TEMPLAR OFF-TANK / MELEE HEALING BUILD

updated 20140430

Here is a build for a Templar Off-Tank frontline healer. I have been updating this on tamrielfoundry.com but thought it'd be nice to share with the family here. This is the buld that I am using for PVE and I am actively working on it for end-game raiding. This should be played in similar style to a 'Hands of Healing' traited Cappy from LOTRO if you've ever gamed that.  On your first bar, you focus on dps. Originally I had planned for this build not to be the main healer. After experiencing more group content and realizing that most group content will be for a party of four in the game this build has morphed into main heals.  As a heavy you can move to pick off adds in between heals and assist with dps. This build should be pretty tough at the end. Your primary stat in this build is magicka. On the first bar you use are using AOE abilities mixed with light/heavy attacks with the goal of spamming your ULT for AOE damage.  Your Second bar is your main healing bar. You are running resto staff and restoring light heals.

link on ESOHead

SKILL SET:

Your skill set is based around Heavy Armour, Restoration, Aedric Spear, Dawns Wrath  and Two-Handed Weapon. You're goal on your first bar is to build ULT fast and spam cresent sweep.

First Main Bar:

• Carve - Slice up anything in front of you and gain 3 ult per enemy hit.
• Solar Barage - Dont aim.. just spam. Do damage, increase your next attack and gain 2 ULT every time you use this.
• Puncturing Sweep -I strafe around the mobs while hitting this. It cleans up nicely.
• Turn Undead - protection & AOE damage. I sometimes have silver shards equiped here also for a ranged attack.
• Repentance - This whole set up is about taking out trash mobs in the dungeon. Repentance gives health and stamina per corpse without cost to you and it does this for your whole group (even though the description reads as if it doesn't). 
• ULT Cresent Sweep - With all of your ULT generation you will be able to spam this. You might also consider switching out for Dawnbreaker of smiting or Solar Disturbance, depending on the situation.

ROTATION NOTES:

As mentioned, the idea behind this is to do AOE damage on the trash mobs and keep mobile. You don't need to aim much because everything is AOE. This also allows makes it easier ot keep an eye on your group in case you need to heal.  I generally hit Solar Barage > Carve > Solar Barage > Puncturing Sweep Mix with Turn Undead / Light & Heavy attacks as needed. If you sprinkle with light attacks before each skill you get more DPS. Your ULT will build up quickly.

AN ALTERNATIVE for ST:

Note: Sometimes in boss fights you need more focused damage with the option of kiting. You'll notice a mix of range and knockbacks / interrupts. Important imo in boss fights. This bar is also not what I normally use.. but I have switched to these skills while leveling and find them useful. For example I defeated Fildgor while under level using these skills.

First ST / ALT Main Bar:

• Uppercut / Dizzying Swing - Splat - debuff the bosses damage
• Vampire Bane - High DPS
• Aurora Javelin - Good DPS at range and knockback / interrupt
• Silver Shards - Stamina Ranged with knockback on those 
• Honor the Dead - Burst heal when in trouble.
• ULT - depends on the boss.

ATTRIBUTE NOTES:

Magicka > Health > Stamina.  You want to be at the soft cap for Magicka and Magicka regen, whether it is through your stats or your equipment it doesn't really matter how you get there.  Your two-handed attacks are fillers for when your magicka is regening or in-between heals so that you do not waste your magicka.  For durability work on health and resists. 

EQUIPMENT:

5 Heavy / 2 light armor. Two-handed weapon / Resto Staff

PASSIVES

The passives are pretty standard.. Anything that is going to increase your resists, health and weapon damage.  See the build on ESOHead for details on how i'd do this.

THE SECOND BAR

Your second bar is your healing bar.   

