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Our newest player-created build takes the Templar to the battlefields of Cyrodiil.
Looking to try something new with your Templar? Today’s featured build, courtesy of Kristofer, has been put to the test of the fields of war. Take a look at the details below and see what you think. You might just come away with some new ideas for your character.
We always want to see new builds! Send your favorite to us at community@elderscrollsonline.com and we’ll take a look at it. Don’t forget to include a handful of nice screenshots of your character.
Blood Knight
The Blood Knights—soldiers with no names. Born in the fires of Cyrodiil, these knights lust for combat, glory, and blood. From an early age, they learn to bend the will of the world around them, harvesting the essence of the dead. They become masters in deception, blood magic, and deadly killing arts. Only those born of holy houses may walk this path, for only the holy can withstand the darkness. They are thrown into combat at a young age, and many do not survive training. They are taught to kill with any weapon, and fight on no matter how close to death they come.
Blood Knights train in a proud and secretive guild where they learn to fight any opponent, memorizing every exploitable weakness and, in time, becoming warriors of legend. They are most agile and deadly skirmishers, feared for their speed. They attack without quarter or mercy, slinging deadly poison-tipped arrows into their opponents. Once their target is weakened, they close in for the kill. The blade of a Blood Knight is forged from the blackest steel, hammered to an edge sharp enough to cut a man in half effortlessly.
A Blood Knight moves like the wind, never in one place too long, always getting behind their prey for the killing blow. They are holy assassins with tainted hearts, the most feared in all of Tamriel.
The Blood Knight is a stamina-based burst build meant for carnage in Cyrodiil. While it has incredible combo-based burst damage and the ability to kill a target within seconds, this build is also sustainable in prolonged combat. It excels at fighting slow opponents who will hold their shields high, and even more so against opponents who wear robes and little armor. Medium armor is the perfect fit for a fast and agile knight who wields a bow for utility and a deadly greatsword for execution. The Blood Knight also displays impressive regenerative power, always ready for more combat within a few seconds of their last encounter.
The playstyle of this build is fast-paced and can require some practice. The idea is to maintain superior mobility over your opponents, making you a hard target to pin down or focus. When the opportunity appears, this build comes down with deadly burst damage capable of killing some opponents within a couple seconds.
Stats, Equipment, Mundus, and Food
With the mix between enchantments and attribute points, the end goal is to achieve 2419 stamina (just at soft cap), at least 1500 magicka, and 2900+ health. The enchantments on the rings are stamina recovery, and two stamina cost reduction glyphs. The ring enchants, however, can be whatever you prefer if you want to boost recovery with more recovery glyphs.
The armor of choice is seven pieces of medium (stamina recovery and reduced cost), but at least five medium plus two of your choice will work as well. The traits should be four to five pieces of Impenetrable with Infused on the legs, chest, and helm.
Shadow Walker (four pieces, obtained from V12 blue accessory boxes from the Cyrodiil accessory vendor) is the ideal accessory set, providing a good boost to weapon damage and stamina recovery.
Willow’s Path (five pieces, crafted) is the most important set for this build (chest, gloves, belt, weapons, and boots or legs). The +15% bonus to all regeneration stacks quite nicely with many other regeneration bonuses.
Finally, Blood Spawn—two pieces: shoulders from gold undaunted pledge key, and helm from Blood Spawn Spindleclutch boss—gives the build more stamina recovery and a bonus to armor and ultimate generation when hit. Many other undaunted two-piece sets will work as well.
As some of that gear is hard to come by, a good replacement is Ravager (three-piece) for accessories, which is found at your local Cyrodiil trinket vendor, the five-piece Willow’s Path set, and a three-piece Night’s Silence to give you more stamina recovery.
The Atronach Mundus stone provides this build with all the magicka recovery it needs, pairing well with the +15% Willow’s Path bonus.
Veteran Rank 5 epic food is recommended for this build. I use potions of Weapon Power (+ weapon power, + weapon critical, restore stamina), but any potions will work.
Finally, Werewolf is recommended, as it provides a +15% Stamina recovery bonus while in human form, but the transformation is not used for this build.
Race and Passives
I am a Nord, but any race will work for this build. Races I would recommend if you are just starting a Templar and have this build in mind are Nord, Redguard, Imperial, and Orc. If you are a part of the Aldmeri Dominion, Khajiit and Bosmer will do fine.
All passives from your three Templar skill trees should be filled, as well as all your Two-Handed, Bow, and Medium Armor passives. Any Alliance War passives available to you should be filled as well. Finally, Fighter’s Guild passives that apply to player vampires and werewolves should be taken.
Primary Ability Bar
Great Sword (two-handed) – Sharpened – Crushing Enchantment – Willow’s Path
Your great sword is your damage dealer, and will be responsible for a majority of your killing.
Executioner (Reverse Slash) – This is your finisher and skill-of-choice when your opponent’s health gets low. This skill serves as more than just a finisher, since it boosts the damage done with Two-Handed attacks by 18% when your target’s health is below 25%.
Critical Rush (Critical Charge) – This is not only your hardest-hitting skill; it is your gap-closer and mobility agent. This skill critically hits every time, dealing a ton of damage. It also synergizes with Magnum Shot by putting distance between you and your target before you charge them. You can use Critical Rush to move around quickly in larger fights by charging into different people.
Repentance (Restoring Aura) – This skill is slotted on both bars for its passive +15% stamina and health recovery. It makes the build a Blood Knight. Repentance has no cost and can pull stamina and health out of dead enemies or allies, making it great for staying alive as people around you die. Not only do you get the health and stamina, but allies close by get it as well.
