9.4.21 The Templar Profession
BASIC INFORMATION
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Armour: Fieldplate. Templar can also wear fullplate, the most protective armour in the game, if smithed for them by someone Transcendent in smithing (or if you get the ability yourself)
Suggested Statpack: Athletic for PvP, Strong for PvE
Main Stat: Strength
Balance Type: Balance/Equilibrium
SKILLSETS
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Weaponmastery
Primary skillset. This should be the first skill you attempt to master, as it provides you with most of your weapon abilities. Along with the ability to combo two different attacks, as you progress through the skillset, weaponmastery provides you with proficiency for free with one of the templar weapons, along with several specialized attacks using these weapons, such as Reave, which lets you do attacks with a battleaxe that do more and more damage to another player, or lacerate, which does significant damage to a bleeding player. Towards the height of Weaponmastery, you also gain the ability to Engage a foe, which gives you a chance to strike them with a strong blow if they attempt to flee, and the ability to Impale an enemy in place also helps prevent escape. The penultimate ability, Dismembowel, allows you to do a large amount of damage to an enemy player you have impaled.
Devotion:
Secondary skillset. Devotion forms the bulk of your defensive abilities, as well as offensive and defensive rites you can lay in a room to either give yourself various beneficial effects, or hinder the enemy in a variety of ways. The thermalshield, frostshield, and earthshield blessings provide strong resistances against many common damage types. Inspiration grants you a bonus to your strength, which is your primary stat and will affect damage both against mobiles and players. The revitalization and healing rites will heal health and mana as well as cure afflictions, respectively. Cleansing inversely will harm an enemy, by stripping them of vital defences which leaves them vulnerable to attack. The ultimate ability, Redemption, works like a starburst tattoo, saving you from death as long as your Devotion is strong enough. The Devotion resource is important to manage as a Templar. While it regenerates fairly quickly, and the LastRites ability grants you the choice of using corpses to give yourself more, it is also used up in a fight at a steady pace, and you will want to manage it carefully so as to not find yourself expended in the middle of a pitched fight.
Chivalry:
Utility skillset. Chivalry is a grab bag of a variety of useful skills. Along with the useful utility defenses of weathering and resistance that help mitigate damage, Chivalry has a variety of enhancement you can place on your weapon to give negative affects to your foes, many useful abilities to use with a mount as a knight must have their steed after all, and then skills centered around falcons. Falcons are a Templar's companion creature and once trained can perform a variety of useful tasks, such as delivering items to others
Combat Focus:
There are two popular routes available to Templar. Firstly, with a battleaxe if you have high strength, you can use the Reave ability to ramp up a great amount of damage against an enemy, with your rites both supplementing this and allowing you to tank long enough to get towards the high end of the Reave momenteum curve. Secondly, if you have a longsword that is forged with serration, you can use this, along with the Lacerate ability, mirroring enhancement, and toxins to both place a great deal of passive damage on an opponent through bleeding from the serration, which you can then exploit with Lacerate to effect. The advantage of the second strategy is since longsword also is fairly quick, you can switch to a strategy of using toxins to "lock" an opponent and prevent their healing if you find they are able to withstand the combination of bleeding and lacerate.
Artifacts made for this profession:
Prayer Beads: 300 Credits
Reduces devotion usage by 1/2.
See Also: HELP WEAPONMASTERY, HELP DEVOTION, HELP CHIVALRY, HELP CRUSADERS, HELP SMITHING, HELP PROFESSION LIST