The Total Templar

Ten Ton Hammer Guide to the Templar

Chapter 1 - Credits & The Basics
Chapter 2 - Quests
Chapter 3 - NPC Locations
Chapter 4 - Spell Upgrades: Finding and Comparing Them
Chapter 5 - Weapons
Chapter 6 - Armour
Chapter 7 - Spells
Chapter 8 - Methods and Techniques
Chapter 9 - 1H+Shld vs. 1H+Symbol vs. 2H Debate
Chapter 10 - Where To Hunt

Chapter 8 - Templar Methods and Techniques

8.0 – Methods and Techniques

8.0a - Spell Breakdown

These tables illustrate the "spell progression" - or natural upgrades to your spells by level and spell name. Note that after the Live Update 13 Combat Changes, there isn't an unworthy spell in your repertoire; you should be using almost all the spells available to you when you pull that mob.

Buffs

Augmentations for you and/or your group's stats. Toss as many of these on your tank and group as you can handle, and don't forget the buffs in the "Utility Heals" section too.

Single Target Heals

These are one of the Templar's strongest heals after the Combat Changes. While it means that you may not be as able to keep the tank in the green anymore, you're a better major hit healer and already somewhat suited to take the aggro that come from heavy healing.

Group Heals

Not as much bang for the buck. Consider using "Utility Heals" like the "Fate" line in lieu of group heals when fighting many linked (or grouped) mobs.

Utility Heals

Another one of our fortes, and this word comes from Lockeye, the Spell Design Lead, himself. If you're not using these, you're handicapping yourself.

Mez / Stuns

The unwelcome guest at our post-Combat Changes dinner table, all of these mezzes are extremely short in duration. Soothe works well, but for an indeterminate amount of time, and the stun will require some major skill work by the time you can use it.

Direct Damage (DD)

The cornerstone of your solo Heroic Opportunities, and consequently your only hope of doing real damage. In HOs while soloing, you can save yourself some damage by turning off melee then sequencing a smite then a strike (in that order!) before casting your DoTs. If you do this, you'll take no damage between when you finish casting smite and finish casting strike, which can be huge. DoTs and auto-melee will break the mez.

Damage Over Time (DoT)

A two-edged sword in that these break mezzes, though Symbol of Corruption is one of the nicest multipurpose WIS debuffs in the game.

Debuffs

Always use these on your target; post-Combat Changes there are no marginal / weak debuffs.

Resurrection Spells

For only the worst of times. Always always always load your group up with a rez stone! It's really easy to forget.

8.1 - Soloing With Your Templar

I used to think a Templar was poorly suited for soloing, that is, until I began the second part of the armor multi-quest (see chapter 2 for details). While slaughtering Giant Kodiaks for quest components, I noticed a 23 Berserker, likewise soloing bears, was killing and recovering slower than I was, me being level 20 at the time. I only mention this to say that our Heavy Armor (save up and get fitted out for it at lvl 20, you'll need about 1.5g + what you get for selling your equipped items) allows us to hold our own against even cons at level 20. Soloing, therefore, brings up two things, confidence (no small thing) and less-used skills (not spells, but what you use to cast spells), like Disruption (used for DD spells). Keep your skills at their caps for maximum effectiveness (press “L” to check on skill levels).

Here's what I do when soloing: first of all, know where to run if things go sour, think long and straight with no aggressive mobs (roads aren’t always the best way to go, a zone wall however is generally free of mobs).pick a lower level mob to start with, and find a location to pull to where aggressive mobs don’t roam. Make sure you’re buffed up (Courage, Symbol, Redoubt, Protective Faith (if fighting magic users), and Protectorate lines), turn on reactive heal, hit the mob with Weakness, Mark of Pawns or Rebuke (or whichever takes the longest to cast at your level, see the spell list in Chapter 7), and pull them to your safe location ("camp"). Turn on melee, then use the rest of your debuffs (Mark of Pawns, Rebuke, Weakness, and – if you’re facing off with a grouped mob – Amending Fate). From here on, its Heroic Opportunities (HO) one after another, only pausing to refresh the reactive heal and occasionally cast a click heal on yourself.

