Well at least we know that the devs are aware of the issues. So if no changes occur with templars, that simply means that the devs do not think that templars really are a broken class and are fine the way they are. And since devs will not reply to issues directly on the boards (for understandable reasons) I guess I'll just have to wait until October's Fan Faire to ask Xelgad what his thoughts are regarding templars and their current status.
For devs' "thoughts" on templars, just ask slippery and crew. We don't have their ear, that much is blatantly obvious by now.
Meatwaggon wrote: I have noticed it looks like the devs are listening to the same vocal minority on the forums for pvp changes that they did when the same ones suggested gear seperation...so I'm not amazed that the general community is being ignored and the "enlightened ones" are being listened too. As for asking Xelgad and other devs at fan faire Peter....last several fan faire the devs were cornered point blank about the state of our class the most famous response people got then still applies to how clueless the devs are to high end raiding and grouping...they asked a raid leader from a top ww guild for confirmation that templars are in high demand in zones like pow and hm drunder...the raid leader said, "we dont use templars in raid we use inquisitors"....I can name the 5 raiding templars on my server and 3 are currently in my guild.
Daalilama@Nagafen wrote: It was Xelgad that we managed to pull aside and chat. that was me who cornered him, and our main tank templar was with me. Don't know who the other two guys were, but he called them in or they joined in the conversation on their own. Of course, the situation is even worse now than it was before. Ymarik
It's funny but there is this pervading MYTH that only complainers post on MMO forums, all the happy people are happily playing and have no need to post anything. From my experience the forums do directly reflect the state of the players and how they are feeling. Look at games like Tera and TSW where the devs post regularly, directly reply to players, etc., their front pages are mostly players looking for optimal builds, asking questions, voicing concerns along with constructive criticism, etc. When you get poor games like SWTOR and EQ2 you can tell by looking at their forums. I have a feeling that the devs are specifically told by management not to respond to threads, or at least I'd like to think that rather than thinking of them as lacking courage. If there is any thought process at SOE that devs responding to player concerns on the forums is bad business I can only point them to other MMO's where the devs do exactly that, and the playerbase completely thrives on it. When you have something rotten you need to address it right away before it spreads and eats up your foundation. Ok, what the heck am I still doing here? My year sub is still in effect, but I don't log on anymore. It's just hard to let go of something that I spent the better part of 8 years building up and I'll always have an interest in what happens here even if I don't play. Who knows, maybe there will be another shake up in management and the game will become interesting once again. But as it stands today EVERYTHING is cookie cutter, they have successfully automated just about every process from making gear to stats to the classes themselves. In their quest to cookie cutter the healers for some odd reason they left us Templars out. Well let me get back to leveling my Assault Rifle/Blades build character in Transylvania in TSW...
Been thinking about this for some time and I know that some people are going to inevitably argue that we are needed when it comes to end game (and I would be one of them) due to the mobs taking a dump on tanks which is partially what we are meant to be good at preventing and reacting to. The move back towards the older style of raids where that kind of mitigation and skillset was needed is a good one imo but the largest problem remains that guilds have been stuck in the mindset of not needing a templar for so long that it's become a prejudice we have to overcome. The lack of the second group cure hurts us horrendously in practice irrespective of what anyone would say. I have seen it said too many times by too many people in so many different contexts that they prefer the inquisitor for two main reasons: two cures and group dps increase. If an inquisitor isn't available they'll sub in a warden instead because of the same reasons. Naysayers can shake their heads all they like in theory but the actual practice of the above is very clear when you start to delve down into the guilds who are raiding and look at their setups. We're simply not needed until a very late and small proportion of the game; and even then I believe a couple of end game guilds will argue we're still not desirable. There is a huge irony here. Take a look at our mythical cloak! Probably the best class cloak they created and chances are that very few templars will ever be present to either loot it or be allowed to loot it because they're not needed. This also raises a question: why did you feel the need to place that on our mythical cloak? Perhaps someone realised that that could be a huge boost to the viability of our class. Considering the raiding content is over by the time you get that until the next release it's a wash. So what to do? Well firstly, really obvious point but simply fix our broken spells. We shouldn't have to be requesting a fix for multiple broken spells. Blessings et al need to be corrected and work according to the way that they are meant to work. Secondly: there has been a definite move towards making the templar a 'raid' proc healer with us now having 3 raid heals. I would propose that if you genuinely aren't interested in giving us a second group heal you increase the proc chance of manacure significantly and allow it to proc raid wide with it also working for a trauma on combat arts OR you make a fixed version of blessings raid wide to combat the argument that we a) don't do enough or any dps and b) we don't buff dps for our groups. The second option is more desirable. Thirdly: reactives should you know... react. This bizarre arfticial intelligence of them currently where they go yep okay I'll react to the first sword swing but woooah hey now not the seond third or tenth of a MA or flurry hit is frankly odd. Alternatively, give us something that is important