that Reflective light gives.

The damage is laughable and for pve if your attacking multiple targets it's just easier to use sweeps on trash mobs.

Just stop. You don't know what you're talking about.

Lore_lai · January 2017

Dracane wrote: »

Fix purifying ritual to be less overpowered before you think of any buffs to Stamina or Magicka Templar please.
It doesn't have to remove FIVE effects and it's questionable, if it should really remove dots, daedric curse and such things. It would be enough if it just removed debuffs, snares, roots or simply removed one or max 2 effects, not 5.

I see you talking a lot in regards to this skill and it's clear that you have an agenda against Purifying Ritual. Yes, I understand it annoys you that there are such counters to Curse and Fury but counters to things should always exists. Especially now that Curse is un-blockable.

You think 5 debuffs is too much? Then you are mistaken. One player alone can put a multitude of debuffs on you, sometimes even with one click of a button. The skill is balanced and it's a Templar defense.
If you would play Templar you would know that at times there are so many debuffs on you that your Purify won't even cleanse the root spam (something Sorc has very easy access too BTW).
If it were up to you, you would strip Templar or Purify and DK of wings. So much bias.

In any case - this thread is for Templar PTS changes/feedback and Purifying Ritual was not one that was changed.
***
Now that we are done with the Off-Topic.
As many others have said before - please give the stun back to Blazing Spear! Templar already suffers on the Hard CC side of things.
Keep in mind that we are also the only class that doesn't have a ROOT.

technohic · January 2017

I disagree with the shortening of range on RD. That would definitely nerf it for PvP but it would make it nearly unuseable without a hard CC and well; we see our options there dwindling.

From another thread, I posted this:

I do agree that the damage nerf will not help the complaints on the skill nor the issues. The issue IMO (other than people expecting to survive zergs) is that it rewards spamming. You spam it on someone so that as soon as they hit 50% health, then boom! Its going to start really hurting before they target has a chance to heal, effectively giving them half a health bar to work with.

What needs to be done is make it to where the execute does not work unless the target is already in execute range, and drop the execute range down to 30% health. This is assuming that they want this nerfed for both PVE and PVP.

If they just want it nerfed for PvP, shorten the range to 15m. (add) but I am not a fan of this idea.

danno8 · January 2017

Dracane wrote: »

Fix purifying ritual to be less overpowered before you think of any buffs to Stamina or Magicka Templar please.
It doesn't have to remove FIVE effects and it's questionable, if it should really remove dots, daedric curse and such things. It would be enough if it just removed debuffs, snares, roots or simply removed one or max 2 effects, not 5.

The ability to remove debuffs is how a Templar makes up for the fact that they have no mobility. It's how the class works. Take it away and the class will be bogged down in snares/roots with no way of getting out of them.

It would be like Templars asking for Sorcerers to not be able to Streak while snared or rooted. How would that look for Sorcerers?

OdinForge · January 2017

Xposted My thoughts from One Tamriel live and Homestead PTS. I played my Stamplar a good bit on PTS last night, and I've played him almost nonstop since Dark Brotherhood until leaving in OT for a break.

Stamplar seems pretty lackluster in PvP now, they started Dark Brotherhood in a great spot. Ever since that initial patch however changes to the meta (heavy / proc, low sustain stat / high damage) or changes made in patches unrelated to Stamplar directly have left it feeling pretty meh.

It's not that it's really bad, jabs can still be made to do a ton of damage. Lack of physical penetration aside Stamplar can still put out a lot of damage both single target and AoE, anyone in medium armor or light armor.

Skill Cost
Stamina skills are so damn expensive compared to what Stamplar is realistically capable of getting in regen, binding javelin is also pretty expensive too. Not to mention that for the cost of jabs, it's very easy to miss with them. They aren't functioning like sweeps, they don't hit through dodge. With a build focused around cost reduction I still can't get jabs to a reasonable cost.

Underwhelming power of the light morph
Stamplar easily falls short in physical penetration capability, minor fracture is not useful enough to make a difference. The concept of power of the light is good, but in application it's very underwhelming. it could use a pretty hefty damage boost to be worth slotting in pvp, or debuff boost or even just a redesign. I'd like to use this skill, it's just not worth touching.

