Is Templar weak early game?

From 1-20 is it just Templar or all the hybrid class compare to Marau,Ranger and Witch weak early game?
I find it very hard cos I have to use both Intel and Str gem.

Erm.. no.

Actually Templar is probably the strongest early game class. That's what I keep hearing (from Kripparian for instance, if you're familiar with this guy).

I just recently started one myself, after playing 7 witches (round about) and I went life stuff, equipped a 2h weapon and LS/Sweeped my way through normal easier than all my witches could have done. Even though they all got quite decent early leveling gear (my templar did not).

Basically I was just running into a pack - no matter how big - and sweeping once. Resulting in a big heap of dead bodies. So yeah, no kiting, no dodging, just bashing. I wouldn't call that weak :>

Personally, early on I'd rank the classes by survivability, assuming a sane early build as: Marauder>Templar>Duelist>Shadow>Witch>Ranger and there's really not much separating adjacent pairs. Later on its far more of a build determined thing than a class determined one, although there is little doubt that Duelist and Shadow seem to lose a lot of ground in the ranking regardless of build (just look at the hardcore league ladder for proof).

Honestly if you're having serious trouble surviving as a Templar under level 20, you're doing something wrong.

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Omnivore61 wrote:

Personally, early on I'd rank the classes by survivability, assuming a sane early build as: Marauder>Templar>Duelist>Shadow>Witch>Ranger and there's really not much separating adjacent pairs. Later on its far more of a build determined thing than a class determined one, although there is little doubt that Duelist and Shadow seem to lose a lot of ground in the ranking regardless of build (just look at the hardcore league ladder for proof).

Honestly if you're having serious trouble surviving as a Templar under level 20, you're doing something wrong.

On survivability alone I'd rank mara slightly ahead of templar early on just because of the early life/regen nodes. Lightning Strike with Weapon Elemental Damage and a 2H weapon is so strong with Templar Catalyse passive- and Resolute Technique is still very close- I'd rank it higher than mara overall for early game TBH.

Oh yeah I just switched to LS and it's like a whole new world. I'm one shoting almost everything now.

Something is rotten in the state of Wraeclast.

Templar is the weakest. Basically any melee/short range class is very weak during the first 20 or so levels, and I tried many guides and trees... With Templar, Marauder, and Duelist, I have been dying regularly as soon as Fetid Pool.

For various reasons, I don't play Scion, so I'm only left with Ranger, Shadow, and Witch. Of those, Witch (I predominantly go Arc/Tendrils way, so lightning) is the only one where I consistently manage to die for the first time somewhere during Act 4. Ranger starts dying often in Act 3. And Shadow has his first death during Act 2 hunts.

So, if you are a moving kind of player, or want a great map cleaning build, I suggest go in this order:

Lightning Witch, Ballista Ranger (just spawn ballistas, run around, and occasionally send some arrows of your own. ), Gyre Shadow (Go Vaal on this one), (maybe Scion, but I just don't like the char model, so I won't ever play, so it can place anywhere towards the end of this list). Then Marauder, Duelist, and I will personally never try Templar again (weak as s*** and has boring lines).

If you're dying on any character prior to act V to anything other than not dodging Izaro slams or wandering into rare spawned ground effects then its a build and/or player skill issue above all else. Templar leveling can be a bit of a pain, glacial hammer on the beach is doable but slow, rolling magma is technically the fastest levelling skill but feels absolutely awful to play.

At least part of the issue is the builds you use, arc and tendrils both are honestly just terrible in acts. Arc is so far past its heyday as to be basically unusable without a second dedicated single target damage set up to deal with rares and bosses and is just not that good at dealing with packs due to hitting a limited number of targets instead of being properly AOE. Lightning tendrils requires survivability and recovery investments that you cannot make and still deal reasonable damage in the acts and suffers from a small point blank aoe making it clear very slowly.

My advice for not dying on templar is to play spark for the first few levels, its less miserable to play than rolling magma and still does enough damage to level fairly fast. Once you get your first lab finished it should be incredibly easy as templar has two ascendancies that functionally trivialize the story content. Hierophant arcane blessing provides an extra links worth of damage at a time where 4 links are rare and guardian's sentinel of radiance can solo the entire campaign.