Class Info From SiN (Dark Templar)

[bonedancer-SiN]

(Read below, from final week of beta)

[Slade-SiN]

***Edit: see Radek's reply below for a consolidated pdf file of good threads from the beta forums concerning the Dark Templar, which was made by a guy with a lot of experience on the class.***

I've mostly played the Dark Templar in Beta and researched it a lot on the Beta Forums (wading through a lot of whining to get to the more intelligent posts) and by talking to two level 80 Dark Tempests. I'll start with a summary and end with a list of all of the abilities a Dark Templar gets.

Like the Guardian, you will not be going around killing people quickly. However, you will not be dying quickly either.

You have buffs, auras, and covenants. You can only have one aura up at a time and one covenant (I use dread fury and weapon of the damned at lower level). Auras will help the whole group and covenants only work on you. You also have a heal (that can be feated to heal stam/mana too). the heal damages you to cast, but is a group heal and the healing is enough to top off the damage it does to you. It is not as strong as a healing class' heal, but it is enough to help out in a pinch.

Unlike most melee classes, you have a mana bar in addition to your health/stamina bars. The mana bar is a BIG part of this class' potential (see Soul Barrier below).

Mitigation:

Armor: You can wear Heavy armor,but not the heaviest--full plate--which is reserved for the Guardian. However, armor is only part of your mitigation as a Dark Templar.

Life Leaches: You have the life leach combo, but there are also several feats that will get you more life.

Drain Life: This is a self buff which you should always have up and make all of your hits heal you for some of the damage.

Soul Barrier: You need to be level 40 to get this feat. I do not consider this an optional feat. When Soul Barrier is up part of the damage you take gets converted to mana damage instead of health damage. Since all of our buffs are long duration, and we have feats to improve mana regeneration, having the mana for this is not a problem. If the buff lasts its full duration and you still have mana left, it puts a HoT on you as it expires.

Curse of Gwahlur: This is another feat I plan to have. It can proc a short duration DoT on anyone hitting you. This DoT can stack three times per target and will also heal you for some of the dmage done. Additionally, each DoT will make all of your curses do more damage (so if 3 people/things are hitting you and get three stacks each--which happens fast--there will be 9x the damage modifier per stack and to any other curses you have out at the time). It is only a 3rd tear feat, but it adds to your damage and your mitigation at the same time. There is no reason not to have it if you plan going into the tree to get fear.

With the right feats, you can be getting back about 20-25% of your damage in leaches throughout a fight. That is a substantial chunk of healing.

Damage:

Dark Templars have very weak white damage. There are arguments over which soldier has lower white damage--Dark Templars or Guardians. Even bone and I differ in our opinion of this; however, the fact it is so close makes one point certain--just like the Guardian, the Dark Templar does not hit hard. Case in point: Motig's Tempest of Set, a magic damage based healer, was doing more melee white damage than I was at level 38.

There are ways a Dark Templar can improve damage, primarily through our feat trees.

Depravity Tree: This tree makes our combos more effective and also has feats on one of the two bottom branches that will make all of your combos do more damage. While this tree is great for PvE, I do not see myself using enough big combos in PvP to make going too deep worthwhile because you would need to give up your AoE fear and some other key talents from the other tree.

Desecration Tree: This tree mainly focuses on improving our spells. Curse of Gwahlur is in this tree. Talisman mastery is in this tree too, but has been broken in Beta so I never got to test it. It is supposed to increase your magic damage by 40% at 5/5, which includes all of your proc damage (more on those in a second).

Procs:

Our white damge might be low, but with feats we can get a lot of procs. If they all go off at once it is a solid burst of damage, even at my level.

Aura of Dread Fury (buff) : Procs single target unholy damage. This proc can go off from melee/spells and the spell gives the buff to the entire party.

Covenant of Pestilence (covenant): An AoE poison proc. The damage on this is really low and you are better of feating into Weapon of the Damned early on than using this.

Weapon of the Damned (feat/covenant): A second tier feat in Desecration that adds a chance to proc single target unholy damage. A good feat for early leveling, but at later levels I will/would unfeat this as you have better covenants by then, including ones with better procs.

Corrupt Weapon (feat): A third tier desecration feat that adds a single target unholy DoT proc to your weapon swings.

Covenant of Putrescence (feat/covenant): This is an eighth tier feat in Desecration. This procs a lot and is a good damage AoE poison proc. It also happens to be the prerequisite for AoE fear.

Blighted Touch/Soul: Touch is a the first tier of Depravity tree and Soul is second tier. Touch adds an unholy dmg proc to your swings and soul makes this into an AoE proc.

Pact/Reaper of Malacador (feat/spell): Third and fifth tier Depravity spell that adds unholy dmg to all swings (becomes AoE with Reaper) for a short time. This spell takes too much of your own life when cast to really be used much in pvp, and there are better places to put the feat points.

Sadism (class ability): At 10 stacks, you start to pulse AoE unholy damage (I will explain sadism in detail below).

