After getting face stomped by a Templar in PvP while playing my Dragonknight, it was time to dust off Big-Jake and come up with a PvP build.  Bubble Trouble is very similar to my DK Dragonguard build.  It’s primarily a melee tank in for PvP.  You’ll be up in the enemies faces, making them frustrated and reflecting their damage.  So, welcome to our ESO Templar PvP Build “Bubble Trouble.”

Updated 2.0 Magicka Build here

Updated 2.0 Stamina Build here

Table of Contents

• Build Objective
• Skills
• Gear
• Combat

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Build Objective

The idea behind Bubble Trouble is to shield yourself with various abilities and reflecting damage back on nearby enemies.  Additionally, you’ll have

five different ways you can heal yourself (yes no lie).  This build uses every resource for healing and protection, and as long as you have something, you can stay alive.  The idea is to frustrate enemies, get close, and kill them.

For this build I’m playing Big-Jake an Imperial Templar.  I think the Imperial race is the best choice for Bubble Trouble because of its racial passive giving a boost to total health and stamina.  Ultimately, anything that has strong passive magicka or stamina return would be a good choice as well (High Elf, Breton, Redguard).

This is mainly a defensive build and requires a specific attitude or play-style and it’s not for everyone.  I use a sword and shield with most light armor and a restoration staff on my secondary bar.  You’re objective is to survive and disrupt the enemies.  Here’s the strengths and weakness of Bubble Trouble.
+ Tanky very hard to kill
+ Single target damage
+ Strong control and resource management
– Slow, reliant on the Templar Charge ability that requires magicka needed for bubbles
– Needs more enemies to shine

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Skills

Bar 1 | Sword and Shield – With these skills you’ll have three ways to heal and a 30% max health damage bubble.  One heal with no cost, second using stamina and third being a potion.  You’re a walking bubble absorbing anything they can throw at you.

• Toppling Charge (morph of Focused Charge| Aedric Spear skill line) – I feel that every melee class needs a gap closer and I like Toppling Charge.   Shield Charge from the Sword and Board skill line is great too, but we need stamina for blocking and Unstoppable limiting our down time being CC’d or stunned.  After hours of testing, the resource sweet spot is using a magicka leap over a  stamina one.
• Blazing Shield (morph of Sun Shield | Aedric Spear  skill line) – Why is the Imperials race choice awesome for this build?  Once maxed out, the racial passive “Tough” increases ones bases health by 12%.  Blazing Shields damage protection is based of the amount of health you have, thus the larger your bubble the more damage you’ll reflect back at nearby enemies.  That’s why the leap is a must because, you want to reflect the damage not just absorb it.  Charge in on a ranged target just when Blazing Shield is about to pop to make them scream.
• Unstoppable (morph of Immovable| Heavy Armor skill line) – Without this ability you’re one stun away from dying.  You must be in control for blocking, keeping up protection and moving. Once I learned to conserve my stamina only for blocking and casting Unstoppable, I stopped dying and truly became Bubble Trouble.  The trick here is to block while recovering magicka and conserve stamina for Unstoppable.
• Absorb Magic (morph of Defensive Posture | One Hand and Shield  skill line) – Remember being able to heal with stamina?  Absorb Magic is the uncommon morph but does so much for this build.  Passively it reduces block cost and increase block mitigation.  Actively you can use stamina to gain another bubble (and yes they stack) only this one will heal you for spell damage.  So an annoying Crushing Shock now comes a great self heal.  Don’t use this a lot because you need stamina for Unstoppable, just  having it slotted is incredibly valuable.
• Repentance (morph of Restoring Aura| Restoring Light  skill line) – Oh yes, a free heal though tricky to use.  It does require bodies, friendly or enemy it doesn’t matter.  Since most of my fights include many players there’s never a shortage.  Plus you can heal other players and replenish stamina needed for Unstoppable and blocking.  And even if there’s no bodies around, it passively increases your stamina and heal regeneration, thus making it a must have.
• Empowering Sweep (morph of  Radial Sweep |Aedric Spear skill line) – At first gl It’s an odd choice considering you WANT enemies to hit you and reflect damage.  However, at some point in time, you’ll simply have TOO many enemies around and need massive damage mitigation.   This has great AoE damage, reduces damage taken, and can keep you fighting literally 10 other players for awhile.  Once I reach Alliance Support skill line six, I plan to swap this out for Barrier and then be Bubble Master 2.0.

With three ways to heal, two bubbles, CC immunity, and a leap, this setup is powerful alone.  However, I always say “you can’t heal someone to death,” therefore you need some damage and that’s what bar two is for.

Bar 2 | Restoration Staff – I tried to play a healer, but I just can’t.  With 90% of players running around as crusty pale white Vampires, I built this as kind of the “Van Helsing” of Bubble Trouble.  I want people who chose Vampire to regret it upon being instantly vaporized.

