Anyone playing staff templar?

Build based around 2h phys dmg, stun and crits with staves, would that be viable?

i wanted to do this.... make a leap slam / sweep with as much increased area of effect as possible.
PROS
1. staff looks coolest with this
2. u get a block chance with a two-hander
3. allot of Staff specific are rlly good and close to templar's start area
CONS (Or one major Con is)
Its hard to actually get a staff with bonus Physical DMG and not spell (or specific elemental) and/or Weapon elemental DMG mods

so all in all .... mace just works better


something like

goes a long way

I am playing this build. I can write up more advice (lvl 68 now, and doing... ok), but my feeling is that you are stretched too thin if you are using a melee skill (I am using ground slam and glacial hammer). Not only do you need tons of life nodes, but you also need AR, crit nodes, and if you use voll's like I did, a few power nodes and +mana nodes. You should also plan on getting +AR on most all of your equipment to make it work.

Part of my current problem is lack of a 5L or 6L... However, in my opinion, if you're going to go crit, you should just use spells.

Yes, spells have a lower base chance of crits, but keep in mind that they do not rely on AR. Enemies can evade not only your first attack, but also the critical strike. That means, on a per enemy basis, if you have (an otherwise respectable) 86% chance to hit, go ahead and multiply your crit chance by 86% for the first hit, and then by another 86% on the critical strike. That means your crit chance is 74% of what it says on the char screen. That alone takes the 6.5% base from your staff down to 4.8%, a lot closer to most spells--never mind the additional disadvantage that your attacks can miss. (If you are using a projectile skill, you can compensate with projectile weakness, but that won't work for a high physical damage melee build.)

Furthermore, maybe in the dev's mind to perhaps compensate for the lower crit chance of most spells, the crit nodes for spells in the templar and witch areas have pretty high percentages per point: including 20, 30, 60. This alone would make up a lot of difference between the base crit chance of a spell and a staff.

Using spells with wands means is much easier to get high crit chance, since you don't need to design your build around voll's protector to get power charges. Voll's is fun, but it is effectively a dead item spot: low armor, low ES, no life, and no resists on a body armor(!).

Finally, crits work best with elemental damage: all of the effects are more useful and interesting than the additional damage that comes with physical damage. That means you should look for skills with high elemental damage, which again points you towards spells.



For reference, here is my current build, but I think I will soon massively respec out of the marauder start to get over to the shadow area:



I run hatred and either purity or determination.

Let's just go through a few skills that I thought about using:

First, some good news: a crit build does work quite well with glacial hammer. Perma-freeze on rare bosses is nice. However, you will need to get up close and personal, and that can be dangerous if you get unlucky and don't freeze in the first couple hits. I would like to eventually couple this with elemental proliferation to keep me safer while suicidally targeting a boss in the middle of a pack.

A crit build would seem to work well on lightning strike: its range allows you to be a little squishy. However, with the two easily accessible lightning nodes that give a total of 20% chance to shock without needing to crit(!), the additional nodes required to keep AR and crit chance up just don't look as compelling.

A crit build actually synergizes with ground slam decently well: the goal being that in addition to being able to stun, you can freeze (or add fire damage while they just sit there, permastunned). The problem is primarily that with ground slam (exacerbated by the huge desync we've been seeing lately), you really only have 1-2 chances to stun or freeze before the mob is on you due to ground slam's shorter range.

Overall, in my opinion, for ground slam and lightning strike, the skills required to keep a crit chance high is just not worth it compared to the ease of resolute technique.

I haven't experimented with other skills.