• Power of the Light - Help your crew deal more DPS
• Blessing of Restoration - sitting behind your tank this is a nice buff and heal. I prefer Restoration instead of Combat Prayer as I find the mages and other higher DPS often behind myself and the tank - the DPS boost won't help the DPS Sorc or Archer behind me. Keep this up all the time on your tank.
• Lingering Ritual - Your main heal group heal
• Extended Ritual- Keep this HoT up all the time.
• Honor the dead - Your burst heal.
• ULT - Remembrance - Monster epic heals :) pretty much heal through anything you might encounter

Remember not to over heal. Extended Ritual only should be cast every 16 seconds. Blessing of Restoration every 8.  Use Lingering Ritual as the group heal. Use Honor the Dead for low health targets who are below 50%. 

What about PVP?

DISCLAIMER: I don't know much about PVP at all. When I do run PVP I am normally healing the masses and dropping siege. When I have been going out for PVP I have normally been either healing or dropping back to the Alternate First skill set for single targets that I listed above. ST / ALT Main Bar.

Final Thoughts

Again, this build has definitely changed quite a bit since my initial post on tamrielfoundry.  This is probably my fourth revision of the build. I have been using this for solo-leveling and grouping. The build melts mobs as long as you don't let your gear get too under level. It has been very enjoyable for me as it lets you get in on the fun heavy melee as well as serve as a good healer for the group.  For armor I use the Magnus and Seducer sets with Warlock Jewelry. I enchant my armor for magicka and drink brew for regen. My regen stats are normally at or a little above softcap and my Magicka is sitting around there too. 

I am quite sure that this build will continue to be tweaked (probably sooner rather than later.. as an adjustment that I am considering is using Biting Jabs instead of puncturing sweep for a better finisher.).  Any input etc is most welcome as always. - M.

nice build, I have a few recommendations that may enhance your overall build just a little bit that you may have overlooked.    First is you should pick up the passive essence drain in the restoration staff build.  while it may not seem like alot, having a free heal with a heavy hit on that staff will be great.  When my templar is in a group, I mostly just use heavy hits with the staff in between heals, one it gives a small heal and damage, but also gives me a chance for a little more magicka back while doing that ability.    Also you may want to invest points into that last nord racial.  While frost resist may not seem that important, it is one less resitance you have to worry about getting, and it also give you more health, which in the end will make you last a little longer.   

lastly I notice your build is not investing anything into Dawns Wrath.  i can undestand perhaps not using the skills, but you should invest at least one point into a skill to rank it up, and then once you have rank 41 in it, you need to invest in the last passive, Restoring Spirit.  This passive does not state that is only for this skill line, but it does say it reduces ability magicka, stamina and ultimate costs by a straigth 2% for just one point.  it may not be much, but that is a straight ability resource reduction for all of your abilities.   That in itself is a huge boost since templars, especially a dual hybrid role like this, will need all the resource conservation as possible.  

Thank you for the input! I will have to take a look at those passives. I had noted Dawns Wrath earlier when looking at build but did not realize it was for all skills.

What are the soft caps on this build? Or on Templars in general? I'm looking at building a healing Templar, but I'd also like to do some damage if needed.

Aedric Spear line is magicka based DPS so that shouldn't be a problem. I am running into the soft caps in magicka and magicka regen while leveling.. I'm thinking for a DPS focus you might try to put biting jabs in there somewhere as it's one of the higher dps moves. 

Templar is looking more and more fun every time I think about it, i think a healing templar may have to be my next toon... thanks for the post, I may end up doing something like this soon.

I have a very similar build, except I sword & board the main bar with a little more focus on taking out multiple targets.  As with what Syphon said, magicka management is a challenge with a Templar and Restoring Spirit helps.  You also, might not need so many healing spells on your second loadout, as you will be out of magicka a lot.  Definitely pick up Essense Drain, and maybe try using Annulment for a defensive ability on the healing bar.  It uses magicka, BUT one morph (Harness Magicka) gains back magicka when taking spell damage.