Crowd Control:

The Dark Templar is very weak in CC without feats. Every form of CC the class gets must be feated; but, you can get to all of the feats without gimping yourself in my opinion.

Dark burden (spell): Fourth tier depravity 8 second snare.

Mind Wrack (combo): Sixth tier Depravity 6 second frontal cone stun.

Mind Shatter (combo): Eighth tier Depravity 8 second frontal cone stun.

Dooming Presence (spell): Ninth Tier Desecration 8 second PBAoE fear.

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Sadism:

Sadism is a Dark Templar ability/self-buff that procs when someone in your group gets hit. Sadism can be stacked up to 10 times. The sadism buff wears out if it isn't refreshed after 10sec. If your sadism counter reaches 10 you begin to pulse AoE unholy damage every 3sec.

Sadism gives you every stack +1% damage +1% lifetap +1% magical damage +1% magical lifetap (for a total of +10% to each when 10 stacks are up).

There are many feats which are connected to sadism:

Depravity tree:
Vile Soul tier 5
2 Point Feat
Effect: You will start to pulse aoe damage when your sadism counter reaches 8 / 5 rather then 10.

Masochism: left depravity tree tier 6 feat
5 Point feat
Effect: There is a chance that you add a sadism counter when you get hit

Depravity: left depravity tree tier 7 feat
5 Point feat
Effect: Your sadism counter will be raised by 1 everytime covenant of vengeance procs

Desecration tree:
Ritualistic Bloodshed tier 5
2 Point Feat
Effect: Gives the Dark Templar a clickable ability to increase the sadism counter by one. However it does a bit of mana damage to the dark templar. The cooldown of the ability let you stack sadism to 10 and keep it up as long as you have mana left.

In group PvP, even with just me and Motig, Sadism is at a 10 stack very fast and stays that way until the end. For solo I might consider the feat that lets it proc off of me getting hit.

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Abilities (I did not include things from the feat trees):

Combos

- leech life: buffs yourself with a lifeleech buff.
- Blood for Aid/ Desolated Bulwark: debuffs the enemy with a armor penetrating debuff. And your hit rating against that enemy is increased. desolated bulwark is just an improved blood for aid. Don't know why its called differently.
- Mystical Bane: does a bit of mana damage to the enemy. (Can be improved via feats to proc a mana restoration effect on you).
- Unhallowed Blight: your unholy attacks will do more damage against that foe.

Spells / Auras

- Drain Life: all your hits will return a % amount of health.
- Blood Pact: all your hits will return 100% health. Damages yourself and has 30min cooldown. Can be reduced via feats.
- Martyrdom: damages yourself and places a HoT effect on your team and yourself. Can be feated to return mana and stamina too.
- Aura of Dread Fury: your hits and the whole party melee hits will do a passive amount of unholy damage wich is added to the weapon damage. (This is not stated in the combat log). And if you get hit, it can proc a minor aoe damage effect.
- Aura of Infusion: if you get hit there is a chance, that the whole party members in the area of the aura will become a HoT.

Covenants

- Covenant of Pestilence: If you get hit there is a chance that a aoe damage effect procs. And the covenant places a -5% hinder movement debuff on you.
- Covenant of War: if you get hit there is a chance that you will become a minor damage shield and a minor damage reflection shield.
- Covenant of Vengeance: All your melee hits have a chance that covenant of vengeance procs. It will boost your attack rating ant let you do more melee damage, white and combo alike.
- Covenant of Death: I don't know if this one is still in. It was a lvl 80 group dungeon (onyx chambers) end boss drop. If you get hit there is a chance that you will become another +6 drain life buff. (This would boost you on lvl 80 with stacked sadism and leech life on the target above 30% health drain! )

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The information on sadism/abilities comes form the beta forums because I got too lazy to format it myself. Sadism is pretty amazing once it reaches 10 stacks.

[Slade-SiN]

Two more things:

1.) You are survivable in PVP as a Dark Templar. At level 40 I can kill a level 45 assassin pretty easily. I've fought several assassins ranging from 37-45 and none got me below 1/2 life before they ran off close to dead or died (the exception being a level 45 one I tried to fight and hit frenzy stance instead of charge...which ended badly for those that know what frenzy stance is). Barbarians are pretty easy to kill too. The hardest fights I've had were against Bear Shamans, Tempests of Set, and HoX's. The Bear/Tempest are usually long fights that have gone either way. The Hox usually either does a ton of burst early and stays to try finishing me off (a long fight) or his burst is low and he dies/runs away. I've only fought one guardian, but he was a keyboard turner so does not count since I was hitting him in the back w/o being hit back for over 90% of the fight.

I have also fought alone against groups and not died. At 38 I was fighting a level 37 assassin, 37 barbarian, and 35 barbarian. I was able to kill the assassin several times and do enough damage to the 35 barbarian to make him run away. Once the 37 barbarian was alone he died (the 1st time) or ran away (every time after the 1st). i think the reason the assassin died was because in a 3 vs 1 people get lazy and he probably failed to watch his health.

