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

Hello I am a level 53 templar on BB.
Most of the content I do is normal grouping and a few instances within my guild. I have found that my healing power is sufficient to do most things but this can be partially atributed to the fact that the tanks I group with are in the mid 60s.

I completely agree with the idea that if all healers are going to have an eqaull healing ability, then we need more utillity, more healing variety and strength, and more DPS.

Several improvements I have come up with are as follows:
1. add the mittigation proc buff back into our group and single target reactives, or make a mitigation buff part of the spell
this would increase our effectiveness on avoidance tanks and it would fit the concept of increasing our allies defence

2. also along this line modify our Aegis line, which is currently a magic ward. It could be changed into a temporary buff that drastically increases the targets resistance to all types of damage, or maybe adjust the ward so that it blocks all damage types, not just elemental and mental

3. Increase the heal numbers on our mark line into the 100s, and increase its divine debuff a bit more, and increase the proc % on the involuntary line

4. decrease the cast time, and recast time of our group reactives, and both our small and large heals
(particullary with the small heal, it should be larger, and almost instantaneous, .5 sec cast time or something to use on mages who are getting hammered)

5. add a regen component or a mitigation buff to our large dirrect heal to help fill in the gap while it is refreshing

6. give us a greater number of direct heals not on the same cast time or allow our reactives to stack with another cleric so that we are more usefull on raids

7. decrease the cast time on prostrate to be similar to the sign line, so that we can acctually interupt enemies with the spell

8. add a reactive stun proc on our protectorate spell, so that while soloing we won't get hit and interupted as much, or maybe some sort of divine damage proc, like the
one we used to have on our group courage buff

9. give us back our parry ability, even if it is reduced, and also the abitlity to use better shields
since our heavy armor means that we are designed to take hits and be in the fray it would only make sense that we would have the ability to block enemy attacks
with our weapon, and use better shields. This change should help to reduce our interupt problem by boosting our avoidance

10. change divine arbitration so that it equalizes the group's % of hp, not just the raw numbers
I have had not had experience with this, but it sounds like it isn't useful in its current form

11. decrease our nukes casting time and boost the damage a little, so that they are interupted less often and can cause more damage with them

12. boost reverences heal percentage, into the 200s at adept level
I was blessed enough to get a master 1 of this spell which heals for 240%, but not everyone has it at this level, and I am sure that lower levels are not nearly as
effective

These changes should boost our solo ability by increasing our DPS through decreased cast timers and more divine debuffs and damage, and by increasing our avoidance, so that we get hit less often.

Also it these changes would help our raid ability by making clerics better able to coroporate in healing and boosting the MTs mitigation is always a good thing, which would make us more vaualble on raids.

Finnaly these changes would improve our group abilities by making it easier to stun and control enemies with a combination of prostrate and the sign line, by allowing us to boost the tanks mittigation through our reactives and the Aegis line, and our single target heals will become stonger so that we are better able to fill in the gaps left by our reactives.

In the future I hope that the cleric class will have a great number of ways to heal our allies, which will help make us the healers that we should be able to be.

Hello I am a level 53 templar on BB.
Most of the content I do is normal grouping and a few instances within my guild. I have found that my healing power is sufficient to do most things but this can be partially atributed to the fact that the tanks I group with are in the mid 60s.

I completely agree with the idea that if all healers are going to have an eqaull healing ability, then we need more utillity, more healing variety and strength, and more DPS.

Several improvements I have come up with are as follows:
1. add the mittigation proc buff back into our group and single target reactives, or make a mitigation buff part of the spell
this would increase our effectiveness on avoidance tanks and it would fit the concept of increasing our allies defence

2. also along this line modify our Aegis line, which is currently a magic ward. It could be changed into a temporary buff that drastically increases the targets resistance to all types of damage, or maybe adjust the ward so that it blocks all damage types, not just elemental and mental

3. Increase the heal numbers on our mark line into the 100s, and increase its divine debuff a bit more, and increase the proc % on the involuntary line

4. decrease the cast time, and recast time of our group reactives, and both our small and large heals
(particullary with the small heal, it should be larger, and almost instantaneous, .5 sec cast time or something to use on mages who are getting hammered)