Repentance could even be slotted on the heal bar for the added regen on you party to help with your healing.  Lastly, and this is just a personal preference thing, but I don't even use Remembrance on my ultimate slot.  I have being immobilized and it's kind of a "meh" heal, IMO... though it IS a heal that doesn't cost magicka, which is a win.  I usually have a damage ulti slotted.  Nova is great, but it's costly.  I LOVE Soul Strike in the Soul Magic tree.  It's cheap, does a ton of damage, and it slows the target as well.  If you can help kill the target, then it dies faster and you don't spend as much magicka to heal.. :)

Something else to think about; I didn't try Equilibrium from the Mage Guild tree when in PTS, but I'm going to when I rank up enough in the guild.  It looks like it could be very helpful as long as the health cost isn't at an inopportune moment.

Just a heads up on Equilibrium (and its Morphs), it puts a debuff on you for ~4 seconds that reduces all self healing to 0 (or close to it).  You can still be healed by others though.

>  You also, might not need so many healing spells on your second loadout, as you will be out of magicka a lot. 

On the second bar Mutagen and Extended Ritual are HoTs. The most difficult part imo is being patient with these spells and not over-healing... Whenever i do overheal (using these while they are still ticking) then I see problems with magicka.  As long as i'm patient I don't experience a problem.

I also read somewhere that heavy attacks with resto staff give a magicka return.. So I do that when i'm healing and and I use healing springs when the group is large enough.  

I save remembrance for those big fight moments. I don't understand why you value it so little. It impresses me as my biggest heal with heals and damage shield in one go..  I think is my biggest heal? I don't have the parse to back it up but it sure feels like it. the Damage reduction and the heals in one go.. plus it gets all the bonuses from the restoration staff and restoring light. It ends up pretty effective imho.

In regard to repentance.. I am really considering that. Im thinking that HoD and Healing Springs may be redundant. It might be better to slot repentance (for mobs) or even siphon spirit (for boss fights). In LOTRO the HoH cappy used to have a mark they could put on a target that would return up to 20% of the damage. This basically meant that you didn't need to worry about healing for your DPS in most boss fights, since the more damage they dealt the more healing they received. Epic automatic HoT's for your min/max players... I'm thinking siphon spirit might be similarly effective in boss fights here.

That said, this is all based on what i've experienced pre-vet content. I am certain that my build is going to evolve (it has already) and do appreciate all the feed back and discussion.

What add-ons do you guys use to parse and analyze data?

If you complete a heavy attack with a Resto staff (~2s channel) you get 10% of your Max Magicka back.

I think you might run into more Magicka problems as you level and get into VR content and would like to make a few suggestions:

• Change to 5 Light/2 Heavy but keep your heavy pieces as chest/head (or legs).  These pieces have the most armour per piece so having them be heavy maximises armour for you.  Also, they have the most effect on how your character looks so you can still look like a Paladin instead of a Priest if the visuals are important to you.
• Look for other ways to regen Magicka - primarily the Warlock set.  It is available around level 20 in normal content and then again at V1.  It has a 3 piece set bonus that says "When you drop to 33% or less Magicka Restore 33% of your Max Magicka.  This cannot occur more than once every 30s".  It is available on neck/ring/head/chest so you can fill your jewelry slots with it.  I wore 3 pieces of level 20 Warlock gear from level 20ish all the way through VR1/2 when I replaced it with the VR version.  Sure you lose a little bit of stats from wearing lower level items but since the set bonus scales (33% of your Max Magicka) it's still by far the best thing you can put in those slots.
• When getting crafted gear look for set bonuses that help with Magicka.  Seducers is an easy one to make (3 piece, 3 traits per piece) that reduces the cost of all abilities by 3%.  Magnus' Gift (3 piece, 4 traits per piece) gives you a 5% chance when casting a spell to cast for free!
• Keep the Resto Staff - As a Templar you have the ability to burst heal so once you're comfortable with the damage your tank takes you can generally afford to let them dip a little low if it means finishing your Heavy Attack channel and getting 10% Max Magicka back.
• You already mentioned this but continue to be careful with the overhealing, with the great power of Templar heals comes the great responsibility of Managing your Magicka.
• Potions, they drop a lot in dungeons so if it's a fight that you know is a tough one don't wait to be OOM to potion, use them early to get them on cd (or wait for Warlock Set to kick in to get it on cd, then potion).