The lack of CC hurts early on, but in groups you do not notice it as much. With Zorg or Motig to knockdown or stun/root, I could get behind someone, hotkey into frenzy stance, unload some combos, then hotkey back out of frenzy for a good burst.

Even in my low 20s when 3 Frenzy were trying to kill me (levels 25-30is), I was able to kite them halfway across the zone to the waiting arms of a 50+ Mysh.

I think the best way to go with the class is deep into both class-specific trees for all of the CCs available. On the way to those CCs I plan to pick up every proc feat possible for damage and also Soul Barrier with some mana regen feats. If I am using big combos I am normally in frenzy on a CC target anyway, so the combo feats wont help as much as procs that can go off while circle strafing. The only combo I use a lot in pvp is Life Leach, and other than that I save stam for when someone is CCd or trying to run away.

2.) I did not say much about PVE, but a Dark Templar is a pretty decent tank, and really shines in group pulls.

A guardian can probably single target tank a lot better than us, but the gap narrows greatly and might even swing to the Dark Templar's favor in larger group/add pulls.

With all of our AoE procs, Curse of Gwahlur, and Sadism we do a good deal of AoE damage while tanking, and the more things that are hitting us the better that damage gets with Curse of Gwahlur stacking on more and more mobs.

Motig, a Conquerer, and I did the Sanctum last night with three of us at level 38. the mobs there are 38/39 elites and we cleared the whole thing with me tanking, Motig healing, and the Conq DPSing.

[Angus-SiN]

http://forums-beta.ageofconan.com/sh...ad.php?t=18187

More Dark Templar information from the beta boards from a few high level players.

[Slade-SiN]

i think most of that was in my post. The other stuff, and more, is in a consolidated post that was put into a pdf file and Radek is supposed to be uploading for me!

[radek-SiN]

Here it is Slade.

[yynderjohn]

What kind of spec would you recommend for lvl 50 and lvl 80?

[Slade-SiN]

Originally Posted by yynderjohn

What kind of spec would you recommend for lvl 50 and lvl 80?

The pdf Radek linked for me has 2 sample builds from a guy that played the DT extensively in Beta. I'd say the one with all of the CC is the better PVP build of those two.

For 50, I'd suggest going a split across Desecration/Depravity.

shoot for something close ot this for 40: http://hybes.de/featPlaner.php?class...,700-15,738-12

After that start filling filling up towards Soul Barrierin Desecration. I tried a few builds, and this was the best DPS on the way to 40 (after researching it a bit). You will eventually get rid of Covenant of Arms (new name for the Teir 2 Desecration Covenant), since late game Putrescence is the Covenant for DPS.

[Nox]

1.) You are survivable in PVP as a Dark Templar. At level 40 I can kill a level 45 assassin pretty easily. I've fought several assassins ranging from 37-45 and none got me below 1/2 life before they ran off close to dead or died (the exception being a level 45 one I tried to fight and hit frenzy stance instead of charge...which ended badly for those that know what frenzy stance is). Barbarians are pretty easy to kill too.

Assassins (and barbs, which are rogue based) have little to no damage mitigation. If you can turn the fight into a fight of attrition rather than opportunity, the advantage moves against them.

Depending on their build (corruption/lotus) they may have frontloaded damage (corruption) or they may have dot and sustained damage (lotus) - it's easy to tell which is which if you have your combat window up (which you should) by looking at the damage type. Poison = lotus, unholy = corruption.

bear in mind, especially at level 45-ish that assassins are distorted due to a lack of itemization of cloth and daggers. At level 45 in beta assassins were probably using vendor items, because the quest rewards didn't include daggers.

[Slade-SiN]

Originally Posted by Nox

1.) You are survivable in PVP as a Dark Templar. At level 40 I can kill a level 45 assassin pretty easily. I've fought several assassins ranging from 37-45 and none got me below 1/2 life before they ran off close to dead or died (the exception being a level 45 one I tried to fight and hit frenzy stance instead of charge...which ended badly for those that know what frenzy stance is). Barbarians are pretty easy to kill too.

Assassins (and barbs, which are rogue based) have little to no damage mitigation. If you can turn the fight into a fight of attrition rather than opportunity, the advantage moves against them.

Depending on their build (corruption/lotus) they may have frontloaded damage (corruption) or they may have dot and sustained damage (lotus) - it's easy to tell which is which if you have your combat window up (which you should) by looking at the damage type. Poison = lotus, unholy = corruption.

bear in mind, especially at level 45-ish that assassins are distorted due to a lack of itemization of cloth and daggers. At level 45 in beta assassins were probably using vendor items, because the quest rewards didn't include daggers.

And, at 45, DT is nowhere near its potential. The higher in levels you get, the easier assasins become to kill as any soldier class imo, including as a DT.