5. add a regen component or a mitigation buff to our large dirrect heal to help fill in the gap while it is refreshing

6. give us a greater number of direct heals not on the same cast time or allow our reactives to stack with another cleric so that we are more usefull on raids

7. decrease the cast time on prostrate to be similar to the sign line, so that we can acctually interupt enemies with the spell

8. add a reactive stun proc on our protectorate spell, so that while soloing we won't get hit and interupted as much, or maybe some sort of divine damage proc, like the
one we used to have on our group courage buff

9. give us back our parry ability, even if it is reduced, and also the abitlity to use better shields
since our heavy armor means that we are designed to take hits and be in the fray it would only make sense that we would have the ability to block enemy attacks
with our weapon, and use better shields. This change should help to reduce our interupt problem by boosting our avoidance

10. change divine arbitration so that it equalizes the group's % of hp, not just the raw numbers
I have had not had experience with this, but it sounds like it isn't useful in its current form

11. decrease our nukes casting time and boost the damage a little, so that they are interupted less often and can cause more damage with them

12. boost reverences heal percentage, into the 200s at adept level
I was blessed enough to get a master 1 of this spell which heals for 240%, but not everyone has it at this level, and I am sure that lower levels are not nearly as
effective

These changes should boost our solo ability by increasing our DPS through decreased cast timers and more divine debuffs and damage, and by increasing our avoidance, so that we get hit less often.

Also it these changes would help our raid ability by making clerics better able to coroporate in healing and boosting the MTs mitigation is always a good thing, which would make us more vaualble on raids.

Finnaly these changes would improve our group abilities by making it easier to stun and control enemies with a combination of prostrate and the sign line, by allowing us to boost the tanks mittigation through our reactives and the Aegis line, and our single target heals will become stonger so that we are better able to fill in the gaps left by our reactives.

In the future I hope that the cleric class will have a great number of ways to heal our allies, which will help make us the healers that we should be able to be.

WoW dude that would make us gods!!!!!!!!
All i want is our freeking reactives to be effective altho the Mark Line heal increas would be realy cool..... we just are not as effective healers as the other healer classes
I don't want utility
I don't DPS

I JUST WANA BE ABLE TO HEAL!!!!

SOE FIX THE HEALING!

im just honestly displease with the lack of DPS that my templar does. Its sad when I cant even really solo because of my lack of ability to defend myself.

Also, we get no 'cool spells'. we cant transform into anything like mystics and furys, we dont get pets. wheres the fun?


Lostariel- 38 Templar
H.A.W.K.S.
Everfrost

What do we need? If healing is working as intended.... i think we need a new combat revamp ;P

Maybe one where they made hots/reactives/wards the end all, be all for CERTAIN(pertaining to each type of heal) encounters (I think at the same time, this would also create more diversity for tanks, althought I really dont think they have it so bad). THAT would increse diversity between us since we are pretty much the same for healing now. Otherwise, I dont really think we need anything. Our healing is on par with others, but I really dont find added DPS to our class to be a good trade. If our DPS did get buffed, I probly still would not solo.

You get an acolyte at level 45, and faith respect is kind of cool at level 20.

I deeply saddens me coming back after months of being away from my Templar that these issues are still not addressed. I started playing another character because of this. It probably won't be long until I leave EQ2 and all SoE products because of the lack of fixes in their games like this. This was probably the main reason I left EQ2 and will contribute heavily if/when I leave again.

OOC.
Just to let you know, there has been some movement and more is likely on the way.
- At LU21, the damage spells of Templars (and indeed, of Inquisitors, Mystics and Defilers too) were given an approximately 15% lift. This has certainly helped alleviate some of the DPS deficiency.
- As part of KOS release, some new Alternate Abilities have been added, some of which give paths for Templars to further increase their DPS. There are as yet no published cross-class comparative parses looking into class balance since KOS release taking these new AP skills into account, but early reports from quite a lot of Templars are suggesting these might be effective.
- Possibly just as important, SOE have said that they intend to look into making mitigation affect the chance of spell interruption, and depending on how this is actually implemented, this might help Templars as well
I am certainly not saying all our problems have gone away, certainly not. However, I will say, things have finally gotten better, and those who have been following my reports and feedback over the last half a year and more, know I'm not one of those who would say that lightly. The worst is certainly over. Indeed, I have recently been playing my Templar more than my Fury, and considering how unhappy I was a few months ago with the Templar class situation, that is certainly saying something.
None of this might change your mind, but perhaps you might want to just take another look. Good luck, whatever you decide.
Felishanna.