Regen and sustain tools
They changed how regen was calculated resulting in a pretty significant decrease in stat for everyone. But Stamplar is the only class without a reliable sustain tool. Stamsorc has dark deal, Stam/magnb has a better regen passive and siphoning attacks. DK has helping hands and battle roar. Even Magplar has ways to return pretty decent amounts of magicka. So everyone is dropping medium armor and running heavy armor with penetration & proc sets to supplement damage, but every other class has some kind of way to either sustain their resources with low regen or flat out restore it.

Unnecessary engine guardian nerf
ZOS "nerfed" engine guardian on top of that, not that repenting one bot was enough to make a huge difference realistically. But it helped a decent amount, and it added another body potentially to others you've killed. It wasn't a class based guaranteed skill, it required you to sacrifice another 2P for damage or defense.

Few useful class based magicka utility skills
I'm appreciative of the low cost magicka utility of stamplar, restoring focus is extremely cheap for when you're moving around a lot, the cleanse is very cheap considering how powerful it is. But out of three class trees those are the only useful magicka utilities for Stamplar.

Seems silly that after 6 months or more of forming their balance patch this is the end result we're left with.

UppGRAYxDD · January 2017

Blazing Shards nerf is going to far for a class that lacks decent affordable stuns. Im guessing that none of your paid employees has ever dueled or 1v1'd with a magplar and realized that you must have distance to use toppling charge or must be facing the enemy directly to land a javelin. All ppl will have to do now is run around in circles directly around you and dps you down. How about giving us a proper root or making a aedric blinding ability similar to NB mass hysteria. Radient nerf.....all magplars knew this was coming due to the salt raining from the skies on the forums

scrobey · January 2017

forzajuve212 wrote: »

Minor magicka steal is going to be extremely broken in PVP and needs to be reworked or scrapped.

It stacks unlimited amounts of time, goes through LoS and walls, and applies to all nearby allies. Currently, if you and a friend are fighting 4 people and the restoring aura debuff is applied, every ally is recieveing 400 magicka per second x 4 enemies, which is 1600 magicka and stacks with your own magicka recovery. In a hypotetical siutation where you are fighting 15 people at once, you will get back 400 magicka per second x 15 enemies, which is 6000 magicka per second for every ally.

This will quite literaly render sustain completely useless if you are playing with a templar as a magicka build.This cannot stand to live without a cap or a complete reversal. Players will be able to run full damage specs with no regard to magicka recovery and you will see absolutely unreal numbers of damage from magicka builds.

Please consider this @Wrobel @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_GinaBruno .

Run full damage with heavy armor and 600 recovery? Sounds like a stam sorc...

Pallio · January 2017

"Improvements" LOL

Joy_Division · January 2017

Paraflex wrote: »

Templar PvP sets from IC will be out of control this patch. New wave of cancer will be 5 Reactive/ 5 Black Rose 2 Malubeth....Templars will be incredibly hard to kill. Sword and Board doubled up on the bars...this is really bad to give Templars access to this armor combo.

Please adjust Reactive armor and lowers to reduced damage.

Please reduce Black Rose 5 piece bonuses

These sets combined make for the worst type of PvP cancer and we'll just hear complains about PvP Templars for the next 4 months.

My guess is that it wont be just templars abusing these sets.

Ishammael · January 2017

Honestly, I think mTemp will stand strongest when this patch settles. sTemp seems tougher, but honestly I am not super experienced with it. Agreed that all of the changes to healing ritual are yawn-worthy.

The utility of have the strongest burst heal in the game cannot be underestimated. This enables enormous flexibility in gearing, champion point allocation (granted, there isn't THAT much there). During his review of the patch notes (which I skimmed), @FENGRUSH discussed the power in mTemp in group play. I think he is 100% spot-on. Overlapping heals, guard, Malubeth, lingering pots, blocking, and now this new mana sustain thingy can create a group synergy that is nearly unbreakable.

While mTemp as a class does not have a great set of CCs w/o Blazing, I don't think it will detrimentally impact the way the class performs. Radiant Destruction will still be a stellar execute since it scales three ways (lower health, higher mana, spell dmg+max mana). I think the nerf should have been to change its range... but whatever.

