#templaring

Mekmek's first impressions:

Vision Stigmas Require 6 stigma combination to open each. Cool concept, by the sounds of it anyway, not sure what exactly this means but if it means I need 6 stigma's to get 1 of these skills would force us into a particular skill would mean more specialized stigma builds, fewer "all round" type of stigma builds, but knowing us we'll end up with a full DPS stigma tree for everything anyway.

 Blood Punishment:

Deal 1257 Physical Damage on a target and drains 50% of the damage as HP. 30sec CD. Sounded so good up until it said 30 seconds CD, would be very effective however, essentially trading HP and getting the better trade off.

 Shield of Vengeance:

For 10sec. creates a shield that reflects 1 skill back at the target. 3min CD. "Reflects" now does this mean like +168 reflect damage or literally sends back a proportion of taken damage back at them, furthermore do we take damage and if so how much is reduced on the reflect? More questions than answers.

 Standing Shield:

For 10sec. Creates a shield that blocks 80& of all damage up to 50,000. Speed is drastically reduced. 3min CD Sounds very cool, it's what Emp Prov wanted to do but couldn't quite manage to do imo, 50,000 damage sounds pretty ridiculous which probably means they're throwing us a hard ball in PvE at 5.0. Can't really see too much practical use of this in PvP primarily because of the "drastically reduced movement speed".

Stigmas 6 Slots (3 normal, 2 greater, 1 gold)

Normal Stigmas:

Punishment, Aether Armor, Inquisitor's Blow, Holy Shield, Incite Rage, Siege Breaker, Punishing Thrust, Barricade of Steel, Divine Fury.

Greater Stigmas:

Magic Smash, Prayer of Victory, Punishing Wave, Divine Justice, Shield of Faith, Prayer of Resilience

Superb Stigmas:

Empyrean Providence, Shield Burst.

Normal stigmas can be equipped in any slot (max 6), greater stigmas can be equipped in greater/superb slot (max 3), superb stigmas can be equipped in superb slot (max 1) Stimga to Skillbook

lvl. 10lvl. 16lvl. 25lvl. 34lvl. 37lvl. 37 lvl. 50lvl. 60

Very cool list to see here, both pulls being made to skills rather than stigma's is a very cool thing to have happen to us, allows us a HUGE amount of play ability with our stigma's, can't see a downside to any of the stigma's here, almost all of them are used frequently, only disappointing to not see AA being there, but apart from that VERY happy to see this change. Deleted Skills

Shield Defense, Weakening Severe Blow, Divine Chastisement(Elyos get Asmo version), Enemy Placement, Provoking Shield Counter, Provoking Severe Blow, Shining Slash, Steel Wall Defense, Blunting Severe Blow, Cry of Ridicule, Shield Retribution(Elyos get Slash Artery), Power of Restoration, Terrible Howl, Righteous Punishment(Asmos get Holy Punishment), Threatening Taunt, Restoration Sacrifice, Morale Wave.

(This is in order) Saw it coming, nobody really used it so not really surprised, Elyos get asmo version? What?, can't remember this skill, I hope we get a replacement on Shining Slash, Pretty underused utility skill sad to see it go, nobody really used this one either, CoR is a very surprising skill to see go looks like NCsoft is making a huge push for Greatsword templar play, Once again reducing number of shield skills (for elyos anyway) interesting move by removing this not sure how to make of this, nobody really used this, nobody really used this either, so...the asmos get the elyos skill and we get the asmo skill? lost in translation I think, not surprised, can't remember this skill, that didn't last very long...

Skill Changes

Dazing Severe Blow: Learned at lvl. 10. Adds PDef decrease. hue

Divine Grasp: CD reduced to 10min. very cool change, zerg fights will never be the same again

Courageous Shield: Learned at lvl. 15 strange move considering it looked like a moment ago they were emphasizing on greatsword templar, don't understand what's up with the change, perhaps just to gameplay rather than balance

Battle Call/Blind Anger: CD reduced to 1min. Heavily implies big PvE content

Illusion Chains: CD reduced to 1min30sec. Any reduction in CD is a good reduction in CD, this is no exception. 

Pitiless Blow: CD reduced to 40sec. Once again, pretty cool reduction in CD.

Prayer of Resilience: Can be used on allies. hue

Prayer of Victory: Duration increased to 3min. hue

Stubborn Spirit: Learned at lvl. 10. Increases your Block by 500, Physical Def by 10%, Stun, Knock Back, Stumble, Spin, and Aerial Thrust Resistance Values by 1000, Immobilization Resist by 1000, Reduce Speed Resist by 1000, Magic Suppression by 700,Magic Resist by 600, and Fear Resist by 300. MR and Fear Resist is coolest idea i've seen yet, huge buff to this skill in general this patch, note MS is still there at +700 

New Skills

Body Smash: Learned at lvl. 10. Chains into Blood Pact I. Potential replacement to shining slash? maybe, not enough details on CD etc.