I'm only a mid-40's Templar myself, but I'll agree with Caethre. Solo'ing is definitely more enjoyable, although still hardly fun. It's not fun for any class that I've played though. I think people focus too much on what we don't do instead of what we do (you thought I was going to say do do, didn't you?).

One thing that would be nice would be a type of offensive or defensive stance option (naming just as an example). Have offensive stance such that our damage spells do more damage (but still not any better than other priests), but our healing and buffing spells are weakened and defensive stance such that our healing and buffing spells are just as they are now, but our damage spells go back even to pre-LU21. And make it a long process to change between the two - 30 seconds or so.

The idea being that Templars are given stronger solo abilities or damage dealing abilities in groups where they are not the primary healer, but still able to be the same as we are in normal grouping situations where we are the primary healer.

Even with no changes, I rarely feel useless as a Templar. Even if I'm the second templar and lower level in a group, my debuffs and buffs don't make me totally useless. Instead of doing a group buff, I do 5xRedoubt's since my group buff would get overwritten anyway. I also become responsible for debuffs, stuns, and heroic opportunities. Granted, none of this would make me more beneficial than a DPS class, but my ability to heal and little mez do come in handy in some of the tougher zones.

I still can bore a mob to death.

AND

I can still out dps a 'bucket of fish'.

15% increase was bone, it does help.

That being said, it should have been at least a 50% increase to our damage spells. And we would still be less than 1/3rd the damage of fury's.

Recast timers. Recast timers. Recast timers. Recast timers. Recast timers. Recast timers. Recast timers. Recast timers. Recast timers. Recast timers. Recast timers. Recast timers. Recast timers. Recast timers. Recast timers. Recast timers. Recast timers. Recast timers. Recast timers. Recast timers. Recast timers. Recast timers. Recast timers. Recast timers. Recast timers.

Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times. Casting Times.

As a level 50 Templar now, I was waiting on the druzaic shrine to pop in TS, and I think I will go out a kill some siren for L&L pieces and autoupdates. level 22... (triple arrow down)solo mobs. Hit me (weird) in full cobalt. And interrupt me regularly. AND It takes multiple HO's to kill one. I should be able to 1 shot these critters at 50, or at a very minimum 1 HO. I get more damage out of the "heirophants crook" proc, than my HO.

While this is a very good thread, and the input seems very positive, I am surprised to see so many concerns over the Templar class. I play a lvl 70 Templar and I do think, as with plate tanks, its very much to do in the equipment you use. For example:

To get your avoidance up, use a shield. The enameled shield of the witchdoctor (or something like that) gives me around 20% avoidance. I find this plenty to give me enough time to get the spells off while udner heavy attack.

As for the DPS, again comparing to tanks, they have a defence and an offensive stance. Templars can essentially do the same by enabling Yaulp (for double tap) and swopping the shield / one hander for a nice 2 hander weapon. Doomcrusher works well Not to mention the critical strike AA skill which improves crits by something like 28%.

Mitigation wise, we are quite spoilt with the ability to wear full plate. I can get my mitigation up to around 3800 / 20% avoidance, which may not be great, but its certainly a lot better than the alternative priest classes bar Inquisitors.

Healing power, especially in Raids, I feel Templars are unmatched IF in the main group. I've been keeping an eye on stats, and typically I heal around double what the furies / wardens do. OK true enough they have other GREAT skills like urchin which will impact greatly on these stats, but what I'm saying is healing wise, we certainly dont fall short.

Templars also shine in small groups of 6. It is quite easy to solo heal in a zone like Halls of Fate IF you have a good tank with some good gear. (Dont try it with a Guardian that has less mitigation than yourself..I've tried, it doesnt work )

As for casting times - We have a AA line that reduces all casting times by 10%, and ofcourse the AA skill that reduces it by 100% and recovery times by 33% for 24 seconds in those sticky situations.

