Thinking of leveling a templar

[edgecrusherO0]

Coming back to the game after a long break and thinking of rolling a Templar.Any suggestions for a leveling for which tree is the best or any other helpful advice? O.o

[El Conquistador]

<p>Well, that's a really wide ranging question.  And two days with no reply kind of surprises me, this board is quite dead these days.</p><p>My simple reply is:  Search for posts by Kendricke and follow his advice.  He's been the go-to guy for levelling and AA advice for years.  A lot depends on if you're solo or group oriented, but that's explained in Kendricke's guides.</p><p>Here are a couple of references to get you started.  They may be a  year old but the advice is still valid.</p><p> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=177987" target="_blank">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=177987</a></p><p> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=370169" target="_blank">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=370169</a></p><p>Good luck and hope you enjoy your time here!</p>

[Jevangal]

<p>Templars have a reputation as being difficult to solo.  If this were true, it would be bad news indeed because grouping in the lower levels is a comparatively rare event these days (compared with the old days of scarecrow and giant groups).  Many people give up on the class because of this perception and the seemingly slow levelling.</p><p>The main reason people struggle is slow casting speed, relatively low dps (at least in the beginning) and the class has a somewhat steep learning curve, which is on a par with a coercer's difficulty in my experience.  Get round these two issues and you will have a good time with this class, finding the reputation is ill-deserved.</p><p>The trick is to learn how to use stuns, debuffs, lotto heals and reactives effectively.  These are the keys to increasing your dps and preventing yourself getting eaten alive (you get the ability to reduce the mob's mitigation vs divine damage, which is your main casting damage, thus effectively increasing your dps).  You also have the ability to wear plate armour, thus reducing physical damage.  Kendricke has some good ideas on these issues, as the previous poster suggested.</p><p>Regarding aas, it is worth considering that most of the damage you do will come from casting (you do not receive the melee dps options that the inquisitor does), and this is where the smites line on the EoF templar tree and the str and int lines on the KoS cleric tree are useful.  The smites line gives you a significant boost to your dps as well as reducing power cost and casting and reuse speeds.  The int line increases your casting speed and chance for crit casting damage and the str line gives you a random proccing divine damage dps boost, an increase in health and immunity to stun. Inquisitors get more bang for their buck from the str line because of their melee dps options whereas templars get more value from the int line because of the way it synergises with the smites line.  However, the immunity to interruption is invaluable to a templar because of our reliance on casting rather than melee.</p><p>Of course, you will not benefit from these in the early levels so questing rather than grinding is the key to soloing this class.  Get the aas as soon as you can and your experience as a templar will be superb!</p>

[SpineDoc]

<p>It is true, it's a myth that templars cannot solo.  I dusted off my 3 year old Templar a couple of months ago and soloed him to 79, of course I did all the group content in between, but seeing as the game is so dead until level 80 most of that time was spent soloing.   I started at level 50 with no AA, and I'm currently closing in on 120AA, I'm sure I would have been maxed if I started at level 1.</p><p>Make sure you first max out your DPS spells in the templar line first, that gives you quite a nice boost in DPS.  Then max out your DPS line in cleric.  Get a big stick that swings slowly so you have a chance to hit some melee between spells, honestly even with yaulp I never noted much melee dps so I switched to a buckler early on and found more utility with defense rather than dps, but YMMV and I'm sure there will be differing opinions on this.   2 end abilities I feel are indispensable are the one that overall increases your dps, and the one that gives you a 20% bonus to procs.  The ability that allows you to be uninterupted I never found that useful, but keep in mind that I hit ROK fairly soon and there are almost no group mobs there.  YMMV in earlier parts of the game, but it was very rare doing any timeline where I wished for that ability.</p><p>My last advice is the IMO most powerful weapon in your arsenal pound for pound, your STUNS.  Once I mastered these I realized how much better my fights went, I could fight stronger mobs, last a fight where I had an add, etc etc.  I forget the stuns times, but I believe at my level it's 12 second and 8 seconds, thats 20 seconds of very reduced DPS from the mob.  This makes the difference between healing a lot and barely scraping through the fight, or completely mastering the mob.  Additionally with points into both stuns they come up much faster and at times I will use them twice during a fight.  Also don't forget that increased spell damage end ability is disabled for like 7 seconds or something after you cast a heal.  By casting stuns I can usually get by a fight with a single up mob a good 4-5 levels above me casting NO heals at all, this is important from a dps point of view.</p><p>Templar really is a great solo class, sure you might take a bit longer to kill that mob, but your durability really is very high compared to most other classes.</p>