Templar Spell Rotations - Heal/DPS [Archive] - EQ2 Forum Archive @ EQ2Wire

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Viethiel

05-27-2009, 11:31 AM

For the veterans out there...I am rather new to the Templar class, but have been enjoying it so far. I recently dinged 77 on my character and am begining to group quite heavily. Although I am working on getting properly geared and purchasing my AD3's...I'd like to become better at this class and am finding solid information hard to come by.My hope is that someone could give me their heal and DPS spell rotations.Which spells should I fire off at the begining of a fight? Or in what situation?Do you use a macro for your rotations in DPS mode?The more detail the better. Thanks in advance for your assistance!

SpineDoc

05-27-2009, 02:52 PM

Depends what you are fighting really, and if the group is well geared and making the fights easy, or if the group sucks and makes the fights hard.On regular group content where I am the main healer in healing stance, say I'm solo healing a TSO zone or something:pre-pull: Repent, group reactive, reverence, arcane blocker if there are choker wearers in the group, Sanctuary on named pulls or if Im expecting control effects.On pull after I see one taunt go off: On easy mobs I rarely cast debuffs as they are usually dead in seconds. On hard mobs mitigation debuff, mark, gift, group heal on death, then I'll stun and daze to reduce their damage output. I'll usually position myself behind the mob and autoattack, and once my heals and debuffs are on I'll nuke, of course this is depending on power, and also sometimes I will stay back like in the Guk's where there are tons of kickbacks and aoe's/frontals. Cure during fights as needed.In DPS mode if I can full out DPS I'll still try and get a group reactive and repent up on the prepull to make life easier on the main healer. Debuffs will go in on harder fights. Mitigation debuff is a MUST as it easily adds a solid 30% to my autoattack and flurries. I'll run in asap to the mobs back and start autoattacking, cast mit debuff, maybe healer debuffs depending on the difficulty, and spam spells. The nice part about the Thex Mallet is it's almost timed perfectly to my DD's, so I can just spam and I won't miss a swing. YMMV and you may have to pay attention to your autoattack bar and adjust your casting so you don't miss autoattack. I'll still play with dazes/stuns, debuffs, heals, cures, etc depending on whats going on. I'm always a healer FIRST so always keep my eye on healer stuff.In the end it always ends up being a combination of the above scenarios.

Viethiel

06-08-2009, 01:25 PM

Thanks for the reply SpineDoc. Would anyone else like to share their spell rotation strategies? I will post my strategies for group, raid, and solo once I finalize a proper rotation.I've begun to macro my heals and damage spells...which is nice because not only do I cast faster (i.e., clicking one button). I will write up a rotation macro at some point as well to help those to become the most efficient healer as possible.

PeterJohn

06-08-2009, 05:01 PM

<cite>SpineDoc wrote:</cite><blockquote>Depends what you are fighting really, and if the group is well geared and making the fights easy, or if the group sucks and makes the fights hard.On regular group content where I am the main healer in healing stance, say I'm solo healing a TSO zone or something:pre-pull: Repent, group reactive, reverence, arcane blocker if there are choker wearers in the group, Sanctuary on named pulls or if Im expecting control effects. I usually save my Reverence for immediately after the pull, since the duration is so short and it is only useful if the tank is actually using power and is already damaged. I would also strongly consider saving your Repent until a few seconds into the battle, so that you get the benefit of the heal amount as well as the ward amount. Yes, I let my tank take a little damage before casting it. See below for timing of Repent. Of course, Repent is pre-pull if you expect huge amount of incoming damage right from the pull, but this is not usually the case in regular group encounters.On pull after I see one taunt go off: On easy mobs I rarely cast debuffs as they are usually dead in seconds. On hard mobs mitigation debuff, mark, gift, group heal on death, then I'll stun and daze to reduce their damage output. I will usually cast my stun first, if fighting only a single mob or named creature if they are susceptible to stun, since this will prevent damage. If the stun lands, I'll cast all my debuffs, and all 3 can be cast just as stun wears off, at which point I cast my daze then Repent for the soon to be expected incoming damage. If the original stun fails, I'll cast by Repent immediately, to absorb the damage that is now incoming, followed by a retry of the stun. The timing for this works out pretty well. I'll usually position myself behind the mob and autoattack, and once my heals and debuffs are on I'll nuke, of course this is depending on power, and also sometimes I will stay back like in the Guk's where there are tons of kickbacks and aoe's/frontals. Cure during fights as needed.</blockquote>I added some comments/variations to SpineDoc's excellent cast order.

