ESO: Templar as a Healer / Support + DPS - Nightblade class, tips, skills ESO guide, tips

Templar as a Healer / Support + DPS: General information, Active skills - the first action bar, the second action bar, Skill explanation, How to build a Templar - healer / support, Can you use this build as a DPS?

Last update: 07 July 2020

This page of our guide to The Elder Scrolls Online has a recommended build for the Templar class. It combines Healer, Support and DPS roles. Therefore, this Templar build is capable of healing and supporting allies as well as dealing massive damage. We have prepared general information about this character build and listed the most useful skills.

General information
Active skills - the first action bar
Active skills - the second action bar
Skill explanation
How to build a Templar - healer / support
Can you use this build as a DPS?

General information

The Templar, thanks to his Restoring Light skill line, is an ideal choice for a healer role. All the abilities, both active and passive ones, are designed to support either yourself, or your party, which, with a little bit of experience and time spent in the game, should be sufficient to allow you to keep your teammates alive and well. Your primary "ability kit" and the action bar mostly used during the fights, would be almost entirely composed of skills from the Restoring Light skill line - the only thing that you should swap out is the ultimate (for reasons mentioned in the previous section), which should be replaced by the Dawn's Wrath one, Nova.

The second action bar can be planned according to your own whim - depending on a number of conditions. You can either opt to build it in a way so you can dish out some serious damage (which will cause you to attract some unnecessary attention from the enemies, leaving you with less time to heal your teammates), or, besides healing, you want to bring your own crowd control into a fight. This section assumes the second option - healing + crowd control, but, as always, you can (and should) modify it, to suit your needs.

Additionally, if you want, you can use the abilities from the Restoration Staff skill line, which, unfortunately, require you to spend some additional skillpoints into that tree and enforce you to use a Restoration Staff as a weapon. However, Templar's abilities from the Restoring Light tree are more than enough for your role, so in this section the Restoration Staff 's abilities (active ones) are skipped.

Still, you can make a good use of the passive abilities from that skill tree, so it would be beneficial for you to develop them (all you have to do is to have at least one active ability from that skill line on your action bar and use a Restoration Staff weapon while gaining experience - you can advance through it extremely quickly while playing as a healer in a party).

As a healer, your primary task is to keep your teammates alive, while simultaneously avoiding the enemy's attacks (the rest of your party should be able to get rid of any foes pursing you). As far as stats go, you should invest the most in your magicka pool, to be able to use your spells constantly. You should also spend some points in health, so those nasty, hard-hitting enemies won't be able to decimate you in seconds. Stamina can be completely ignored, as you won't be using any skills requiring that supply - if you want, you can still add some points in it, to be able to use your dodge more often. A recommended stat distribution is as follows : Magicka 30, Health 15, Stamina 5. You can reverse the distribution between magicka and health, if you are certain that you have plenty of it (investing 30 points in Health and 15 in Magicka).

As far as armor goes, the best choice would be the cloth armor (Light Armor), because you need its passive abilities, which will boost your magicka regeneration considerably. The weapon choice, as you won't be using any ability from the Restoration Staff skill line, is purely a personal preference (like a one-handed weapon + shield, gaining a slight boost into your armor stat), but you should use a Restoration Staff weapon (at least until you develop the corresponding skill line), to gain access to its passive abilities.

The race choice is, naturally, unrestricted, but this guide assumes that you will be playing a High Elf, given his two passive, racial abilities (Spellcharge and Gift of Magnus), which boost your magicka pool (the former) and its regeneration during a fight (the latter). A Breton would be a fine choice, too, thanks to his Gift of Magnus (the same as before, increasing magicka pool) and Magicka Mastery (decreased cost of magicka-based abilities) skills.

General information
Active skills - the first action bar
Active skills - the second action bar
Skill explanation
How to build a Templar - healer / support
Can you use this build as a DPS?

Active skills - the first action bar

Icon	Ability name (with a recommended morph)
	Nova (ultimate) morphed into Solar Disturbance
	Healing Ritual morphed into Lingering Ritual
	Rushed Ceremony morphed into Breath of Life
	Restoring Aura morphed into Repentance
	Cleansing Ritual morphed into Purifying Ritual
	Rune Focus morphed into Channeled Focus

Active skills - the second action bar

Icon	Ability name (with a recommended morph)
	Radial Sweep (ultimate) morphed into Empowering Sweep
	Spear Shards morphed into Blazing Spear
	Blinding Light morphed into Blinding Flames
	Backlash morphed into Purifying Light
	Eclipse morphed into Total Dark
	Sun Fire morphed into Reflective Light

Additionally, you must invest into those passive abilities (derived from the High Elf, Templar, Restoration Staff and Light Armor skill lines):

Spellcharge (High Elf skill line) - increased magicka regeneration.
Gift of Magnus (High Elf skill line) - increased magicka pool.
Evocation (Light Armor skill line) - decreased magicka cost of abilities for every piece of Light Armor you wear.
Recovery (Light Armor skill line) - increased magicka regeneration for every piece of Light Armor you wear.
Spell Warding (Light Armor skill line) - increased magic resistance for every piece of Light Armor you wear.
Mending (Templar skill line)
Light Weaver (Templar skill line)
Focused Healing (Templar skill line)
Restoration Master (Restoration Staff skill line) - increases the amount of healing.
Restoration Expert (Restoration Staff skill line)

If you want to use some offensive abilities as, invest in the below passive abilities (from the Light Armor skill line):

Prodigy - you get an additional 5% critical chance from your spells, as long as you have at least 5 pieces of Light Armor equipped.
Concentration - your spells ignore 3% of the enemy's magic resistance for every piece of Light Armor you wear.

