Templar Class Issues - What do we need? (Now updated Post-GU51)

Back to the original thread topic.
What I would like to see is an insta-heal. The most anoying thing for me in a group is to see a mage catch aggro and die while my heal is taking it's own sweet time to land. In fact, the long cast times on all our one-shot heals seems bogus to me. Isn't it enough to have a recharge timer?
Yes we have that save-from-death heal. I guess I have to get used to throwing that off more.

Divine Arbitration Ad1 - Ad3 - M1 upgrades work and theres a difference in penalty, allthough a little less than what would be liked (Master 1 should be zero penalty imo) so thats ok.


The real thing here is now the way DivArb works, the way it balances the actualy hp number is bad imo, this means everyone goes to 4k hp or something, which basically puts your tank in the group into deep orange hp, limiting its use to saving casters but at the expense of putting the tank close to death, imagine the tank being 100% mage takes a huge hit u cast DA and all of u are now 90% except the tank whos now 35% and got aggro back off the mage and starts getting hits, in a flash hes red health...


If DivArb balanced the % hp amount of the group instead it would put everyone the same, more evenly balancing out the hp, tanks wouldnt be thrown into low hp and now suddenly instead of having a skill to save low hp classes by plunging your tank into low hp you now have a skill that can be used to save any class of any hp amount with control over the rest of the groups hp, no worry of differing hp max amounts, no worry of people being sent into random hp levels, even if the group is collectively lower hp and you use it atleast they all come out the same rather than the tank being thrown increasingly closer to death depending on what the groups hp is at the time.

If DivArb equalized the % of the group it would be better not just for Templars, but other priests with us, of course the tanks no longer thrown close to death by the mad Templar

Basically it would be a far better way to have the spell work in all ways over the current one, and as a lvl 58 Ancient spell it would justify its 15min reuse timer.

OOC.
Ok, I have hugely re-structured the presentation of the original post of this thread, to direct the issues that have come up most often in a more succinct form. I have not (yet) gone through the most recent entries and added those into the original post, but I will do so in the near future.
Let me know if you have any constructive comments on the new presentation.
Felishanna.
Message Edited by Caethre on 02-20-200605:31 PM

looks good and feels good too

Large part is a mod QFE. Save the preaching, keep the constructive stuff coming.
Message Edited by StarryEyedElf on 02-21-200611:13 PM

Thanks for saying preaching is a bad thing. I totally agree with you that its annoying and i look forward to you helping us put an end to it.

My main is a templar, and I still love playing her. That being said, I have been also working on a warden alt. Why? Its simple really. I love to heal, but I would like to be able to do more than just healing. I would also like to be able to solo kill a monster in a comparative amount of time to others in the healing profession.
I actually had a guild mate watching me kill a level 35 heroic evil eye the other day, and he asked me why I took so long to kill it ( Iwas a 52 templar at the time). When I told him that was my fastest pace he kindly took pity on me and grouped up with me to help me work on my L&L quest so that I could actually complete it.
Thats the key to playing a templar, you see. Grouping. We are not the best fighters. Our nukes are pathetic. However we heal better than any other class out there. PERIOD. So, we sacrifice the ability to solo, or solo WELL, I should say. Our inefficiency in soloing mobs is counterbalanced by our healing diversity and power.
My only criticism with the changes made to templars is that many of us who created templars had an expectation of what our class was. Now, we either have to adapt to the current revamped version or roll up another toon to replace it with. My warden may replace my templar, as my soloer. However, she will never replace her as my main. The templar is STILL my favorite class. I guess that I have adapted and accepted the way things are now.
If I could get SOE to implement ONE change to our class, it would be to give us one spell with a more robust damage ability. I would gladly sacrifice one of my reactive heals for that.

thanks for your feedback, and we will see our AA line soon enough, sounds lots of DPS...
although i hate to say, but AA (AP..) shouldnt be the thing fix us...i mean...man...those w/o KOS wont be able to be a good Templar... unlike other priests...

Honestly -- if we had One and definitely if we had Two additional seperate heal lines -- like other priests get -- Or shorter cast times on our heals -- then I'd buy that we are slightly better healers then others. VERY SLIGHTLY. Which would atleast be something to compensate for the lack of anything else. And then we could have a less angst riden discussion about the degree of difference but be happy there was some trade off.