SpineDoc

06-08-2009, 08:30 PM

Thanks PeterJohn. I like to precast Repent because it gives me extra time to cast other stuff as the tank comes in, like mark or gift or whatever debuff pertains to the situation. Same with reverence (30 sec duration, 30 sec recast so it's just always up, no waste there), same with group reactives. I see 2 situations: a) it's a hard hitting pull, then Repent is needed as a precast or b) it's a pull that is ok with not precasting Repent, but that means that it's not so important that I have to *save* or be stingy with Repent. So in either case I will still precast it. And on the aformentioned note NOT precasting it wastes my debuffing time which is also time that my debuffs will not reduce the mobs mitigation or heal the tank. You have a good point with stuns though, sometimes on tough stuff I will put up a stun or daze first just to mitigate that initial damage.The one thing that really sucks as a hybrid dps for us Templars is 1) power is horrible if you have Yaulp on, but with Yaulp and flurry melee dps is incredible. Just make sure you are comfy with eating up your power, and yes this is with mana proc items. 2) the ridiculous long casting time of DD's when in heal mode, holy crap I can walk my dog before my Martyr strike goes off. and 3) gear gear and gear. Switching from mythical/shield/T3 healer gear and healer jewelry to Thex mallet/T3 tank gear and dps jewelry makes a ridiculously huge difference in both heals and dps. My dps will easily triple or quadruple in dps gear, but heals will be 20% of what they are in healer gear. That's a tough decision, IMO if the dungeon is easy enough where I'm in DPS gear the group should have just gone with a single healer and gotten a real DPS.<cite>PeterJohn wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SpineDoc wrote:</cite><blockquote>Depends what you are fighting really, and if the group is well geared and making the fights easy, or if the group sucks and makes the fights hard.On regular group content where I am the main healer in healing stance, say I'm solo healing a TSO zone or something:pre-pull: Repent, group reactive, reverence, arcane blocker if there are choker wearers in the group, Sanctuary on named pulls or if Im expecting control effects. I usually save my Reverence for immediately after the pull, since the duration is so short and it is only useful if the tank is actually using power and is already damaged. I would also strongly consider saving your Repent until a few seconds into the battle, so that you get the benefit of the heal amount as well as the ward amount. Yes, I let my tank take a little damage before casting it. See below for timing of Repent. Of course, Repent is pre-pull if you expect huge amount of incoming damage right from the pull, but this is not usually the case in regular group encounters.On pull after I see one taunt go off: On easy mobs I rarely cast debuffs as they are usually dead in seconds. On hard mobs mitigation debuff, mark, gift, group heal on death, then I'll stun and daze to reduce their damage output. I will usually cast my stun first, if fighting only a single mob or named creature if they are susceptible to stun, since this will prevent damage. If the stun lands, I'll cast all my debuffs, and all 3 can be cast just as stun wears off, at which point I cast my daze then Repent for the soon to be expected incoming damage. If the original stun fails, I'll cast by Repent immediately, to absorb the damage that is now incoming, followed by a retry of the stun. The timing for this works out pretty well. I'll usually position myself behind the mob and autoattack, and once my heals and debuffs are on I'll nuke, of course this is depending on power, and also sometimes I will stay back like in the Guk's where there are tons of kickbacks and aoe's/frontals. Cure during fights as needed.</blockquote>I added some comments/variations to SpineDoc's excellent cast order.</blockquote>

PeterJohn

06-08-2009, 09:57 PM

Just to clarify, Reverence is 15 second duration and 15 second recast. Repent is the one on a 30 second timer.Your point regarding precasting Repent is a good one, especially since anything you precast is basically "free" power. But I still like to get the double healing/warding effect that I get by casting it once the tank is down 2-3k health.Here is a neat trick with Involuntary Gift you can try: Don't cast this initial debuff on the mob that is currently being targeted by the MA, but instead cast it on another attacking mob. This spell goes off when the mob hits someone, and the targeted mob tends to be stunned a lot, making it not go off. Another neat trick when casting your debuffs is to try to get your Involuntary Gift on multiple mobs. Duration of this spell is over one minute, but the recast is only 9 seconds, so you can get it cast on 2-3 mobs and make it actually show up on your parse.

Viethiel

06-09-2009, 01:25 PM

<cite>PeterJohn wrote:</cite><blockquote>Just to clarify, Reverence is 15 second duration and 15 second recast. Repent is the one on a 30 second timer.Your point regarding precasting Repent is a good one, especially since anything you precast is basically "free" power. But I still like to get the double healing/warding effect that I get by casting it once the tank is down 2-3k health.Here is a neat trick with Involuntary Gift you can try: Don't cast this initial debuff on the mob that is currently being targeted by the MA, but instead cast it on another attacking mob. This spell goes off when the mob hits someone, and the targeted mob tends to be stunned a lot, making it not go off. Another neat trick when casting your debuffs is to try to get your Involuntary Gift on multiple mobs. Duration of this spell is over one minute, but the recast is only 9 seconds, so you can get it cast on 2-3 mobs and make it actually show up on your parse.</blockquote>Awesome tips! I can't wait to test them out!