Beyond Magicka Management which should always be of primary concern for Templars as it is one of our "weaknesses" I have the following comments.

• In a dungeon I feel like Toppling Charge is a wasted slot.  You don't need a gap closer IMO.  If you really feel the need to run one then use the charge from 2Hander because that will use Stamina and not eat up Magicka you'll want for healing.
• I personally wouldn't use Cleave as a healer but your char concept is different than mine, and I think Cleave fits well for what you are trying to achieve.
• Piercing Javelin is "ok" and I could totally see it being used in solo/leveling but in a dungeon it seems expensive Magicka wise for what it does.  I would remove it.
• Repentance - this is a really good "selfish" Morph, especially for PvP.  For PvE I think you're better off with the other morph (or even not morphing it).  You lose the ability to give yourself and your group 80% increased Stamina (and health) Regen when you swap to the self-only heal.  Your tank will be able to block and bash and taunt more with that extra Stamina which will in turn make your job as healer easier - any stamina dps in the group will love the extra resources also.
• Honor the Dead - this is the morph I currently use but I'm hearing a lot of people reporting that the mana regen is buggy and either has a logn cooldown or requires the person you heal to be below 50% *after* you heal them rather than before.  I have yet to test this to verify if there is a problem but if it's not working as advertised in tooltip I'm probably going to swap to Breath of Life at my next respec.
• Empowering Sweep - it's ok, I much prefer Crescent Sweep for the 33% more damage as the bonus armour from ES isn't much.  I'd also probably not use Crescent Sweep in a dungeon either way.  I'll talk about Ulti choice at the end.

Bar 2

• Lingering Ritual and Extended Ritual are your healer Bread and Butter, we already talked about HtD.
• Healing Springs and Mutagen are taking up 2 slots on your bar and they overlap heavily with your existing heals - plus they do not benefit from your Templar Passives that boost your healing.  I usually run 1 Resto staff heal and it depends on the fight - sometimes it is Regeneration, sometimes Force Siphon, I also enjoy Combat Prayer if the party is bunched as it gives an ok heal, some armour/spellresist and 11% more Damage for 8 seconds - it can really help with phases of a fight where you need to dps something down fast.
• Rememberance - solid choice if you have any concern in your mind that you might need an "oh shoot" saves the day heal.

Dawn's Wrath

I know you're going for the "Paladin" kind of hybrid healer but I think you can stay in theme while still branching out to Dawn's Wrath for some really good abilities.  Syphon already mentioned the Restoring Spirit passive that will reduce the costs of all abilities by 4%, the last point in it required 50 Dawn's Wrath so it may be a long way off but the sooner you start working on the line the sooner you get it.

The DW ultimate "Nova" and its Morphs are amazing, it is usually always on one of my bars - massive AoE that stuns, deals a ton of damage, reduces the damage enemies deal by 30% and the morph I like also snares them.

Backlash morphed into Power of the Light is the best single target "damage per activation" ability in the game and is a great way to contribute good DPS to a boss fight without inhibiting your ablility to heal.  Basically it's a 1.5s cast 6s (7.2s) duration debuff you put on a single target, when the debuff expires it will deal damage equal to 36% of the damage the target took from all sources while the debuff was active (with a cap based on your level).  At 50 in dungeons this should cap out at about 1500-1600 damage - all for 1.5s and about half the mana of one of your heal spells.  The Power of the Light morph makes it so the first 5 weapon attacks against the target increase the damage he takes from all weapon atatcks by 2% each (up to 10%) for 7s (8.4s if traited).  This added effect is a really nice group damage buff so logn as your dps are not solely using non-weapon attacks.

Dark Flare is a better opener than Piercing Javelin but is not as good once in combat due to the 1.5s cast time and tbh, you probably don't want to be the one making the pull anyway =)

Vampire's Bane and Reflective Light (Sun Fire Morphs) are great for ST and AoE damage respectively but I'm not sure they fit with your build as they become more of a drain on your Magicka.

