Templar (Defence / Dream) Build Guide (Ragnarok Required)

0 death, reflection build built around Icescale monster infrequents from Ragnarok and high amounts of damage avoidance and health.

Introduction

Zeal, Full of Righteous Fury
Mastery: Templar (Defence / Dream)
Build: Nigh unkillable damage reflector


Templars get excellent damage mitigation and reflection abilities from each of their respective masteries. My Templar is built around using the Icescale monster infrequents from the Ragnarok expansion for the chance to reflect massive amounts of damage back while also being nearly unkillable.

Reflection is vastly superior to the retaliation mechanic. Retaliation only works against melee attackers while reflection works against any source of damage. Melee, ranged, spell; it all gets applied. Also, it's important to note that the damage reflected is NOT the damage that you actually took. The full damage before any mitigation is applied. So dodged damage will be reflected. Enemies that resist the damage that inflict themselves will be more time consuming unless you have a way to reduce their resistances.

The Icescale monster infrequents grants projectile avoidance and gives a 15% chance to reflect a huge amount of damage (500% in legendary). Projectile avoidance seems to also affect enemy staff attacks. You'll want to have these pre-farmed, preferably with resists and / or health buffs.

My Templar was built with Atlantis masteries and skills but the expansion should not be required.

• Exceptional damage mitigation from skills and gear
  
• Good CC
  
• Barely ever needs to use either type of potion

• Damage outside of reflection can be so-so
  
• So unkillable at times that it can be a little ZZZ
  
• Dependent on particular gear

Required Skills

Battle Awareness


Battle Awareness will give you a bit more Defensive Ability to mitigate damage from melee attackers. It will give you an extra 180 DA at 16/16. Focus boosts your shield block chance, good to max for legendary but I'd make other skills a priority before then. Iron Will is a terrific synergy which gives you great stun resistance and reduces how long you are trapped, frozen, skill disrupted and pets mind controlled. Really helps against annoying foes. You only need 7/6 in the skill to get the cap (80%) in general practice, more points in the skill can help for times that enemies have skills that lower your resist I guess but that's not particularly often.


Armor Handling


Armor Handling boosts your Armor Absorption and reduces strength requirements for wearing armour and shields. Useful for equiping armour earlier and will allow you to wear your Icescale infrequents faster and free up points for health and / or dexterity if you wish.


Trance of Empathy


Trance of Empathy grants you 3 ~ 10% of Attack Damage Converted to Health and grants you 60% Damage Reflected at 12/12. Extra reflection to go along with your Icescale procs.


Lucid Dream


Lucid Dream is an excellent passive. The base skill boosts physical, electrical burn and vitality damage. Premonition boosts your Offensive and Defensive Ability by 111 at 6/6. Temporal Flux grants you extra speed, slow resistance and projectile avoidance.

The base skill can be left at one point until you've maxxed other important skills. You'll want to max Premonition and Temporal Flux quickly through. The extra OA / DA, speed and projectile avoidance are too good to pass up.


Phantom Strike


One of your charge type attack skills. Activating makes you vanish and moves you unseen towards the target and attacking in melee. Enemies reset when you vanish and will run back to their starting positions until you reappear. Additional points in the base skill increase total damage %. A single point in the base skill is all you need for the build to unlock the skill.

Its synergy skill Dream Stealer, on the other hand, should be maxxed quickly. The skill has a 360% attack arc, hits multiple targets, does damage, applies an energy leech and also stuns the targets. Extra points into the skill improves all the elements of the skill. Nice CC, damage and you almost will never have to use an energy potion either with this skill. You'll want a decent Offensive Ability through as it has a short cooldown and can miss. Spears work best with the skill I believe because of how much damage they do on single strikes.


Rally


Rally provides a decent immediate heal to you and any pets / players close enough to you. Rally needs points put into it occasionally as you level so as to keep the heal relevant.

The Inspiration synergy boosts your total speed by 10% and gives you extra energy regeneration. Drop one point into skill for the speed buff but no more as you don't really need the extra energy when you have Dream Stealer.

The Defiance synergy will boost you a short buff after using rally to elemental resistance and boost your damage reflected. Should be maxxed eventually but I'd put priority on others first.


Shield Charge


Your second charge type skill. Drop one point into the base skill and pump up its synergy skill Disruption. Good way to get into melee range of casters and archers quickly, hits multiple targets, short stun and skill disruption.


Shield Smash, Disable and Pulverise


This trio of passive skills should be maxxed out. When attacking with a shield equipped, you'll get the chance to trigger their effects (reduced defensive ability, slower attack and 3 target reduced OA / skill disruption respectively) and do some extra damage.


Colossus Form


Grow to a large size and provides you with some substantial buffs. Great one point wonder anti-boss skill. Downside is the long cooldown, the large size makes it harder to navigate and you can't enter caves and such.