Sprin

06-23-2009, 05:49 PM

<cite>SpineDoc wrote:</cite><blockquote> IMO if the dungeon is easy enough where I'm in DPS gear the group should have just gone with a single healer and gotten a real DPS.</blockquote>See that is the position i take on any "hybrid-able" classes... Such as melee mystic / Inquisy / warden, or a fury.... If you are not needed for your heals only, then they would have been better getting a pure DPS class. If your having to heal a bit as a 2nd healer, but mostly doing DPS, just think of it this way.. would the tank be taking as much damage, and would the fights last that long (causing them to need more heals) if a pure DPS class had come along? So would they really need your "extra heals" if the fights were shorter, there were more CC's, more Debuffs etc from a pure DPS / Utility class? Yes do as much damage as you can, to help things out, but "DPS Spec'd" healer is a waste of a healer spot, or a waste of a DPS spot... a "hybrid-waste" so to speak <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />I know there are healers out there that can do some "uber" DPS... but thats not your job... It impresses me more when a healer can keep the group alive with no problems and everything runs super smooth and you have insanely high HPS, not DPS... Thats just my opinion, but I always hated it when I would run an instance on my Swashy and the Melee Spec'd mystic would not only let the fights get closer to failure then he should have, but would roll on the DPS items because he "likes to be the highest DPS healer on the server" or some crap

Viethiel

06-24-2009, 08:16 AM

<cite>Sprinng@Nagafen wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SpineDoc wrote:</cite>Yes do as much damage as you can, to help things out, but "DPS Spec'd" healer is a waste of a healer spot, or a waste of a DPS spot... a "hybrid-waste" so to speak <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" />I know there are healers out there that can do some "uber" DPS... but thats not your job... It impresses me more when a healer can keep the group alive with no problems and everything runs super smooth and you have insanely high HPS, not DPS... Thats just my opinion, but I always hated it when I would run an instance on my Swashy and the Melee Spec'd mystic would not only let the fights get closer to failure then he should have, but would roll on the DPS items because he "likes to be the highest DPS healer on the server" or some crap </blockquote>You bring up an excellent point, actually. I've been 80 for a few weeks now and have been raiding quite heavily with my guild. Our "primary" templar is taking the summer off, so I immediately went from being the backup to the primary. Although I still make some mistakes, I am getting better and probably by the time our primary templar decides to come back, I should be close to her skill level and gear wise. This will make us a stronger raid force and me a better player.Having said that, I probably should re-ask the question, not as a DPS rotation, but a "solo rotation." In raids/groups I see the clear the role that the templar is suppose to play...a HEALER. We are there to keep the MT up and the group members alive. I get this concept and enjoy the challenge.However, have you ever tried to solo in a "healing" spec?! OMG. It is painfully long...it's not that it's impossible to kill a mob...it just takes FOREVER. I have since picked up an AA mirror and have played around with different "specs". I have a DPS spec and a heal spec. The DPS spec has absolutely nothing to do with healing - ever point is in something that increase my base DPS - either combat or spell damage. The heal spec...well has nothing to do with DPS and every point is allocated to increasing my healing.The DPS spec smites mobs down almost as fast and in some cases, faster than my 80 Illusionist. The difference between the "DPS" and "heal" spec is night and day. I guess what I'm looking for now is...What spells do you rotate or have a macro created for to maximize the DPS? What spells do you rotate to maximize the healing? I've gotten some awesome suggestions from this thread and have incorporated them - namely the healing ones. So far, it has helped me. Any other thoughts on the topic are welcome!

SpineDoc

06-24-2009, 02:31 PM

Yeah DPS spec for soloing is awesome, especially when you get the right gear to go with it. I'm powerleveling a dirge on my other account and sometimes just out of boredom I'll use my Templar instead of my Coercer to powerlevel. It's always fun to one shot mobs in Fens and JW, and even 2-3 shot mobs in Moors. But the whole "DPS in groups" thing I got over a while ago and chalked it up to another fad, or something fun if you are with friends/guild and they know you just want to DPS for fun. But for serious groups, as I've mentioned before, I'd rather either 1) solo heal and get another DPS, or 2) log on my Coercer and let the other healer solo heal.DPS rotation for solo spec is really pretty easy, the difficulty is in getting a second set of gear for DPS. Work on getting your T2 or even T3 shard armor suit, but the tank suit that Templars are allowed to wear, it will bring your melee through the roof. Work on the Thex Mallet, it is almost perfect in terms of delay versus your spell cast times, and that melee/spell/spell/melee rhythym is where a ton of your DPS comes from. Try and get items that have STR and INT, and spell crit, reuse, spell damage, etc etc. It's hard as you will either see STR/melee type items OR INT/spell type items. I think overall most of my armor has STR/melee type stuff and my jewelery has INT/spell stuff, but once in a while you find something with both. Hint: Shadowknight stuff is superb for STR/INT and spell crit/damage if we can wear it.Other than that it's pretty much debuff, melee, DD, DD, melee, DD, DD, melee, etc etc. With max AA spec in DPS mobs will not stand more than 3 or 4 hits for solo or ^ mobs. ^^ mobs are easy as well. ^^^ mobs require a pre-repent on yourself and lots of debuffing/stuns/daze.