While we have no "special abilities" like evac or invis, totems can be baught for invis or you can just train We do have Sanctuary which in some instances, you just dont want to be without. (Cazel comes to mind).

All in all I am happy with the Templar Class. I feel that, even though it takes a lifetime to kill something, we CAN do it. I am not sure what other level 70 priests can take on, but I can quite happily solo blue heroics. (Yes yes, I know you mages are laughing, but atleast we dont get 1 tapped

Someone mentioned about divine arbritration being no good. I've found it very useful to keep the mages / scouts alive when they take aggro. Ofcourse usually the tanks health gets halved but it does usually fully heal any mage or scout, or even 2 mages/ scouts.

As for our debuffs, we can debuff physical mit for over 1000.. which has a great impact when you have around 10 scouts/tanks beating on the raid mob.

What I would improve on templars:

- 45 second recast on Pet Hammer (to solve dps problem - and yes it really is a problem when doing writs)
- Slightly reduce casting time on group reactive. (many times that spell lasts for around 1.5 seconds on raid mobs then I have nothing but emergency spells to cast)
- Remove the stun/stifle effect from when your lvl 50/70 reactive is cast. (Its such a great spell but hardly use it because the solo/group reactives stacked heals for more than that spell. While that can be stacked too, im stifled to recast single/group when that expires leaving me to cancel the spell)

Thats my views anyhow

To clarify, these abilities affect the PLAYER's timers for casting, recast and recovery, and do not directly affect any spell (typically, they make the player do those things faster) - the distinction is vital to how the skills actually work.

I don't think there is anything wrong with the Templar class anymore. We were never meant to be the fast casting healers. We cast slow but BIG heals. And IMO we're pretty power efficient too. Only tweak I would make is to take a proc or 2 off of reactives and put those "lost" ticks back into the remaining procs and have them last longer. Or, have the remaining procs dump into their target when the spell expires. Other then that, I think we're fairly balanced.

How many of ya'll ever thought you would hear me say that???

great we got nerfed again...divine recovery HALVED in effeciency, and shield of the witchdoctor taken from 1092protection to 392.. lowering my avoidance by about 10%, which in return make soloing 10% more painful... gee.. thanks?

I love it how the devs make u spend weeks accuiring gear and then make it useless in the next update.

Divine recovery is a display thing not at actual reduction (It's capped to 50%). There are other posts in these forums talking about it. And with the shield, did you honestly think that a shield a priest can use that has almost the same avoidance gain as a Tower shield wasn't a problem? IMO, they fixed the shield to the way it was intended.

yeah divine recovery was always 50% only now has it been changed to say it is. AS for the enameled buckler of the witchdoctor it is usable by all priests i believe and counts as a kite shield despite the name-so no use for the AA mez

wrong
before the change, casting time of dire interecession under Divine recovery was 2.5 sec
now, it's around 3s

Message Edited by Olivetti on 06-12-2006 01:36 PM

Would it be possible to address the PVP side of a templar? I currently play on a PVP server, and I must admit, when even a Grenn PVP opponent approaches, I have to run. I cannot hold my own against a Green PVP mob, so needless to say, I have no chance against anything PVP. I simply run.

I would suggest, possibly a short term invulnerability spell, that progresses with level, and a progressive root spell also. Anything for a bit more defense. The DPS issue is still pertinent, but I'd rather have a survivability enhancement in the form of Defense (Root, invulnerability, AE stun...) anything.

I wonder if anyone official even reads this thread these days?
Anyhow one thing I do notice alot is that as a caster class that does not root but wears heavy armour we appear to lack interruption protection.
The fight starts, the mob rushes up, the mob keeps hitting me, my spells keep getting interupted.
As melee casters I feel we need more protection against interruption, or shorter cast times, one or the other.

Another issue is our un-fun 'fun' spells that although not essential to gameplay do have a bad effect on the look and feel of the class. These sad spells are generally not fun and appear to lack imagination on the part of the developer who came up with them. Please can we have some fun spells that really are fun.