Optional Skills

Concussive Blow


Adds a chance to stun with axe and mace. Obviously, if you're not using an axe or mace as your one hander the skill is useless. Skill isn't mandatory, more nice to have.


Batter


Batter requires shield to use and has a short cooldown. Does some damage and applies a slow. With a point in Rend Armour you'll be able to hit three targets in a 160 degree arc and reduce armour on enemies. With Rend Armour it is decent for dealing with groups.

I can't see a reason not to drop a single point into each skill to unlock it. Can be used while your other abilities are on cooldown. It won't make a big difference if you don't take it through.


Psionic Touch


Psionic Touch can serve as your main LMB attack. It boosts your total damage and adds vitality damage. Every hit of the skill builds builds a charge; the skill requires 3 charges to be ready. When you have enough charges, the next attack activates skill, gets the bonuses, and consumes all of the charges. The Psionic Burn synergy skill adds an electrical dot, a slowing effect and does bonus damage against demons.

Like Batter, there's no reason not to drop a single point into the two skills. If you want to be less reliant on reflection and do more damage yourself you may want to max both.


Adrenaline


The base Adrenaline skill has a 5% proc chance and boosts your health regeneration for a short duration. The Resilience synergy reduces Adrenaline cooldown. The Defensive Reaction synergy boosts your physical and bleeding damage and your total speed during Adrenaline effect.

A single point is all you'll ever need in the base skill. The health regeneration is quickly rendered obsolete in later difficulties. The two synergy skills would need to be maxxed; resilience so that the Adrenaline effect can be triggered more often and Defensive Reaction for the damage and speed buffs.


Quick Recovery


Good one point ability. Gives a nice boost to absorption and block for a limited time. Good when fighting crowds. Not really needed until legendary but you can drop a point into it if you want early.


Trance of Convalescence


Trance of Convalescence grants you health / energy regeneartion and damage absorption. As you can only have one trance up at one time it may seem weird to have both Trances but there are fights where the reflection from Empathy isn't as useful as Convalescence's absorption. If you don't have Atlantis then you'll have a lot of extra points to invest somewhere after all.


Distortion Field


Gives you a chance to proc a short term (15s) buff that applies damage absorption and physical damage retaliation. Proc rate is only 5% through. If you want you can drop 1 point into the skill and buff with +skill items.


Unyielding Phalanx


An Atlantis exclusive skill, Unyielding Phalanx summons a stationary line of warriors for a short time that fight anybody that comes within melee range for them. Extra points increase their health and summon duration time.

As the summons can't move positioning is key. Not useful against ranged enemies unless you drop them right under their feet or LOS them into a narrow corridor. When they can get at something, through, they put out some good damage.


Perfect Block


An Atlantis exclusive skill, Perfect Block grants you perfect damage immunity and movement speed buff. The buff lasts only 1.1 seconds through and you are also unable to attack or cast during it. Useful for emergencies (like avoiding Typhon's meteors) but you need to time it right. Honestly I mostly forgot I had the skill.


Dream Image


Summons a pet that looks like you for a short duration. Doesn't benefit from pet bonus gear from my understanding. Nothing outstanding but can provide an extra body for boss fights.

My Final Skill Trees

This is my final skill allocation. Maxxed out all important passives. 40/40 mastery points for more stats. A point in a few abilities to use as one point wonders. Haven't invested much of damage skills outside of some synergy skills for utility. Dream Image and Unyielding Phalanx for support.

Stats

If you have Atlantis, the extra mastery points give you:

• Defence mastery = +12 str, 16 dex, +400 health
  
• Dream mastery = +16 str, +14 int, +280 health, +64 energy

Health: Worth putting at least a few points into health to eat up blows when avoidance / mitigation fails. If you have +health % gear then you'll get even more benefit from each point.

Energy: None. Dream Stealer will supply all your energy needs and you can just buy more potions if required.

Strength: You need enough strength to equip your legendary Icescale infrequents. Legendary Icescale pieces require 639 strength to equip. Armour Handling at 6/6 gives -20% strength reduction letting you equip with only ~511.

Intellect: Not applicable to build.

Dexterity: Will help boost your Offensive and Defensive ability. You'll need a lot if you intend to use spears instead of swords / axes / maces. Good secondary stat to invest in.

Equipment

This is my final equipment loadout. Using three of four possible pieces of Icescale gear. Using Porphyrion's gauntlets as I found one with a nice fix. Everything socketed with resistance boosting charms / relics.

Lots of gear to give huge boost to health, cap avoid projectiles and damage mitigaiton. Zeno's Third Paradox used to boost health and avoidance via dodge attacks and avoid projectiles. Bronze Heart boosts health by a ton, boosts your DA and gives a +1 skill. Only thing it lacks is resistance buffs. Chiron's Loop boosts your DA, has dodge attacks, some resists and dex buff. Buffed green Tinkerer ring (Atlantis fix) with Demon's Blood.