SpineDoc

06-24-2009, 02:39 PM

By the way some of us grandpas remember when there was no such thing as a spec, you were a healer and a healer only. We actually were very strong soloers, just slooooowww. Basically we healed the mob to death. Ahh those were some painful times, but overall I think the pre-DPS Everquest was a MUCH more fun game grouping, but less fun solo.True difficulties like ALWAYS running out of power so you had to learn to manage your power, Adds and roamers that truly had a chance to kill the group, True aggro management not based off of DPS without aggro meters, even the possibility of getting aggro through a heal. IMO these are what made grouping as a healer a specific challenge and in the end a rewarding feeling. Now it's just DPS and control effects where you just stand there cluelessly until the control effect wears off.<cite>Viethiel wrote:</cite><blockquote>However, have you ever tried to solo in a "healing" spec?! </blockquote>

Viethiel

06-26-2009, 08:20 AM

<cite>SpineDoc wrote:</cite><blockquote>By the way some of us grandpas remember when...</blockquote>Although I made my account back when EQ2 launched, I was quickly secuded by WoW when it came out. EQ2 had too many problems in the early days...but boy have I seen the light! EQ2 is by far a better over all game than WoW (now), in my opinion.Anyway, I just wanted to say SpineDoc, I do enjoy reading your threads - you seem very knowledgable and I appreciate you sharing your wisdom with the rest of us "newer" players. And the same holds true for the rest of you "grandpas" and "grandmas" out there that help us all learn to be better players through the sharing of your experiences!

Arielle Nightshade

06-26-2009, 09:25 PM

SpineDoc, sorry if this is a dumb question - you said "Arcane blocker if there are choker wearers in the group.." Why? I cant' think this one through (lol).My Templar is my 3rd healer alt, though. I'm moderately decent healing on this character, but your spell rotation ideas represent some very nice tweaks, and are appreciated.I remember the old Grandpa days you are talking about - when we were all level 50, and anything with power regen on it was the uberiest item on the server <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />. That was back when my Wood Elf Templar held her buckler backwards, presumeably cause she was blonde at the time <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

SpineDoc

06-27-2009, 11:25 AM

For some reason I can't remember the name of the spell, it's the arcane damage ward we have. It mitigates choker damage so is quite useful to spam if you have anyone with a choker in the group. I believe with the recast you can have it up like 1/3 or 1/2 of the time.

PeterJohn

06-29-2009, 04:34 PM

I thought choker damage was changed to direct damage such that it is not affected by wards or mitigation any more?

SpineDoc

06-29-2009, 09:35 PM

<cite>PeterJohn wrote:</cite><blockquote>I thought choker damage was changed to direct damage such that it is not affected by wards or mitigation any more?</blockquote>Wouldn't surprise me knowing SOE. Can anyone confirm this is the case?

Nalgia

07-02-2009, 02:26 PM

<cite>SpineDoc wrote:</cite><blockquote>For some reason I can't remember the name of the spell, it's the arcane damage ward we have. It mitigates choker damage so is quite useful to spam if you have anyone with a choker in the group. I believe with the recast you can have it up like 1/3 or 1/2 of the time.</blockquote>The spell name is : Shield of Faith IV and it mitigates arcane damage. Bloodthirsty Chocker was changed and has done Focus damage for the last half year or so. I cant find in which update it happened tho. Still there are arcane DoT:s and debuffs ingame to make Shield of Faith worth casting.

Arielle Nightshade

07-03-2009, 04:22 AM

Wardens (which is my main) have the Elemental version of this Arcane Ward - it doesnt' take very long to cast, and is well worth keeping cast and refreshed whenever available. I do it every fight...that habit causes me to cast Shield of Faith the same way, and I have never felt it was wasted effort.

Perrigrin

07-17-2009, 02:54 AM

I have much love for my AA mirror <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I have a pure healing spec, and a pure DPS spec, and switch quite frequently as I change my mind what I want to do for the day lol. Let me just say that my Swashbuckler alt would give her left leg to have the melee stats my templar has in her DPS spec. 125% double attack, 101% melee crit /faint.

Buckminster

08-17-2009, 05:58 PM

Regarding the choker: it is now arcane "focus" damage, and that means it can't be resisted or mitigated - but it can still be absorbed by a ward. That's why Shield of Faith, and the Troub arcane resist buff with the ward AA, prevents the majority of choker damage to those using it.