Templar

Templars harness the power of the light and the sun its self to support their fellows in combat and burn their enemies. The Templar is the only class in The Elder Scrolls Online that has a large selection of heals at their disposal, making it the natural choice for those who love the healer role. The Templar is completely capable of filling in the other roles, too.

Each skill line includes one ultimate skill, five active skills and four passive skills. The ultimate skills and active skills can be morphed. Morphs enhance the original skill, giving you more room to customize your character and play it just the way you want. Each ultimate skill and active skill comes with two morph options. Once you have morphed an ability, it will replace the original ability.

Templar Skill Lines

Templar’s skill lines are Aedric Spear, Dawn’s Wrath and Restoring Light.

Aedric Spear

Aedric Spear skill line has a selection of useful damage abilities. It can be seen as the “physical damage” skill line of Templars, even though all damage dealt is Magic Damage.

Radial Sweep is the ultimate ability of Aedric Spear skill line. It deals Magic Damage around the player. The damage its self is not very high, but it makes sense because the ultimate cost is so low. Empowering Sweep morph will increase the Armor value for each target hit, so it can be used as a way to gain additional armor for Templar tanks. The ultimate overall seems a bit underwhelming, and it’s hard to justify using it for anything but the Armor gain instead of Nova, the ultimate ability of Dawn’s Wrath Templar skill line.

Puncturing Strikes is an useful melee ability. It deals damage in four pulses infront of you, also knocking enemy targets down. Because the damage is dealt in four different hits, Puncturing Strikes is a very powerful melee attack to perform while sneaking or hidden. Successful sneak attacks are critical hits, so that means four separate critical hits in this case.

Piercing Javelin is a ranged knockback and can be morphed to include a longer knockdown as well.

Focused Charge is a great way for Templars to close the gap between distant targets. It interrupts all casting, damages and stuns the target. Toppling charge morph will also set casting targets off balance, opening a chance for the Templar to perform a very powerful Heavy Attack on them.

Spear Shards is a ranged attack that deals Magic Damage in a small radius around the enemy target and also disorients it. An ally may pick up the spear to regenerate Stamina. If morphed to Luminous Shards, the ally will also have some of their Magicka restored when they pick the spear up.

Sun Shield is a pretty powerful damage shield which also deals damage to nearby targets on activation. You can further increase the strength of the shield with successful hits. The catch here is that whilst the skill is active, for 6 seconds, you are unable to regenerate Magicka, so there is a pretty significant trade-off.

Dawn’s Wrath

Dawn’s Wrath is the caster skill line for Templars, which also comes with some very powerful debuffs.

Nova is the ultimate skill of Dawn’s Wrath skill line. It is easily the best choice of ultimate a Templar has for damage. Enemies are debuffed to deal 40% less damage and they also take Magic Damage every second for 8 seconds. The pure damage of Nova is very potent on its own, but it also opens up the chance for an ally to use the Supernova synergy, stunning all enemies in area and dealing high damage.

Sun Fire deals Fire damage over time and adds a snare. The morph Vampire’s Bane increases the damage of the DOT, whilst Reflective Light gives the original skill an initial 3-target AOE damage component and a 3-target snare.

Solar Flare is a ranged nuke which also increases the weapon and spell damage you of your next attack against the target and the enemies around it. Dark Flare morph gives the original skill a mortal strike effect, reducing enemy’s healing effictiveness by 30%.

Backlash is a very powerful skill when used correctly. It applies a debuff on an enemy for 6 seconds, storing up enemy damage they take for the duration. When the debuff ends, the damage is released and they take an additional 33% of total damage dealt. This is a great way to burst players down in PvP to counter any healing. Use Backlash on enemy, deal lots of damage to it, and just as the debuff ends focus on other high-damage burst abilities to take huge chunks of enemy Health down within a short period of time.

Eclipse is an amazing debuff. When cast on enemy, any single target spells the enemy uses will be reflected back at them for the duration of the debuff. It’s a great way to take out spell casters for a short period of time, both in PvE and PvP.

Blinding Light is a heavy AOE debuff which gives nearby enemies a 50% chance to miss and be set off balance, essentially making it a 50% damage reduction buff providing that you can catch every enemy with it. It is exactly as great as it looks on paper, but the Magicka cost of the skill is higher than your average skill cost. Searing Light will also make the original skill deal Magic Damage when the debuff ends.

Restoring Light

Restoring Light is the healing skill line of Templars. At the same time, it’s the only dedicated healing skill line for any class in the game. Because of this, it’s fair to say that Templars are the go-to class for anyone who wants to play the Paladin archetype or a pure healer in Elder Scrolls Online.

Rite of Passage is an insanely strong channeled AOE heal ultimate skill, and in my eyes the reason why Templars will always be better healers than any other class regardless of how they invest skill points in Restoration Staff skill line. This is because other classes are forced to use Magicka as a resource for heals, whilst Templars can also dump their Ultimate into this powerful heal.

Rushed Ceremony is a powerful, instant single target smart heal aimed at the most wounded nearby ally. Breath of Life morph turns the heal into a 3-target heal, making it hands down the best morph option.

Healing Ritual is a 12-meter radius targeted AOE heal, which heals the caster for even more. It’s the bread-and-butter group heal for any Templar.

Restoring Aura is simply a must have for any Templar who plans on using Stamina as a resource. There’s two versions of this skill. When slotted, it provides a passive 15% Stamina and Health regeneration buff on self, being the reason why this skill is so powerful. It’s also a passive self buff. When activated, for 6 seconds it increases the Stamina regeneration of nearby allies by an additional 80%.

Repentance morph completely changes the original skill, making it cost no Magicka at all and only work on your self. It still increases Stamina and Health regeneration passively, but when activated, the skill restores Stamina and Health per nearby corpses. Each corpse only counts once towards this skill. Repentance it’s a nice way to quickly recover from combat, as long as you can keep on killing stuff to have corpses as resources.

Cleansing Ritual removes a negative effect from self and periodically heals nearby allies. What makes this skill amazing is the Purify synergy, which allies can activate. It removes ALL negative effects and heals them.

Rune Focus creates a small area of self protection. As long as you are in the area, you gain extra Armor and Spell Resistance. Channeled Focus morph also restores Magicka whilst you stand in the area.