To continue on my thoughts about the information coming out of the Sentinel’s Fate beta I thought I’d spend some time talking about the Templar AA abilities. I was generally pleased with the cleric upgrades so I suppose it is not too shocking to find out that I’m feeling the same way about the Templar specific abilities. They’re not earth shattering or game changing but there is something there that will make my job go a bit smoother. Lets get to it!
Divine Reckoning – Increases the reuse speed of hostile spells
There is nothing wrong with this ability right here. It makes soloing easier, helps us pull some more DPS on a raid and isn’t wrapped up in a long line of abilities you don’t want. I think this is a nice boon to the DPS minded templar. That isn’t me but I totally see the value and this will go into my soloing spec.
Holy Protector – Adds a magical damage reduction to holy armor
The way this reads is that it just reduces damage by a percentage. It doesn’t sound like mitigation increase. In either case this is awesome. Take one of our best buffs and make it better? Absolutely fantastic! Buffing is one of my core areas of concern and this addresses it. This will probably be a no doubt pick up for all templars.
Divine Meditation – Increases the healing amount of Focused Intervention and reduces its power cost
Focused intervention is one of our less than useful spells. It is basically a reactive that stops the templar from moving, healing, or doing anything for that matter. I like that SOE is trying to improve it but the way to do that would be to remove the stun effect. The power cost on the spell is beyond tiny as it is so reducing that doesn’t help much. The healing bonuses aren’t really enough to make it something I’d use in any case other than when I have nothing left.
Atonement – Increases the base ward amount of Repent
I’ve made it no secret that I think repent is one of the best spells templars have ever received. Wards are awesome and this ability is awesome as well! I also like the fact that it says “and its upgrades.” That gives me hope that this spell might not be a one off.
Cleansing the Soul – Improves the casting and reuse times of cure curse
All I can say is “uh oh.” I’m glad that this is an improvement. I’m not glad that this likely means I’ll be curing a lot of curses. I know we have to add complexity to MMOs but part of me really misses the old days where I just healed! Anyway, good upgrade!
Soul Corruption – Adds an additional intelligence debuff to the smite corruption line of spells
As you know I always try to be a kind and supportive player and not one of those rude people who say terrible things about developers! This is the type of AA ability that only a mother could love. So perhaps if you’re fighting a mage mob and you could debuff a massive amount of intelligence this would be marginally useful but I don’t know how abilities like this are made. It might make a difference it critical mitigation but I doubt it would be statistically noticeable. It would be more fair to new players to just leave an empty spot so that they don’t accidentally spend the AA on this!
True Faith – Reduces all damage to target by 25%. On any successful combat or spell attack the target will proc a taunt. 20 second duration with a 5 minute recast
This is an awesome ability. The recast is a bit long for my tastes but it still hits the core of what I do: keeping the main tank alive. I like that it is a straight up huge damage reduction that I can give to a target of my choice. Great benefit to the templar class. Thank you to whoever came up with this one.
All characters are © 2007 - 2010