I think Templar shield builds are underpowered. Tell me why I'm wrong.

1H/Mace Templar. Gear decent, not great, but not garbage. 1.8k hp, 42% phys reduction, maxed resists, 43% block.

http://tinyurl.com/9zaju3w



Questions:

1. Looking at my build, I thought I had a balanced mix of elemental damage, shield nodes, resists, life nodes, and melee damage nodes. Yet at level 58 now, my damage is drastically substandard, I'm not really as tanky as I expected to be with the gear and shield/life nodes that I have. What are some flaws you see in the build that would cause what I think is flat out weakness?

2. I'm new and I mostly solo, so the fact that I was steamrolling mobs and not really having trouble killing anything but Vaal lead me to think I was pretty solid. Yet, most characters at roughly my level do twice the damage with twice the survivability and I haven't pinpointed exactly why. Given my build and gear, is it just a flaw in my choices, or is there some fundamental weakness in the tree I'm not aware of?

3. General suggestions? First character.

No, they are not underpowered. A few things. Use Ironwill on molten shell. You are missing out on over 40% total damage there, also drop leap slam and use ground slam. Leap slam may seem awesome because its the new FOTM, but remember that it PUTS you next to the enemies. Which yea is cool for molten shell, but it cannot be your main damage. Unless you have it on a 5link with +radius, concentrate, culling strike ect. It will not do its peak damage.

It sounds you did not put enough focus into your main attacks or stats and tried to be an everyman. Which does not work all that well in this game. Focus bro. Focus.

Leap slam is ok for aoe, especially with molten shell (disagree with previous post).

Problems :
No single target attack, use heavy strike, glacial hammer or infernal blow. (heavy strike better for your build)
Life on hit doesn't work on molten shell
Added chaos damage is useless on molten shell
Some useless nodes in your tree, but it's not too bad.
Reduced mana shouldn't be necessary on all your skills, put some better supports instead for low cost skills.

i feel the same way...heres what im working with:


thats my build and heres my gear:



currently sitting at ~37% reduction 47% base shield block 1.2k hp 1.1k ES

im debating dropping some of my armor+es gear for pure armor gear for survability

And you both haven't enough hp, especially nslasha.

Energy shield builds aren't tanky, since energy shield regens only out of combat (although ghost reaver changes that a bit if you actually take it)

Your character is built defensively, but not all-out defensively. You could probably have better-spent passives (more efficient), and certainly gear can always be improved.

For one handed builds that do deal reasonable amounts of elemntal damage, I highly recommend finding some gloves with good added physical damage (dex and accuracy and attack speed helps too), as well as rings with the same thing. I'm not sure if you do this, but you can and should try using an aura or two as well, such as hatred, wrath or anger to buff damage more, or discipline or grace for more defense (tempest shield is too expensive, I wouldn't recommend it for most). Since you're a templar using inner force passives with the auras can be done easily as well (if you want to invest the points into it)


added chaos damage seems rather inefficient/useless to put on molten shell. Life gain on hit doesn't work with it as far as I know. For molten shell you'd want to add increased area of effect, and chance to ignite. Optionally concentrate effect as well.

For your attack I'd recommend added fire damage, elemental weapon damage, and added physical damage. Experiment to see which ones do the most damage. Oftentimes for 1 handed builds I find that elemental weapon damage will give the most extra damage as long as the character is built "right" (lots of elemental damage).


A belt with +80 or 90 health will give far far more health than Meginord's girdle is giving you. You'll lose some damage, but that could be regained by a +20-30% weapon elemental damage mod. Meginord's girdle is terribly overrated. It's useful for low level builds and facebreaker, but that's it.

Thanks for the replies. I knew if I worded it like that I'd get somebody to shine some light on why I felt so weak. But yeah, there was no pre-play theorycrafting or build planning, just flat out intuitive picks based on what I found in game, what I learned along the way, and what advice I could get from people in-game that kick it in General.

As for my picks: I went with Leap Slam because pre-patch nobody used it, it was Ground Slam or nothing, so I wanted to try something a bit different, and so instead of swapping it out when I found out it was a little shitty I decided to just tailor my gameplay around it, which actually works pretty well. While the DPS is definitely way, way low on it, I like the way it works with Molten Shell and with the speed buff it just feels really fluid; I think once I can respec a bit and pick up a better mace it'll be good money.

- Thanks for the tip on Iron Will.

- My HP rarely drops, and until now I thought it was because LoH actually worked with Molten. I don't even use Mark in every engagement and I never really focused on leech, yet my HP rarely dips below half, so i guess I can't really explain that.

-Yeah, definitely going to swap that chaos gem around, among other things. Realized shortly after posting this thread that I hadn't really optimized my character for 20ish levels.

Thanks for all ya'lls tips, will definitely be spending a little time working them into that build. It seems the biggest mistake I made was not researching my gem synergies, and trying to do too much without really specializing. Thus, kind of shitty. But yeah, thanks again.

Just a little question what is you DPS exactly? I'm just curious because i have a lvl 59 templar where i'm triing to focus on all elements at the same time (i know he would be stronger if i would only focus on one - BUT this is a little experiment where i wanted to know if a really general character can be good in the end game (as in all elements are identically buffed and for physical nodes i took only general melee damage and 1-handed damage, while my stats allow me to use most 1-handed weapons in the game)).

EDIT: looking at your skill tree: why do you have the 2 spell damage nodes? (yes molten shell is a spell, but TBH 2 nodes for only 1 skill is not worth it) and you could refund 4 +10 str nodes -> if you refund 3 of them you could get to heart of the gladiator (thus you would end up with far more str and additional life).

I personaly would refund all those 6 nodes i mentioned and go for heart of the gladiator and take the catalyse circle or any physical damage nodes of your choise ;) - you have more strenght, more life, more damage on all attacks except molten shell

EIT2: and i also agree with the above that infernal blow would work nicely with your fire and elemental passives.

Your largest single problem is you're trying to build a hybrid. Frankly, you could stop right there and ignore the rest of what I have to say. As a first character, hybrids are far too complicated. You have too many mana and spell bonuses. If you're going to be melee, focus in on melee.

I agree with Xapti regarding using energy shield for tanking. If you actually want to tank: armour reduces damage and improves the value of your regen, while ES only provides buffer (doesn't help your healing at all). Until GGG add the "ES return on block" mechanic, ES has poor tanking value. Should be great in a high dps build, though.

I notice you haven't really maxed out either armour/endurance or shield passives. Because of the way they scale, it's really very beneficial to focus on one or the other.

Value of 1% block rises sharply as you add more block. So maybe if you were focusing on shield for defense you could get Shield Mastery from the mara area.

Value of armour rises sharply as you add more endurance charges. Also, physi DR builds benefit a huge amount from percent life regen; don't skip over troll's blood lightly. That whole northern mara start area should be very attractive to any tank-templar wearing pure armour. Consider picking it all up - I skipped only diamond skin/flask life nodes.

I am a staff templar (~25% block), not shield block. But it plays similarly and the build priorities are very similar to your build. I use my first 61 points like this and wear str-aligned armour like you, but with no shield.

There are a lot of parallels between my character and yours, do please give it a look.

Your flasks: I do love the saturated/iron skin combo. It's very nice to have one of those equipped at all times. But you NEED a bubbling or seething flask for emergencies.