Here's the lowdown on our solo Heroic Opportunies. Again you'll want to cast a smite then a strike when doing solo HOs:

Don’t be afraid to run – no one’s going to know, promise. And the debt you’ll accumulate if you die easily could be worth the exp gained by killing 10 mobs, 20 mobs or more. I use “half & half” as a rule of thumb, if the mob isn’t down to half health (or if fighting a group, half the group isn’t “dead” with half my power gone, or if an aggressive mob engages you while you’re attacking something else (called an “add”) its time to think very seriously about high-tailing it. When running, turn off melee, turn around and run in your safe direction, and “/yell” to break the encounter. This 1) makes you healable to passers by, and 2) lets you off the hook faster – you won’t have to run as far to lose the mob. Yelling purely to increase power and health regeneration no longer works, it seems.

Resurrecting players, or “rezzing” – At this point, you have to be grouped with a player to rez them. This was done, ostensibly, to prevent malicious rezzing in the middle of a group of aggressive creatures. You can now rez and heal players outside your group.

8.2 - Grouping with Your Templar

Remember to use all your group buffs, and give everyone a token to rez you should you die (via the level 11 spell, Divine Awakening). If anyone complains about the lost activatable or inventory slot, reason with them. If they’re really causing a stink, I offer, in /tell, to give them a common drop item that fell to me when the group breaks. Most of the time they’ll realize how silly they’re being and be too embarrassed to take it later on. In any case, its worth the insurance. Then give the MT (main tank, or "meatshield) Vigilant Benediction if you have it- keep an eye on this spell since it has a tendancy to go cold in mid-battle.

Your energies should be focused primarily on healing the main tank. Stack up your reactive heals on the main tank/puller and group right before combat begins; casting beforehand keeps you from building hate. For tough situations, stack your single target reactive with your group reactive and the arcane-warding Protective Faith line if need be. Be sure to debuff the target fully before entering combat- your debuffs make a huge difference.

To melee or not to melee? Some temps prefer not to melee to focus on their tasks as Main Healer, which is fine. Unlike EQ1, power regen is uniform throughout combat, whether fighting, casting, sitting, or dancing- so this shouldn't be part of your decision criteria. The common arguments against meleeing your Temp is 1) the fear of breaking a mez if the MT tabs through targets, and 2) the additional hate this can bring.

Personally, I like being in the action and find I can heal just as well while swinging a mace as otherwise. Breaking a mez this way is by all accounts a rare (if devastating) thing (often caused by the tank your "casting through" mis-targetting, and can usually be solved with your quick-cast hate reducer (Placate line spells - some seem to have trouble with this spell actually building hate on a resist, I personally can't report any problems).  The hate I've earned has always been attributable to a premature debuff or group reactive heal, and while meleeing adds aggro, it's simple enough to toggle auto-attack off while the MT taunts the mob away. What little damage we do (augmented nicely by our Blessed Weapon proc - which adds a fair amount of damage every seven swipes or so) is nonetheless helpful - if nothing else we're like a little DoT that doesn't wear off or cost power. So (again personally) I turn on melee when the mob arrives, get in a couple little swings while the MT builds aggro, and use the rest of the reactive healing "window" to debuff the mob.

Debuffs are cheap with regards to power cost, and Mark of Pawns and Amending Fate, for example, can help you heal- big time.  For example, Amending Fate heals the group as much as Healing Touch at a sixth of the power cost!  It's not much use when fighting single-pulls, but for those long tough grouped mobs- it's magic! [Thanks Winstar of Oggok for reminding me of Amending Fate]

Debuffs help you to heal simply by helping to kill the mob faster. Watch for reactive heal to wear off (on the maintained spells windows on the left side of the screen, by default) and refresh as appropriate. Also, watch for negative effects popping up on the group status bar and use your cure/aid spells to cure these ailments immediately. Throw in a minor Healing spell to make up for the damage above what the reactive heals can handle, and if you see the bar still dropping, hit a major heal for a more powerful heal. Most importantly, keep reactive heal on at all times.

If another member is taking damage, I throw a click heal at them, and if the bar still keeps dropping, you’ve got two “tanks” on your hands. If you happen to be one of the players taking hits, use your hate reducer (Placate). Two tanks uses up your power twice as fast, so I have a macro that goes something like this “/g %T is being attacked, tanks please taunt mob away.” The game fills in the players name in place of %T if you have them targeted. Hopefully this will solve the problem.

And if everything starts to go the way of the buffalo, Radiance (no-cast time +500 pt reactive heal with 15 min recast time), Healing Touch and Prayer of Amelioration (mana-heavy group click heals), and Battle Respite (in-battle rez) are your bread and butter while continuing to renew reactive heals. A word about battle rez - use it! Getting a dead tank or DPS off the ground free of aggro and back in action can be a lifesaver! If you need to constantly group heal, its time to run. Keep the group informed of your power level when it gets low, give them an “OOP!” (out of power) when its all gone. If your groups stays when your OOP, turn on melee if you haven't already and keep trying to heal as your power regenerates. Templars stay to the bitter end! But that's usually because we’re the second to die!