for the whole raid that we don't have currently. Some form of 'aura' that we can switch around would be an interesting addition. Heck at this point I would take an anti memwipe 'aura' that protects a raid from the constant crazy mobs running around regardless of what a tank does (and that should say a lot about the current state of templars to be perfectly honest). I know they won't do this but stuff like a ressurection aura where anyone being rezzed whilst it's up doesn't get rez sickness or a protection aura that would help to negate a percentage of damage raid wide or how about a debuff aura that would increase debuff effectiveness. Just something guys come on. Healing isn't our problem, we can do big numbers and compete in that sense. We're just screwed on usefullness when everyone can now do big numbers and they bring more apparent usefullness to the table. Templars have always been a niche class with generally speaking one raid spot available. So doing the above wouldn't change that fact if only one aura was allowed raid wide at a time for anyone who would argue oh lulz 4 templars in raid. We're on the bench coach, put us back in! ( sorry for the walltext! had to get this stuff off my chest )
The problem is they have ignored repeatedly problems the templar community has brought up to them...the class isnt totally broken but its darn close. Given that our initial templar endlines (blessings, mana cure, overconfidence, smite wrath) are completely broken or useless (blessings still works on older procs but skyshrine/HM drunder revamp procs are a no go) this needs to be addressed now not in 2 years. As for another group cure....I would prefer they just revamp the overconfidence aa ability and make it for drasticly droping the base reuse of our single group cure (there is precident for this already as in our curse cure aa line and would not create probs by granting us another group cure) Sanctuary should have immunities for memwipes/no beneficial spells/charm added to them...and yes I agree mana cure needs a real proc rate not .3% (not sure of its real rate but I'd be amazed if it was higher). Smite Wrath should have its damage immunity removed not only is it an outdated mechanic with the state of the game its really dumb considering the boost to our damage is not going to make or break us.
I definately do not have a solution but I can say that I have all but retired my 92 Templar. He's been my main healer now for a few years and he is fairly well geared in a mix of legendary and fabled gear, fully mastered, 320 AA and he struggles like mad trying to keep a group in Skyshrine (contested and instanced) cured and healed. This week I dusted off my 90 Warden and spent a few days getting him to 92 and aquiring some decent gear though he is not close to being as well geared as my Templar and I can solo heal contested and all of CD no problem. He never runs low on mana and has plenty of cure abilities, not to mention having two group cures on a 10 second recast. He is not fully mastered either but I'm going to be focusing on him much more going forward.
No offense meant but you should have np solo healing contested or normal skyshrine (even challenge is fine up to a point) with a templar. That's not the current problem with the class. If you were struggling with that then it's possible something else was wrong.
Glenedhel@Antonia Bayle wrote: TBH aside from certain named annoying abilities you really should have any major probs solo healing on a temp contested or grp zones.
The actual healing is fine. It is the curing and the fact that he constantly runs out of mana during most fights. Our "groups" consist of a Paladin, Templar and Dirge since that is about all that we can get to gear up and be ready for end-game content in our smaller guild unfortunately.
Glenedhel@Antonia Bayle wrote: tinkered mana stones, the old manastone hq item, mc clarity pots ohh and cleric ae prevent macro'd to yourself...did I miss anything?
Meatwaggon wrote: I seriously wonder at this point. It would be one thing to totally ignore us, however the glimmer of hope we got with the assertion that they would take a look at us again before GU64 and which was then reneged upon, seems to suggest that they think one class being broken is okay for the moment. (For anyone who wants to pounce on the word broken, don't bother. I'm referring to the spells not working as intended which no other class has such a plethora of.) Most of us are pretty helpful and constructive people and are happy to work with you to make this class once again viable for raiding. A large number of the people I see posting on this forum have stuck it out for a very long time on this class, as have I, because we cling to the hope that you'll eventually see how badly unbalanced our class has become. I haven't seen anyone ask for ridiculously game breaking additions to the class or untenable fixes. It would be really nice for the developers to give us a response one way or the other. If you intend to really take a look at our class then please say so and give us a realistic timeframe. If not, please just state that and we can all go reroll inquisitor or quit the game. Having unhappy customers isn't a good thing for either side of the equation that's business 101.
They have simply become tone deaf to the community unless its fluff...SOEmote/DF/DM(which what 5% of the player base will even use)...this class has been intentionally lied to as Xelgad did...and tbh I'll prob not buy the "new" xpac their touting for november which will probably half finished and pushed out broke.
I asked no less than five times politely during last weeks dev 'tweetchat' if they had rescheduled their review of templars. They gave no response and decided to concentrate on such burning issues as lore, whether we can play as dragons one day and station cash rich issues. Thank you for showing us you really could care less at this point at addressing a valid point and concern. We weren't the ones who made the point of saying that the class would be reviewed "between gu63 and gu64"; that was a statement that Xelgad made so it would be nice if any dev at this point could at least read this and find out what is going on.
They appear to have reviewed the class balance issues now. Can't wait to test out the changes in beta!
PeterJohn wrote: We thought that during the skyshrine prestige feedback at test...it was like pulling teeth to get half the changes in....