Ultimate Choice

I usually run Rememberance/Solar Disturbance as either one can turn a fight around.  Against bosses with no adds I'll often swap in Soul Assault for Solar Disturbance.  I'm a Vampire so I sometimes use Devouring Swarm for trash pulls because it's so strong and at Stage 4 vamp it has a very low Ult cost (when it isn't bugged) allowing it to be up often.  If you are 100% comfortable that you won't possibly need Rememberance then you can swap that out but you get 2 slots so I can't think of any situation where I'd feel like I need 2 other Ults over it.

Ok, I told you what I didn't like so what would I swap in for some of those abilities... Honestly, this is the hard part, I usually swap 1 or 2 abilities in and out for each boss or when going from trash to boss or boss to trash.

So if you want to keep a charge on in a dungeon I'd swap n the 2h charge, if not maybe Executioner?  That might help burn the boss down once he hits 20%.  If you dont like that then Circle of Protection from the Fighter's Guild - it's actually a pretty big circle and has a decent duration and will beef up everyone's Armour and Spell Resistance.  Best part is it costs Stamina.

Aurora Javelin I would swap out for Power of the Light, Dark Flare, or one of the Sun Fire Morphs (Vampire's Bane/Reflective Light).  You could also look at morphing Solar Flare to Solar Barrage instead of Dark Flare.  I would also consider Volcanic Rune from Mage's Guild when it becomes available to you.  I know these choices might break your theme a little so if you want to stick with the Javelin so be it =)

Repentance - on your next respec change it to Radiant Aura.

Heal bar drop one of the two resto heals and get Combat Prayer and Force Siphon and swap them in as needed.  In the free slot you could run Power of the Light, Circle of Protection, Volcanic Rune, Immovable.

Build link at Esohead

Sorry for being long winded and I really hope I didn't come across as bashing your build, I'm just trying to share my experiences with you.  I too loved playing my Healing Hand Cappy in LOTRO btw!

Some great info there Myst. I'm still playing around with some skills and different morphs. The play style I enjoy is a mobile one so I tend to shy away from anything with a cast time, unless you can move while casting. And, btw I love empowering sweep. No need to target the ground, it does over 300 damage to enemy as well as a 400+ armor for each enemy hit, and it's super cheap so I can blast it a lot. Just my 2 cents. :)

For gear I've been trying to pick up the healer's habit set. I do have some of the Warlock set so I will probably try to pick the rest up and switch based on your recommendation Myst.  I have been running the crafted Seducer set as well. I saw the Magnus Gift but passed it by because I didn't have the traits researched to gear it up. I'll have to go back to it as soon as I have the traits done (one more in research atm).

Also, no worries, I never take comments of it as bashing my build.  Alot of my build (especially on the first bar) has come from what has worked for me while leveling up. Leveling is a different experience than group play and my experience is limited only to the skills i've been able to trait up. All of your input is taken constructively - the communities combined experience is much greater than my own and you guys give me stuff / ideas to test, chew on and take into my build.

Anyways, thanks again for the input! - M.

updated with recent changes. - M.

I really like Restoring Aura when healing dungeons. Combining that with Regeneration seems to be a low cost way to keep everyone's health topped off so you only have to worry about healing the occasional burst damage. 

are u using the radiant aura morph? I might try that also.  For me it has been keeping up extended ritual, throwing blessing of protection on the tank and using HoD when someone gets in trouble.

Being able to drop Restoring Aura looks like it might be worth it in groups as I haven't been using repentance as much as I used to.  On my next retrait I think that I will likely switch to it along with Blessing of Preservation from the Fighter's Guild... It will be nice to give the tank and melee fighters 100% stamina boost (if they stack).

Giving a set build with set bars is difficult also as I often switch the bars out depending on the situation and boss. When I ran blessed Crucible last night (have u tried healing vampires through this?!?) I switched out skills with almost every boss.  Power of Light, Vampires Bane, and Silver Shards all saw time on my healing bar at different point through the fight. - M.