DHale · January 2017

I am not sure why you would remove the stun. The extra 2 seconds does not help people move on of the area anyways. Bosses are not stunnable. We would like this put back I am not sure how this was part of any balance plan. Eclipse is not helpful people get a free break free and take no damage... you did not change this. This procs unchained. The radiant nerf should just be changed put the damage back and make it so it only does damage if the target is under fifty percent health period. Is this too hard to code?

As for radiant aura the new magic drain now proc once from one mob instead of all targets in range. This means that siphon and elemental drain were literally nerfed into the ground by like two thirds what it is in live. With ele drain you can cast it on multiple targets. Why would you make a skill like radiant aura that only procs once off one enemy?

Altyrann · January 2017

Any chance these feedback threads could be split into PvP and PvE? They are very different contexts and feedback from the two together seems mostly to confuse things.

Ron_Burgundy_79 · January 2017

Ishammael wrote: »

Honestly, I think mTemp will stand strongest when this patch settles. sTemp seems tougher, but honestly I am not super experienced with it. Agreed that all of the changes to healing ritual are yawn-worthy.

The utility of have the strongest burst heal in the game cannot be underestimated. This enables enormous flexibility in gearing, champion point allocation (granted, there isn't THAT much there). During his review of the patch notes (which I skimmed), @FENGRUSH discussed the power in mTemp in group play. I think he is 100% spot-on. Overlapping heals, guard, Malubeth, lingering pots, blocking, and now this new mana sustain thingy can create a group synergy that is nearly unbreakable.

While mTemp as a class does not have a great set of CCs w/o Blazing, I don't think it will detrimentally impact the way the class performs. Radiant Destruction will still be a stellar execute since it scales three ways (lower health, higher mana, spell dmg+max mana). I think the nerf should have been to change its range... but whatever.

I think you meant to say they will still provide the best group utility in both PVE and PVP. The blazing spear nerf hurts templars in small group and solo play.

I'm on console, so I decided to duel without blazing spear last night. It didn't go well when dueling good stam players. I was using aurora javelin as a defensive cc in place of blazing spear. I looked like Shaq at the freethrow line. It missed shuffle users well over 50% of the time, and a 5% shuffle nerf won't suddenly make this skill not suck.

Solariken · January 2017

Alright, I've finally had a chance to get into the PTS and play with the changes.

Blazing Spear - I'm not sure why the stun was removed - it was a valuable tool in magplar burst and allowed them to quickly go from defense to offense in the time of a bar swap. It was a very viscerally rewarding combo with jabs. The projectile travel speed wasn't a problem before but I'm glad it was sped up to compensate.

Backlash - the damage on this skill isn't meaningful and doesn't really accomplish anything. Instead it should apply a DOT with similar damage to that of Reflective Light which DOES apply to the copied damage - this would make the skill more viable for solo play and synergize well with my Burning Light suggestion below.

Eclipse is a little better now that it can be placed on multiple targets, but I still hate the skill and will never use it because of its clash with true CC abilities.

The Radiant Destruction damage nerf is fine I guess because some of the damage can be added back in with a fire staff. Still, I would have preferred a more intelligent nerf - perhaps a 20% tooltip damage nerf but add 10% back into the execute scaling. It would also be cool to make it deal scaling damage based on the caster's proximity to the target - more damage for being closer and less for being farther away.

Hasty Prayer is cool AF now, I don't know what's up with these naysayers. This skill is the bees knees now. It may be hard to use reactively but but it's a big and efficient heal while on the move.

Ritual of Rebirth is still super lame. This should become a mass resurrection with a high cost (100% of remaining magicka but restores X magicka per player resurrected over Y seconds) and perhaps a 5s cast time. That would be awesome.

Restoring/Radiant Aura are fine - it's better than the Major Regen buffs but still pretty unimpressive overall.

Now some suggestions for class improvements with Stamplars specifically in mind:

1) Burning Light should be changed to proc on all magic, fire, and physical damge-over-time effects instead of Aedric Spear abilities explicitly (hence the term "burning"). This would give a TON of build flexibility and synergize amazingly well with the WHOLE Templar toolkit (including my Backlash DOT suggestion above!).

2) Restoring Spirit should be buffed to 5% cost reduction.

