Mace/Shield LS Templar with Video and writeup(Written for New Players)

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j0hanSE wrote:

So the bandit quest?

Help oak for 40+ hp?

Follow untopaa's post?

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untopaa wrote:

So about the Bandit quests with this build the best thing to do would be:
Normal help oak for +40 max hp
Cruel help oak for 12% phys dmg
Merciless help oak for 1 endu charge

Am i right or way off?

Yep definitely take the HP. I'm finding resists really easy to max.

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Ganrao wrote:

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Aranstel wrote:

I am thinking of making a no Resolute Technique build too. My highest character is a L20 Templar so I am a newbie, a few thoughts though:
Wouldn't this build significantly benefit from the Elemental Equilibrium large keystone skill?
How about going past the +30 Dex keystone to get to the Marauder skills:
a) it gets you to the Marauder skills quicker.
b) it gives you the option to take +30 dex rather than 2% block if you so choose (aka need more accuracy or wanna wield an axe, etc).

Well, I don't feel like taking +30 dex is ever going to be as useful as taking nodes that explicitly give +accuracy (even if they also feature some amount of dex). You don't need dex to equip maces, your shields, or any of your armour or gems in this build that I'm aware of.

As far as Elemental Equilibrium you could argue that Lightning self-inflicts that on monsters with the stacking debuff that increases the damage they take. You can't really stand there spamming Lightning Strike on something to get 3 stacks when after the first hit they now have +resist vs. lightning. It defeats the main dps mechanic of the build. Now if you wanted to create an alternating fire / frost build, that would work better since they don't require multiple stacks to reach max effectiveness and don't already increase their own damage done to the enemy. I don't have time to explore what a Fire / Frost build would look like right now, though. I'm pretty sure you could alternate Glacial Hammer / Infernal Strike (IS doesn't require specific weapon type I think? So just use 1H Maces still). It would be single target damage that becomes AoE when they explode, haha.

This.

Elemental Equilibrium would only be useful if you're regularly playing in a group where your party members deal primarily non-lightning damage.

For our purposes it is a detrimental skill. Our damage comes from physical and lightning. Having -25% fire/ice on enemies does us no good. All it would cause is us to do 25% less lightning damage, so a detriment solo.

However, it's great if you have a group you regularly play with and you just focus on building out a really tanky templar that runs auras and uses anger and decoy totems to keep aggro off everyone else.

Although... reading up on Elemental Equilibrium...

Enemies you hit with Elemental Damage temporarily get +25% flat Resistance to that Element and -50% Resistance to other Elements.

The effect doesn't stack and lasts 5 seconds or until replaced with a new one.

In case of an enemy being hit with an attack that carries two types of Elemental Damage it will get -50% Resistance to third element. An attack carrying all three Elemental Damage types does not trigger Elemental Equlibrium.

You COULD alternate between something like glacial hammer and lightning strike. The first hit of lightning strike would trigger -50% ice/fire, the second hit of glacial hammer would take advantage of that -50% ice and trigger -50% lightning/fire, then the hit of lightning strike would take advantage of that -50% and so on.

Seems viable. Seems like a pain in the ass too, but viable.

I'm not sure how elemental damage on weapons would play into this, or how added lightning damage from Wrath would effect the glacial hammer strikes.

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Thehealthygamer wrote:

Although... reading up on Elemental Equilibrium...

Enemies you hit with Elemental Damage temporarily get +25% flat Resistance to that Element and -50% Resistance to other Elements.

The effect doesn't stack and lasts 5 seconds or until replaced with a new one.

In case of an enemy being hit with an attack that carries two types of Elemental Damage it will get -50% Resistance to third element. An attack carrying all three Elemental Damage types does not trigger Elemental Equlibrium.

You COULD alternate between something like glacial hammer and lightning strike. The first hit of lightning strike would trigger -50% ice/fire, the second hit of glacial hammer would take advantage of that -50% ice and trigger -50% lightning/fire, then the hit of lightning strike would take advantage of that -50% and so on.

Seems viable. Seems like a pain in the ass too, but viable.

I'm not sure how elemental damage on weapons would play into this, or how added lightning damage from Wrath would effect the glacial hammer strikes.

That skill just seems like more trouble than it is worth :[ Maybe builds exist that it would work great with, but those are not builds that encourage spamming the same attack with the same attribute over and over (which describes most builds).

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Thehealthygamer wrote:

Yep definitely take the HP. I'm finding resists really easy to max.

Really glad to hear you say that. The main reason my 2H Duelist build is apparantly never going to work is because it only gets +47% resists from talents + quest resist. Yours gets +35% just from 3 points, and another what, +15% just from holding a shield? :P On top of that it seems our shields give at least +8% resist all as a standard trait.