Rally (Momentum) – This is your mainstay heal, and you should have it active at all times. Rally increases your weapon damage by 20% while active, allowing you to land deadly attacks. The heal from Rally is a heal over time, but it also provides a burst heal that increases in strength the longer it has been active. Be careful not to let Rally run out before reactivating it, or you will not get any burst heal at all!
Blazing Shield (Sun Shield) –This is one of two magicka abilities this build uses. Try to use it as you enter a fight—the damage it deals when it explodes can help you kill your target. If your health drops low, Blazing Shield synergizes with heals over time, as you can use the shield to eat up incoming damage while your HoT’s heal you.
Ultimate – Flawless Dawnbreaker (Dawnbreaker) – This ultimate is a passive slotted skill. Primarily, you will not use this ultimate. Instead, it is slotted to passively increase your Two-Handed damage. It increases the damage of all weapon abilities (including light and heavy attacks) by 13%. This value is not affected by soft caps, so that’s a huge increase!
Utility Ability Bar
Bow – Sharpened – Crushing Enchantment – Willow’s Path
Your bow is your utility weapon; you will use it to set up your combos, move around more, and buff yourself.
Poison Injection (Poison Arrow) – This skill is used primarily for the damage over time effect, which increases in strength as your opponent’s health starts to drop. This synergizes with any burst combo.
Magnum Shot (Scatter Shot) – This is your combo and movement skill. Magnum Shot knocks you and your target away from each other. Your target is then stunned, this effect ends when they are hit by another attack. A quick swap to your greatsword to use Critical Rush is an ideal burst and use of synergy with this skill. You can also use Magnum Shot to “bounce” yourself around if you are immobilized or snared.
Repentance (Restoring Aura) – This is slotted again for the passive stamina and health regeneration increase.
Purifying Ritual (Cleansing Ritual) – This is your second magicka skill, and it’s used primarily to remove negative effects such as damage over time, disease, or armor debuffs. Purifying Ritual provides a great heal over time, and when coupled with Rally and high health regeneration, you can receive as much as 300 health every two seconds for quite a cheap resource cost.
Immovable (either morph) – This skill is fantastic because it prevents you from being crowd controlled while greatly reducing incoming damage. Immovable pushes your armor and spell resistance far past the soft cap. If you learn to maintain Immovable uptime, you will be very difficult to slow down, as your medium armor allows you to roll out of immobilizes cheaply and effectively. With the reduced costs, your Immovable costs almost half that of breaking free and lasts three seconds longer.
Ultimate – Empowering Sweep (Radial Sweep) – This is the ultimate you will activate the most. It reduces incoming damage by 15% with a bonus 4% per each opponent it hits, which helps you land your burst combos easier by giving you a sort of “tank” phase while it is active.
Regeneration and Cost Reduction
The key concept of this build is to stack as many regeneration bonuses as possible. I use six medium and one heavy (due to the Undaunted heavy drop I received) for my setup. I have +24% stamina recovery from my armor, +15% stamina recovery from Repentance, +15% stamina recovery from lycanthropy, and +15% stamina recovery from the Willow’s Path set. This amounts to a whopping +69% stamina recovery.
Regarding health recovery, I get a +30% bonus from being Nord, +15% bonus from Repentance, and +15% bonus from the Willow’s Path set. This amounts to + 60% health recovery.
With these bonuses, I have 98 magicka recovery, 80 health recovery, and 153 stamina recovery while in Cyrodiil. This provides me with excellent sustainability in combat and rapid recovery outside of combat.
Reducing stamina costs is vital for this build. Medium armor provides great reductions to stamina skill costs and dodge roll costs. The two cost reduction glyphs also reduce the cost of any stamina skill, dodge roll, block, and break free! And don’t forget that the Templar passive Restoring Spirit reduces all stamina, magicka, and ultimate costs by 4%.
The Bunker
This build is surprisingly good at bunkering down when it needs to. Besides dodge roll negating all incoming damage while you’re rolling (and you can roll a lot), this build stacks an impressive amount of armor and spell resistance. As stated before, I try to keep Immovable up 100% of the time, giving me a total of around 2300 armor and spell resistance at all times.
Empowering Sweep reduces incoming damage by a minimum of 15%, increasing by 4% for each opponent it hits. This is the only ultimate that I use for this build, and it charges very quickly (costing 72 ultimate).
Being a Nord, I also take 6% less incoming damage from my passive Rugged.
Finally, when the Blood Spawn set activates (6% chance when you are hit), I gain nearly 800 armor and spell resistance for eight seconds as well as 25 ultimate to use on Empowering Sweep.
The Burst
Finally, the master combo of the Blood Knight:
Poison injection > Magnum Shot > Critical Rush > Executioner
This combo can deal well over 2000 damage if done correctly.
Start by applying the damage over time effect of Poison Injection. If you’re close to your target, Magnum Shot away to make distance. Then, swap to your greatsword and use Critical Rush (the damage increases the further away you are). If your target’s health is at 30% or lower, now is the time to use Executioner. Do your best to stay behind your target while executing this combo.
This combo not only causes some serious hurt, but it makes you mobile and a very tough target for your opponents. It can take some time to master, but once you are used to it, you’ll be able to dance around people with it.
Outro
Special thanks to the many Legend duelists that have helped me test and perfect this build, and to the many warriors in Cyrodiil who have as well. As I have thoroughly enjoyed the play style of this build, I feel a need to share it with others so they may too enjoy it. I am excited to see what people will do with it, and I can’t wait to learn from others how I can further improve this setup!