But until there is some balance -- not one priest type with uber DPS for a priest -and- the shortest cast times -and- the most heal lines (WAY out of balance) there will be annoyance from anyone that actually knows what's going on.

Message Edited by Robert2005 on 02-21-200608:42 AM

Needed: 2h Staff that has stats equivalent or better to what we can get with a good 1h + symbol. Right now the APs PUNISH some lines because they need a 2h staff. Even if I max the stat increases in all AP lines I cannot make up for giving up the stats of a 1h + symbol -- meaning the AP line DECREASES stats and effectiveness and does not help.

That is bad; very bad.

I only have a Templar as a serious character, one I've invested a lot of time and effort into. I have played other classes, but I do enjoy my Templar the most. That is not to say though that I wouldn't relish a few minor changes to improve the play experience.
As a single change I would like to see a bit more resiliance as a Plate healer to interrupts - I would like to feel as though those pesky blows are bonging off my armour and I get the heal off regardless. Perhaps this could be achieved by adding a decent amount of focus-improving plate armour or symbols, without having to resort to fundamental changes to the current implementation of interrupts. This would go some way towards improving soloing ability by extending our survivability, as a healer, not as a dealer of damage.
Please do not get me wrong, I wouldn't complain if I received stronger combative spells, however I think my top priority is being a little less interrupt-prone.

Come again?

A little lower cast time on our direct heals would be nice...

However, i would like to see us able to use slashing or piercing weapons...for the sake of variety/stats etc. I found maces rather boring with too often low or non-existent wisdom.

Hey all fellow Templars....
For problem A: all Priest classes should be able to act as main healers in groups with an approximately equal ability, that is, that the healing power of the six priest classes should be more or less equal.
Here's my main concern, with the exception of templars and inquisitors, every other healing class is part healer/part some dps class. So in turn, Templars/Inquisitors should have more healing power than other classes, which is absolutly not the case. In T6 raids in gates and other instances Wardens in fact out parse Templars/Inquisitors every time. Im not talking a few healing points either, I'm talking 300,000 total healed to around 195,000 for the nearest Templar/Inquisitor. How is that even close to to healing power being equal.
Part of the problem is the ridiculously long cast times for Templars v. the othe classes, also Wardens big heals have HOT's connected to them. So when a main tank is hit and everyone is casting their heals eventually there is an overlap of wasted healing power with the exception of the warden HOT's connected with their large heals which heal the tank as he is being hit, while other healers are still waiting on recasts.
Since Templars/Inquisitors reactives do not stack, only one of them in a raid force has the ability to use them or it becomes a burden on the power of all the Templar/Inquisitor's in the raid/group. That leaves Tempalrs with 2 direct heals and thats it. Each of which are on slower timers than the other classes.
I'm not sure about most peoples reason's for playing a Templar, but I can bet dps is not one of them. I started this class when the game first came out to be a main healer in a group/raid situation. Soloing is not something I am interested in or even remotly care about, If i wanted to solo I'd be a dps/tank class. So any attempt to add dps to a healer in my opinion is a complete waste of power/time hotbar space. The main concern with all this is the healing power, if other healer classes are part some dps class and healer class they should not have equal healing power, and definatly not greater healing capabilities.
My suggestion is add some HOT's, more direct heals or a combination of both, also either make reactives stack or turn them into wards.
2. The Interrupts Problem with Templars and Plate Armour
This is a definate problem, unlike the other healer classes Templars/inquisitors cannot root their targets and move away to kill them, so our only option is to spend a half an hour killing a single down arrow mob, since the care bear cars wont let you fly away with aggro. (for those of you thinking invis totems, mosts mobs see invis now, so they only work a portion of the time.)
3. The Lack of Useful Utility

A. The Problem

Many Templars are unhappy that Templars do not have utility spells of sufficient value and/or perceived value to solo situations, small groups, full groups and raids, compared to other priest classes. Abilities such as SoW, Evac, Root and Group Invisibility have proven considerably more appealing to groups than our relatively unexciting proc-heals ("lotto" heals) and "mezzes".