Other Changes

I’ve already answered parts of your question (namely in relation to the MR set or slotting of MR stones into PvP armor) on this post on my page, reffer to it and I think it’s somewhat relevant to your question.

In relation to Block sets this link contains relevant information on your question, containing detailed information as to how much block you need and why. This link contains a post in relation to Crit/Accuracy and it’s applications along with pro’s and cons. 

Two part question; A) Yes it still is the spec that I use personally for most if not all situations where I need to be in full DPS spec. B) Dekoze answered this question on forums with a fairly simple and straight forward answer; the big hitting skills go first, they generate generally the most enmity of all other actual hitting skills; everything else falls into place and begins to differ from person to person. 

First part of the question, and second that there isn’t any specific instances which require you to be in either one; Albeit EB Defense group which should most of the time be completed in full PvE tree unless your group says so. 

Holding Enmity in DPS Spec is easy…if you know how to DPS properly; which is often times the hard part as most people without practice struggle; it’s probably as steep of a learning curb as the ability to PvP with the class. The primary idea as mentioned earlier how you hold enmity is by simply doing DPS, is simple as that sounds it’s not exactly simple and generally takes time, and quite a lot of it to master it; There are a few guides out there; here’s one that’s quite popular (based on pure hit post hit #’s) 

http://forums.na.aiononline.com/na/showthread.php?t=127624

I haven’t read through it thoroughly, nor have I given the thread much in the means of my attention but from what I’ve gathered and the fact that it hasn’t received much criticism from peers suggest to me that it’s probably a sound piece of work. The author is also fairly genuine and seems to post constructive things most of the time, albeit the phase he went through believing that MB Templars are viable for PvE.

This has got to be probably one of the more vague questions I’ve been asked in this answer a question series haha. 

Okay so from the PvE perspective, I’m going to assume what you mean by the question is how one would go about utilizing both tools efficiently. Generally, what we say as a response to a question like this, is that we only swap to Sword/Board in an offensive situation when you have ran out of normal skills which can be casted on greatsword. This more or less means shield-specific skills (Things like Magic Smash, Divine Justice, Shield Bash etc etc). We do this because in the event that you run out of available skills to weave on greatsword (ie. Everything is on cool down or you can see that your about to run out of skills you can weave (Except for magic smash/DJ because ideally those land on mace/shield anyway)) you can have other skills to use with a simple weapon swap, this is also why it’s important to have even just a few of your primary shield skills on your skill bar and in relatively convenient places (For example if you look at mine).

In other cases (Continued on from PvE) what sword/board can be used for is damage mitigation, namely through Cry of Ridicule, but it can also be used to give a proportionally large bonus of Enmity Boost for taunts (CoR, Battle Cry etc etc) which is exceptionally useful for when you need enmity when tanking, this is also to say that ideally, “Ideally” all your taunts land on sword/board because of your shield’s enmity boost. Furthermore, provided you have substantial quantities of crit on your PvE set you could also potentially actually hit a Break Power harder on sword than you could on Greatsword due to the bonus crit modifier (I stress potentially on this one, it’s gear specific, you still need to be crit capped in order to see benefits).

In PvP how both can be utilized together is fairly complex, and it in itself is the epitome and hallmark of a good templar, one that can utilize both items at their disposal, does that mean i’m telling you to make a block set, sort of. But it really does depend on your server, and as to whether or not it’s viable in your home server as more and more people decide to go Crit/accuracy to deal with Clerics, it kind of leaves you high and dry since Chain can get substantially more block than you can without shield stancing.

My recommendations for this is if you really want to see how sword/board and greatsword can be used effectively is to watch streams, people who notably use both, or are renowned for using Block sets or are widely known for their PvP, people who I would watch out for

http://www.twitch.tv/aerosgw/profile -Some of his past broadcasts, look for ones which include his play vs melee classes.

http://www.twitch.tv/wtfast_siel/profile - Probably one of the more notable Block set users in NA, very well known for his Block set play.

https://www.youtube.com/user/StarryTemplar - And generally just some of this guy’s play.

These 3 guy’s streams / YT’s I’ve linked are probably on the cutting edge of NA, might be difficult finding what your after on their streams but with the amount they upload it’s probably fairly simple to find snippets of what you want. I currently do not have any personal links with either of the 3 people I’ve mentioned, I am “friends” / “acquaintances” with 2 of them but even still I wouldn’t reccomend them to you just on that basis.

I DE’d my Block PvP set, and I don’t want to spend 50k kinah going from Sanctum to Katalam to find your answer, but it’s the one with Block instead of Parry c:

Same principal goes for the helm your after, you want the one with Block over the one with parry, 

Only exception to this is if your intentionally going out of your way to make a questionably viable Parry set primarily with greatsword up at almost all times (Highly not reccomended).