3) Templars have to rely on heavy attacks for sustain more than the other classes during combat (especially in PvP). I suggest Master Ritualist should lose the soul gem filling mechanic (but keep the Rez speed) and provide a bonus to heavy attack speed and damage - perhaps +20% speed and +8% damage. This would also be a QoL improvement for magplars as it's difficult to weave with a staff with so many cast/channel abilities.

4) The Mending passive should apply to all healing done. This would give Stamplars more meaningful benefit to being a Templar.

I could offer more suggestions but these are core to making the class more complete and give more access to in-class class synergy.

cazlonb16_ESO · January 2017

Ishammael wrote: »

Honestly, I think mTemp will stand strongest when this patch settles. sTemp seems tougher, but honestly I am not super experienced with it. Agreed that all of the changes to healing ritual are yawn-worthy.

The utility of have the strongest burst heal in the game cannot be underestimated. This enables enormous flexibility in gearing, champion point allocation (granted, there isn't THAT much there). During his review of the patch notes (which I skimmed), @FENGRUSH discussed the power in mTemp in group play. I think he is 100% spot-on. Overlapping heals, guard, Malubeth, lingering pots, blocking, and now this new mana sustain thingy can create a group synergy that is nearly unbreakable.

While mTemp as a class does not have a great set of CCs w/o Blazing, I don't think it will detrimentally impact the way the class performs.

Even if that were true: Do I really have to explain why making MagTemps even better healbots would be bad for everyone ?

MrGorv · January 2017

I will comment only on things that were changed.
1. No stun for Blazing Spear. That's sad. And like most of the changes this patch, nobody asked for it.
2. Backlash changes are ok, nothing to argue with.
3. I'm alright with new Eclipse too.
4. Radiant Destruction. Well... If I got this one right, it was nerfed because of PvP mostly. And of course PvE got all of the pain again. Not damage of this ability is the problem. Problem is its range. 21% won't help in Cyrodiil that much, it will still melt people down from 30 damn meters away, while templars in PvE will loose like 5% of their overall DPS. Yes, I know, that this skill is over the top in PvE too, but not that much so you nerf it for more then 1/5! What should you do? Reduce the damage nerf to someting around 5%, but make the range 2 times smaller! 14 or even 10 meters is more than enough! This will make it well balanced in both PvP AND PvE. Just do it. Please.
5. Healing Ritual, Restoring Aura and Ritual of Rebirth were not that important for me, so I hope someone more competent will comment ot these.

Alcast · January 2017

It is funny that when people talk about TEMPLARS all they think of is Magicka Templars. There used the be smth called "Stamina Templars" a long time ago......but I guess people have forgotten about that setup..

The only thing that bothers me on Magplar is the nerf to Radiant Destruction. Crippels magicka Templars for PvE and does change ZERO in PvP. Because we all know RANGE is the problem, not the damage.

Joy_Division · January 2017

Got on the PTS for a bit.

Blazing Spear - I and I'd imagine no person who values efficiency will use this in PvP. ZoS turned it into Lightning Splash, a weakish ground DoT that people will move out of. It is a bit more efficient in a DPS rotation, but this way one of the most unique abilities in the game and required a fair bit of skill to use (because people could move away) and set up interesting combinations. This is a very poor decision that removes a core element of interactive PvP gameplay and if ZoS values varied and tactical gameplay, then it should be reverted. This skill's value cannot be measured in mathamatics - which is the best kind btw ZOS.
Radiant Aura - I was a bit skeptical of this at first because the magickasteals didnt stack, but I do like the change. One templar in a raid should run this and in any trash pull or "zerg" fight will instantly make the entire raid fine on magicka management. It is difficult in trash pulls to maintain people's magicka because nobody wants to elemental drain trash. This change was well thought out and offers an interesting tool in a pretty common situation. Credit where credit is due.
Backlash - The PvP Battlespirit mechanics still make this impractical to use against enemy players, but the moderate damage helps a bit for PvE rotations. I still think this should be reworked such that the buff rather than damage is the most attractive feature of the spell.
Healing Ritual - I do like what you are trying to do here and in specific situations I can see the "hasty" morph work. The thing I don't like about the spell is that your team/raid/group has to be winning in order to make full effect of it because if your team is losing and there are enemy players pressuring your healers, there is a danger of interruption and at that point the fight is going to go down the drain. I much rather have my healing option shine when I am losing and under a lot of pressure. I understand the heals are large and much more magicka efficient the breath of life, but I'm telling you if an enemy healer is getting bombed by any PvP raid that knows what they are doing, even trying to use the "Hasty" morph is going to get them killed. This is a spell that more ensure a winning position stays a winning position, which is fine, I suppose, but I have limited bar space and have a higher expectation.
Radiant Destruction - Not enough experience with it yet to comment.
Eclipse - I have said "1 target is useless" at least 100 times so I will acknowledge ZoS's change here. I have tried it and it's still bad because it 1) is too expensive, 2) and does less damage than sorcerer's curse even though 3) it takes longer to explode and 4) does not have the free echo effect. I challenge anyone to find a more inefficient skill in the game.