Skill explanation

The first set of abilities should be obvious - it's entirely composed of abilities that support and heal (besides the ultimate, which inflict damage and weakens the enemies) yourself and your teammates. All of those abilities, as well as their purpose, was explained in the previous section, so there's no point in doing it again.

The second set of abilities are the ones giving you crowd control to some extent, which will help you get some of the pursuing foes off your tail. Blazing Shards, besides the obvious damaging part, allows your team to stun your enemies (a synergy activation is required to do so, unfortunately), which comes in handy when your team has a hard time controlling the "flow" of enemies. Blinding Light, morphed into Blinding Flames, will blind the enemies, greatly decreasing their chance to hit, Eclipse (morphed into Total Dark) will make one ally immune to single-target spells aimed at him (bouncing them off at the attacker, and, when the effect ends, weakening him) and Sun Fire (morphed into Reflective Light) will damage and Snare enemies, decreasing their move speed.

Backlash (morphed into Purifying Light) gives yet another healing at your disposal, and the ultimate, Radial Sweep (morphed into Empowering Sweep) will allow you to inflict damage on your foes, while simultaneously increasing your armor. However, you should avoid using this ultimate if you're able to - Nova (from the first set) is far better, does more damage and allows you to Snare enemies.

As you can see, this build focuses primarily on the purpose of healing, supporting and basically keeping your team in a fine shape. With the addition of crowd control abilities, it also allows you to ease your teammate's jobs, by keeping the enemies at bay. You should opt to use the first set of abilities majority of times, switching to the second one whenever your team do not require healing.

How to build a Templar - healer / support

Besides abilities, you should also take care of some minor, as some would think, stuff:

A recommended stat distribution is as follows: 30 points to Magicka, 15 to Health, 5 to Stamina. You can reverse the distribution between health and magicka (investing 30 points in Health and 15 in Magicka), if you think that you don't need as much.
You should wear Light Armor only - it doesn't offer as much armor as a Heavy (or even Medium) armor, but, given your role, you won't be (at least you shouldn't be, if you're doing everything correctly) on the frontlines, meaning that you won't be hit as much. The Light Armor offers you a set of passive abilities, giving you boosts to magicka and spell damage.
Enchant your armor in a way to suit your needs (or complement your lacking stats) - pieces of armor should be provided with a Health stat, or, if you really need it, with Stamina, because you should have plenty of Magicka already. As far as jewelry goes, you should also enchant it to suit your needs - if you feel that you lack in your stamina/health/magicka regeneration, throw that in. You can also (or rather you should) invest in a Reduced Magicka cost of abilities.
Try to "fight" with a Restoration Staff - a one-handed weapon and a shield offer some bonus armor, but you will need a few of the Restoration Staff skill line passive abilities.
Creating the armor on your own (or buying it from someone), try to accumulate some of the more useful traits, like (in case of armor pieces) Impenetrable (resistance to critical hits) or Reinforced (increased item armor value). As far as weapons go, you should go for Precise (increased chance for a critical hit), Defending (increase in your total armor and magic resistance) or Sharpened (increased armor and magic penetration).

Additionally, here are some tips on how to play a healer:

Don't ever go on the frontlines - given the fact, that you sacrifice defensive capabilities for your healing and supporting ones (and damage dealing, to some extent), you are probably the most squishy target in your party. A dead healer is a useless healer. Let someone else (a tank, preferably) get between the enemies first, so he/she will aggro them, keeping their attention off from you.
Adapt your position according to the situation on the battlefield. A great deal of enemies have some AoE attacks at their disposal, and by standing in the wrong place, you will take unnecessary damage all the time, making your job a lot more difficult. Obviously, not all attacks can be avoided.
Whenever some enemy "breaks his leash" and starts chasing you (which will happen quite frequently), use your crowd control abilities (especially Blazing Spear) to slow them down / make their pursuit impossible, allowing your team to get their attention again. There's hardly any point in engaging an enemy and focus your attention onto him - by doing so, there's a chance that you won't be able to notice a teammate in trouble and someone can die.

Can you use this build as a DPS?

The answer to this question is yes. It is possible to use this build as a Ranged DPS (a role which sole purpose it to deal damage from a distance). The only difference is that you will be mostly using your second set of skills - healing abilities will come in handy to support a main healer in a party, or to heal yourself. Also, you can swap the healing abilities with those coming from the Aedric Spear tree, however, they require (at least most of them) attacking from a melee range, which will put you out in danger. Besides, the abilities from the Dawn's Wrath deal sufficient amount of damage.

The only difference to the pure healer build, is swapping out Spear Shards ability with Solar Flare (morphed into Solar Barrage). Besides team-oriented play, this build works perfectly while playing solo - you won't be the most tank target for your enemies, but you will deal so much damage, that most of your foes won't even be able to harm you. Even if something goes wrong, you can always heal yourself. In case of a solo play, use one-handed weapon + shield (and a Restoring Staff when swapping to healing set of skills) and invest most of your points in health (30-35 Health, 5 to Stamina, rest to Magicka, respectively).

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