Increase templars healing capabilities to be better than the rest and the useful utility crap from other classes would not be a problem, I did not make a templar to go root/mezz/sow, andy of that other non essential crap, I made a templar to be a main healer. Improve their healing capabilities...add more heals...HOT's... and save the utility/dps for the utility/dps classes.
4. The Problem of Linked Timers for Heals (And Watching Friends DIE!)
Add HOT's to the end of all our heals/ get rid of the crappy ractives or make em stack, and add more heals along with some HOT's. Reduce timers on our current heals would help too.
If you had not figured it out by now this class was not meant to be a solo class, not meant to be DPS, but meant to be a healer. So when SOE decided to make the other partial healer classes equal in healing power to templars/inquisitors they might as well have stuck a knife in the back of all those who worked hard to level their Templars. The limited healing ability of the other classes along with their utility values gave them their value, but giving them equla healing power completely destroyed the whole purpose of being a templar imo. Also as group cures should be installed for templars/inquisitors for all types instead of just mental. that would be great. one spell group cure everything.
If you get the impression that doing all this would be making a templar too powerful. throw us a bone, you've kept us in the doghouse far too long, and quite frankly its getting OLD.
Well im off, enjoy friends.

Lonern 66 Templar Antonia Bayle GC FTW

Hello Templars,
We are only good for 2 things......
1. Backup healer for groups due to the fact our reactive heals are worthless and our direct heals are on such long recast timers.
Also we only have 2 direct heals and the cast timer is so slow on our group heal that by the time it goes off our tank is dead.
2 Raids and only for our buffs/debuffs i.e. : sancuary,Hp buffs/mit buffs, and our mit debuff. Throw our emergency bring you back to life and there you have it.

I just spent 4 and a half hours in Halls of Faith hearing how the group i was in was fine last night with only a defiler and the tank only died a couple times on names.

I cant do my job! I'm a Fing healer hello
I'm going to quit playing my Templar except for raids.
He has been my main since the game went live and I love him but I'm going to play a class that can do his job in a group and in a raid not just in one or the other.
It is hard enuff finding 1 healer for a group no one wants to have to find another one because the healer they have doesn't suffice. Templars Just Suck.
Please SoE fix this class it is no longer fun to play. We can no longer do our job. We are pointless!
I'm going to go level a dps atleast that way i can do what I'm supposed to!

Uinneeda Somluvin of Befallen
LvL 70 Templar of guild Fallen

Message Edited by Mofug on 03-08-200611:38 PM

Well my guildies say it more nicely :smileyindifferent:, I am invited to group whenever they need 2 healers for some final mobs. They invite me to be the main healer while the fury nukes and then with the final mob, the fury will heal too. What they dont know is that I have just my heals showing up on a chatbox and the general order of a fight is that the furies casts HoTs whenever they are not nuking. In all this means that I dont have to actually heal anything. When I dont, no one notices a thing. When I do, no one notices. If I nuke, no one notices. If I dont, no one notices.

In raids, I am just a health buffer and just another healer that has to be in MT group to buff. If I didn't have the buffs, no one would want me in the MT group (that is the fate of inquisitors :smileysad. Only shamans and druids are in the MT group because of their ability to heal/prevent damage, templars are there because they buff.

I agree totally. It is cast timers, and recast timers. All the other talk is fluff.
Even a 25% reduction in timers would be a win, and since we don't have utiltiy beyond healing, it wouldn't hurt.
Glad to see I am not alone, but you won't find much compassion for your plight on these boards.
I am kind of lgad to see a 70 feel the same way about the timers.
Since I haven't been on any raids with my templar, I can only speak to number 1.

I dont think that focus is working nor do i belive that focus has been proven to have any benefit. SoE needs to look at focus and figure out what is the deal with it. I would also like to know what is up with fizzels on my manastone and other magic items? What in the greater wisdom of SoE were they thinking by making magic items fizzel =/
I also agree that either they need to shorten our recast on heals by 25%, unlink ALL of our direct heals or change the way our utility debuff heals work to make them useful.

Message Edited by Xaax on 03-09-200608:40 AM

hello,
57 templar here. just wanted to put my opinions/suggestions in. i have not through the 500 pages worth of stuff, so sorry it was already said.
1. would like to see the % chance of "procing" on glory of combat increased to 10 15%. right now mine says 5% which i think is low. i have gone hours of exp grinding will that spell never going off. nice spell, when it goes off.
2. would like to see an increase in healing in the mark of kings line. would help with classes that dont get hit, which is what is needed for our reactives. some classes do a better job at hitting, which is a good thing. right now mine heals for 22. i think thats low when comparing the amount of damage, both direct and spell wise, the upper mobs hit for.

Interestingly, Defiler heal recast timers are the same as Templar's. Which is odd when you consider the first post's statements.