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Ganrao wrote:

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Thehealthygamer wrote:

Yep definitely take the HP. I'm finding resists really easy to max.

Really glad to hear you say that. The main reason my 2H Duelist build is apparantly never going to work is because it only gets +47% resists from talents + quest resist. Yours gets +35% just from 3 points, and another what, +15% just from holding a shield? :P On top of that it seems our shields give at least +8% resist all as a standard trait.

Exactly. Couple that with some +25 resist rings and randomly other resist on the armor and you'll be capped out at 80 easily.

Hi, I took tempest shield instead of lighting strike, im very interested in this build, does the lightning gem drop in world?

I'm going to have to go over the point totals for our diverging builds and see how much defense I gave up to drop the Resoute Technique. It didn't seem like that much, but maybe I underestimated how much +acc you'll need? I really don't know personally. Templar's tree is fantastic @_@ So many great dps and defense nodes. That huge (+50%) crit node and Strong Arm up north are fantastic for the tiny price to reach them.

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Thehealthygamer wrote:

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Ganrao wrote:

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Aranstel wrote:

I am thinking of making a no Resolute Technique build too. My highest character is a L20 Templar so I am a newbie, a few thoughts though:
Wouldn't this build significantly benefit from the Elemental Equilibrium large keystone skill?
How about going past the +30 Dex keystone to get to the Marauder skills:
a) it gets you to the Marauder skills quicker.
b) it gives you the option to take +30 dex rather than 2% block if you so choose (aka need more accuracy or wanna wield an axe, etc).

Well, I don't feel like taking +30 dex is ever going to be as useful as taking nodes that explicitly give +accuracy (even if they also feature some amount of dex). You don't need dex to equip maces, your shields, or any of your armour or gems in this build that I'm aware of.

As far as Elemental Equilibrium you could argue that Lightning self-inflicts that on monsters with the stacking debuff that increases the damage they take. You can't really stand there spamming Lightning Strike on something to get 3 stacks when after the first hit they now have +resist vs. lightning. It defeats the main dps mechanic of the build. Now if you wanted to create an alternating fire / frost build, that would work better since they don't require multiple stacks to reach max effectiveness and don't already increase their own damage done to the enemy. I don't have time to explore what a Fire / Frost build would look like right now, though. I'm pretty sure you could alternate Glacial Hammer / Infernal Strike (IS doesn't require specific weapon type I think? So just use 1H Maces still). It would be single target damage that becomes AoE when they explode, haha.

This.

Elemental Equilibrium would only be useful if you're regularly playing in a group where your party members deal primarily non-lightning damage.

For our purposes it is a detrimental skill. Our damage comes from physical and lightning. Having -25% fire/ice on enemies does us no good. All it would cause is us to do 25% less lightning damage, so a detriment solo.

However, it's great if you have a group you regularly play with and you just focus on building out a really tanky templar that runs auras and uses anger and decoy totems to keep aggro off everyone else.

I too think that Elemental Equilibrium is more trouble than it is worth. I was tired last night when I looked at the tree and read the "+25" as "-25" (the + is hard to see).

I prefer the route past the +30 dex node because the same end build can be achieved with greater flexibility, i.e. can reach Marauder skills quicker or take the dex mode for the +60 acc if either preferred

Ok, working hard on cleaning up my build to maintain the DPS increases without losing many survival stats. I have run into some conundrums though, while attempting this.

First off, I don't actually understand how accuracy rating on nodes works.

Example:

A node called "Accuracy" says "+10% increased accuracy rating"

Now, what does that mean? Does it take your base Accuracy from Dex (+2 per Dex point) then multiply that by 110%?

Example:

Base Templar Dex is 14, so 28 accuracy rating.

Accuracy node says 28 x 1.10 = 28 + 2.8 = 30.8 total accuracy rating now?

Seems pretty crap if that is how this works, because until you have 200 base dexterity you'll be gaining less accuracy for taking "Accuracy" than you would for just taking another crappy +10 Dex node. This observation makes me question if that is how the Accuracy node actually works, because it would be completely useless. An alternative interpretation of Accuracy could be that it adds a flat 10 to your accuracy value? In that case it is still 50% worse than a regular +10 Dex node. Still no good. I doubt that is what it means either.

New Consideration - Lightning Resistant Mobs

Since you don't NEED Static Blows to apply Shock any more now that you're missing Resolute Technique, you could greatly improve your dps vs. Lightning resistant mobs by improving your critical chance as much as is feasible and carrying Glacial Hammer / Infernal Strike just to deal with them specifically. I backed down on the +6% Lightning damage nodes because they were crap anyway, and the build has so many +all elemental damage nodes it just makes sense to me to branch out into at least one other elemental attack to handle these types of mobs.

New Skeleton
No Resolute Technique v3 (unfinished)