If you have to heal someone other than the MT and are auto-attacking, turn off melee. Why, you ask? Because you’ll attack what they’re attacking, and if its an OT drawing aggro, you’ll keep attacking what they are after they switch back to the MT’s target. Turn melee back on when you return to healing the MT. It’s also VERY important in zones where mobs are packed tightly together to make sure you stop attacking when the last mob dies.

Sound like common sense? Nope. Unfortunately as the healer, you target players, not mobs, which means you’ll stay in melee mode after the last mob dies. A function new to EQ2, called cast-through, means 1) if you target a mob, your beneficial spells will enhance the target of that mob (i.e. a group member) and your harmful spells will attach to the mob itself and 2) if you target a group-member, your beneficial spells will attach to him/her and your harmful spells will affect his/her target. Very handy. But if you target the main tank to keep a close eye on his/her health, and upon the death of the MT's last mob he/she puts his weapon away and switches to a non-aggro target, and the mob is within your reach, you’ll hit it. And the group has to fight again, presumably in bad shape. The best way I've found to handle this problem is to change the setting “Show NPC Health” to always under the User Interface options, then click on the last mob when it has only a smidge of health left.

When in a group with two healers, coordinate your heals. One healer, preferably the highest level, should devote him or herself to keeping the MT "in the green." The other should debuff and heal others that are taking riposte/barrage etc. (have ALL melee'ers except the MT stay behind the mob to avoid riposte damage, which can easily take away half a mage's or priest's total HP in one shot with 20+ mobs) or aggro damage. If you and the other healer happen to be of different subclasses, you can stack your reactive heal with their ward or heal-over-time on the MT at the start of the battle. Remember though, your reactive heals will not stack with another Templar's or Inquisitor's, and will be cancelled by their casts if they're of higher level. Your group must have healers with different classes to be most effective.

Don't underestimate your buffs and debuffs! I've gotten plenty of remarks from smart tanks who comment on how much AC and health I've added to their pools. And your enemies with die much faster with your combination of stamina (defense) and AC debuffs. Throw in a strength debuff, and you've got a healer that combines good heals with short battles :) And if you happen to have a summoner in your group, he/she can summon you a mana enhancing item for your activatable slot! Thanks to Hideus Orkhammer of Butcherblock for some great soloing and grouping tips!

8.1 - Your U.I. Setup

Here’s a couple things I do, but figure out what’s comfortable for you. You’ll be amazed how much frustration is saved by taking a few moments to plan out your interface.

Use at least two chat windows, one for combat and reward text and the other for chat. You can filter the messages you’re receiving by right clicking and choosing “Chat Options.” I put all player text, wornoff spell, and reward messages in one, and all other text in the other.

You can open multiple hotbars, three layers covers my spells quite nicely for now. Melee attack, heals, and cures (aids) go on the primary hotbar, which I put at the top of the screen right underneath the group member status bar for fast access. Secondary is group heals, debuffs (Weakness, Rebuke lines), and hate reducers (Distract, Faith Respect lines) with one space left empty between. Tertiary bar is HO starter and DD spells with misc spells (like Summon Food & Water) on the other side.

I keep my top bar full of heals, and it just happens to be "Hotbar 1." Then I always keep "Hotbar 6" loaded with all my tier one / tier two heals (Bestowal of Vitae, Combat Healing, etc.) - that way i can quickly switch to the low power cost heals if need be.

I would shy away from putting /yell or “Call for Help” in any hotbar, especially not in the primary one (primary uses keys 1-9). In a panic, stop melee, turn and hit numlock to autorun, then its easy to type /yell to break the encounter. Calling for help in a legitimate fight (especially on a quest mob) is a good way to build aggro on the part of your groupmates!

Chapter 1 - Credits & The Basics
Chapter 2 - Quests
Chapter 3 - NPC Locations
Chapter 4 - Spell Upgrades: Finding and Comparing Them
Chapter 5 - Weapons
Chapter 6 - Armour
Chapter 7 - Spells
Chapter 8 - Methods and Techniques
Chapter 9 - 1H+Shld vs. 1H+Symbol vs. 2H Debate
Chapter 10 - Where To Hunt