Ichthian Spine with attack damage converted to health socketed with Anubis' Wrath for more adch. It also has some cold resist so helps there as well.

Lionheart provides me some resists, chance for damage reflection. +1 defence skill and buff proc chance on taking melee damage.

The legendaries have all been upgraded via Ragnarok's Legendary Craftmanship quest to add some additional resistances to them.


So for yourself you should have at least 3 of the Icescale infrequents on you at any time. Preferably you'll find some with useful fixes (Veteran's, any sort of resist buff, health, DA, etc.) After that, try to find some gear that boosts your survivability and covers any holes in your resists. You can also look for some more +skill gear to get to max ultimate levels or get some recharge so you can use Rally for health + buff more often.

A few random alternatives:
Rings: Apollo's Will (resists), Adroit Loop (OA/DA, dex, resists), +Str/Heal green with Demon's Blood, etc.
Amulet: Myrmidon's Pendant (Resists and projectile avoidance), Aphrodite's Favor, etc.
Shields: Unyielding Soldier's Will (dodge + DA), Athena's Mirrored Shield (reflection), green with reflection buff, etc.
Weapon: Anything with Attack Damage Converted to Health, something with +skill (ie: Scepter of the Shadow King), something with recharge reduction (Tyrfing), etc.

Leveling

Defence is slow to start with so start with Dream instead. One point into Psionic Touch for your LMB attack. At mastery level 4, unlock Phantom Strike, Trance of Empathy and Lucid Dream. Leave Phantom Strike and Lucid Dream at one point, put one point into Trance of Empathy on each level up.

At mastery level 10, pick up Premonition and Dream Stealer. Make Dream Stealer a priority to max, then Premonition.

At mastery 16, pick up Distort Reality for CC then at mastery 24 start maxxing Temporal Flux. At this point you might as well switch over to Defence mastery.

In Defence, one point into Battle Awareness and Batter. Put points into Armour Handling if you need to equip something earlier. Skip the Adrenaline tree for now, it needs a lot of points to be good. Unlock the shields skills and level up the tree. Get Shield Charge, max Iron Will, grab Colossus Form, add points to Rally tree as needed, etc.

Q&A

If you have any queries about the build leave a comment and I will respond when I have time.

[chris.ferrantegerard]

@George Icescale makes a huge impact as it has reflects a huge % of damage (and gives you huge mitigation against ranged attacks). Templar has good built in reflection from skills but it's not overwhelming compared to Icescale. So it's a lot better if you have the Icescale farmed with another character and gear from stash as that what makes the build truly shine (excellent defense combined with huge reflection).

TQ is quite challenging for first playthrough in general through. Plenty of enemies and bosses can destroy you if you don't know how to counter them so even with top tier build Hardcore is quite difficult except for Veterans.

[George]

I would like to ask: at which point of the game will this build become viable? I'm new to the game and trying this build. I'm still only on normal difficulty and already finish killing Chronos but still died quite often, and the reflected damage is nowhere enough to kill enemy, Or do I really have to get the Icescale armor for the build to work?

[𝐀𝐍𝕘𝑒𝕃คʎคW☯]

💕💜🩷

[chris.ferrantegerard]

@Naxos84 It's for the Icescale Monster Infrequents, which are exclusive to one zone in Ragnarok DLC. Overall likely possible to play a lesser reflection build without them, you have some built in skills and a few items provide some reflection. Icescale is just very powerful for the build, with a couple of pieces you have a good chance to do massive reflection damage.

[Naxos84]

Why does this build need ragnarok? Is it because of some item?

[WhyNotZoidberg]

I'd like to mention: Unless an enemy survives the attack of dream stealer, you leech zero energy. In the early stage of the game, it works as intended for heroes and bosses, but against normal energy enemies, you'll almost 100% of all time will instakill them and get no energy back.

[chris.ferrantegerard]

@Čmaroljub Grozni 1 mastery, 1 Trance and 1 Dream Stealer should be fine. Usually always good to drop at least one point into Mastery level per level up, you just should be leveling these before leveling other skills. Dream Stealer will make Phantom Strike more effective for dealing with crowds.

[Čmaroljub Grozni]

''Make Dream Stealer a priority to max, then Premonition'' when you say priority, do you mean that we should drop putting points into mastery until these are maxed out? I'm currently going 1 mastery, 1 Trance and 1 Dream Stealer

[chris.ferrantegerard]

@eqthedr I believe the ring gives level 11 Heat Shield so it's a very strong item granted skill.

[CygGame]

@chris.ferrantegerard, correct. I don't know what level heat shield it provides, but makes very noticeable difference on legendary.