Some_Guy · January 2017

Alcast wrote: »

It is funny that when people talk about TEMPLARS all they think of is Magicka Templars. There used the be smth called "Stamina Templars" a long time ago......but I guess people have forgotten about that setup..

What is this... stah-men-ah templar you speak of?
Sounds like it would be a bad dps with terrible sustain...

MrGorv · January 2017

Alcast wrote: »

It is funny that when people talk about TEMPLARS all they think of is Magicka Templars. There used the be smth called "Stamina Templars" a long time ago......but I guess people have forgotten about that setup..

Point is, we're not gonna get anything good for stamplars in this patch, no matter how many pages we write about it. We're just trying to save what we can now.

Ron_Burgundy_79 · January 2017

Alcast wrote: »

It is funny that when people talk about TEMPLARS all they think of is Magicka Templars. There used the be smth called "Stamina Templars" a long time ago......but I guess people have forgotten about that setup..

Stamplars are mythological creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster.

timidobserver · January 2017

Alcast wrote: »

It is funny that when people talk about TEMPLARS all they think of is Magicka Templars. There used the be smth called "Stamina Templars" a long time ago......

Your parses probably caused ZOS to implement a policy of not buffing Templar in any way.

technohic · January 2017

MrGorv wrote: »

Alcast wrote: »

It is funny that when people talk about TEMPLARS all they think of is Magicka Templars. There used the be smth called "Stamina Templars" a long time ago......but I guess people have forgotten about that setup..

Point is, we're not gonna get anything good for stamplars in this patch, no matter how many pages we write about it. We're just trying to save what we can now.

We'll be lucky to save anything. Their focus is going to be very much on housing feedback as it is setting up to be the cash cow in the crown store.

I'm actually OK with the changes they have made outside of blazing spear, as the rest of the changes I find do not change much. Actually; the blazing spear makes me lean on RD a little more TBH. I would pair the DOT along with hitting with other abilities while it pinned a target down a couple of seconds but now, I am forced to lose DPS from the DOTs by using luminous for CC (and soft at that) or I have to go with javelin which really does not provide much damage, and I certainly am out an AOE ability. So to make up for it, I can see me leaning on RD a bit.

React · January 2017

Alcast wrote: »

It is funny that when people talk about TEMPLARS all they think of is Magicka Templars. There used the be smth called "Stamina Templars" a long time ago......but I guess people have forgotten about that setup..

The only thing that bothers me on Magplar is the nerf to Radiant Destruction. Crippels magicka Templars for PvE and does change ZERO in PvP. Because we all know RANGE is the problem, not the damage.

@ZOS_GinaBruno This right here. Stamina templars are UNDERREPRESENTED because they have gone unused for so long. It is time to bring some balance back to the class, and give people an incentive to actually play stamplar because it just isn't there. PLEASE take a look at the many excellent suggestions for stamplars in the midst of all this magplar qq'ing, because EVERYONE AND THEIR MOTHER plays magplar, so you are guaranteed to hear more about that spec regardless of how little it is changed on the pts.

technohic · January 2017

For you Stamplars; is it at least useable? I know its not great but I am considering going that route just for a change in play style of turtle up and heal then use spell power build up from heavy to lash out. Probably would be better off leveling up my stamblade, but I don't wanna.