Dual totem searing bond optim question

Hi there,

I have my first templar currently lvl 56 in ambush, act 2 merciless, with some very crapy stuff, but with Searing Bond (OMFG it's too OP, nerf it!) he does well :). I have currently 14 points left to put in my tree and I'm wondering where I should go next.



Currently 2k life, 470 mana, 2.7k dps on SB.

I was wondering if I should go first for life and life regen in marauder area, up to Warrior's Blood (example ongoing tree), or go for Iron skin, thick skin and Growth and decay through the circle of life (example ongoing tree).

BUT I've just dropped Cloak of Defiance, which could add a lot to my survivability, so I could as well go for EB. And then there are still two routes for EB, either north with not much to get on the road except the Deep Thoughts cluster and maybe Hex Master, or through the Witch start where I could later get some ok life nodes, and good ES bonus (ie. mana). And then I would eventually go back to either of the two first routes.

As I'm not a caster specialist, I'm more a ranger guy, any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks :)

edit: now in mid act 2, and searing is starting to become weak since I haven't invested in related nodes for a while. As it has often been noted, it doesn't do much damage for late merciless so I may end up dropping it eventually. I more or less planed for this before CoD drop, by probably going for a RF templar (I would need rise of the phoenix though), but now I don't know anymore xD

True, but a tad more expensive, but there's also good stuff on the road with the life/mana nodes, clear mind and written in blood cluster.

I haven't played my templar in the last two days, still 17 points to spend.

Where is the problem? Is this because the pun I put in parenthesis? if so yes, it's just here because of all the ruckus there was at the start of ambush/invasion. I don't see any problem in this skill. As it has very few support, it can't scale well late game so it's fine as it is. It gives us a nice leveling tool, just like ST or IF with facebreaker.