• Vampires Bane (morph of Sun Fire| Dawn’s Wrath  skill line) – I love this ability in and out of PvP.  Since most people wield the unoriginal Impulse spamming, fire breathing, Dunmer Dragonknight, bathing them with fire damage is hysterical.  Keep this damage over time (DoT) up on targets to have them fear you at range.
• Dark Flare  (morph of  Solar Flare| Dawn’s Wrath  skill line) – Part two of stupid Vampire builds  is Devouring Swarm every cheesy players dream ultimate.  I even have a counter for that, it’s Dark Flare.  Most people don’t realize this ability reduces healing taken by up to 40% and increases your next attacks weapon or spell power by a huge margin.  So when that derp Vampire goes charging in for a Bats, combo time Dark Flare into the next ability.
• Silver Shards (morph of Silver Bolts | Fighters Guild  skill line) -LOLZ TIME!  Now that we’ve got that Vampire burning, heal debuffed, and our weapon damage to max, it’s time to hit them square in the face with Silver Shards.  Nothing beats seeing a player instantly vaporized after feeling like they were unkillable.  Shards uses stamina and has great range which is fine on bar two.    These abilities also work well on non-vampire so don’t be afraid to use the combo otherwise.
• Harness Magicka (morph of  Annulment | Light Armor  skill line) – The weakness of bar two is a defensive at range but we counter that by using Harness Magicka.  Most people recommend using this in conjunction with Blazing Shields.  That’s a great combo, but for this build we are using five pieces of light armor not seven, so you can’t just continue to spam these two abilities over and over.  I use this for a bar two bubble that can prevent me from instant dying to two Nightblades casting Snipe.
• Breath of Life (morph of Rushed Ceremony | Restoring Light skill line) – The best burst heal in the game makes Breath of Life a must have in PvP.  It’s a oh crap magicka heal that can keep a small team alive just a little bit longer.  Even though I’m not supposed to be the primary healer, it’s war and anything goes.  With this ability, you’ll be prepared for anything!
• Remembrance (morph of  Rite of Passage |Restoring Light  skill line) – I had some trouble picking a worth while ultimate for two  until I stumbled upon Remembrance.  I remembered during a recent patch that players couldn’t be interrupted while casting this thus a “god mode” button.  Not only that, but allies take less damage too.  With this on my back bar, I now have five ways to heal and two CC immunity buttons.  It’s VERY hard to kill me when running properly.

In essence, the skills above are somewhat complex.  The role you’re trying to provide is a tanky attention getter.  You’re optimizing the team by getting the attention of the opponents. Since we are using all three resources heavily, gear becomes extremely important.

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Gear

 GOAL = health to soft cap or 3,600 in PvP > stamina and magicka near soft cap > high spell power

• Armor Weight – Five light and two heavy gives us a great balance of resources and passive bonuses.  Since there’s no medium armor, we really have to augment our jewelry to get some stamina return.  Hypothetically, you’ll want enough stamina return to replenish Unstoppable every 10 seconds.  Additionally, five light gives us that needed five piece set bonus thus helping our damage from Blazing Shield.
• Set Bonuses – We are using three, oh yes three.  Here’s the breakdown of each
  • Seducer – Adds magicka recover (2x), total magicka, and reduces all magicka cost by 8%.  The five piece bonus or 8% spell cost really makes up for the missing two light armor pieces.  With this reduction, and our armor choices, I can cast Blazing Shields many times before I’m out of magicka.
  • Soulshine – Adds max magicka, spell critical, spell damage and increased spell power while casting or channeling.  This is perfect for our Remembrance life saver.  It’ll pump up our stats enough so we can sit and heal without fear of death.
  • Lord’s Mail – Adds magicka recovery.  Once again, we need something simple to get us close to the magicka recovery soft cap and this does the trick.
• Traits – As you see above, I use a lot of impenetrable trait since it’s helps in PvP.  Some of the traits you can’t pick so you’re stuck with Divines which is okay too.
• Glyphs- For my armor and shield, I go all health to reach that important soft cap or 3,600 in Cyrodiil.  This maximizes my Blazing Shield and helps me survive long encounters.  As for the other glyphs, I like another bubble provide from my sword that can help in between casts.  Additionally, Restoration Staff magic steal seems like a logical choice since it already returns magicka by default. One heavy attack with your staff and you’ll have a monster amount of magicka back.
• Jewelry – These pieces I use to augment my missing stats and for this build it’s stamina recovery.  I could go with reduced block cost, but I don’t want to be a standing robot that just blocks.  So I go all three stamina return to get near the soft cap.
• Mundus – There is no Mundus stone for stamina return, but there is one for magicka return.  If you’re not at the soft cap, go with this.  I don’t use the Thief since most players are immune or nearly immune to critical attacks.  It just makes more sense to focus on resources than a small chance for burst.
• Food – Also going with tri-stat food here.  Also make sure to bring a long some tri-stat and stealth detect potion.
• Race – You can’t go wrong with Imperial though Redguard or High Elf might be good for high recovery.

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Combat

Now that we have all the concepts, gear, and setup down, let’s put it all together.  We have to kill stuff right?

Opening – The opener is real simple (okay maybe not), pop Unstoppable FIRST then leap in with Toppling Charge.  This way you can’t be CC’d immediately which most players try to do.  Once you stun the opponent, charge up a full heavy and cast Blazing Shield.  This will give you two damage bubbles one from your weapon and one from  your spell.

• Good Players Will – Create space and try to get away from you.  Remember your shield only works if nearby.  The counter is simple, keep up Unstoppable and charge them.  Keep casting Blazing Shield and weave in heavy attacks for damage.  No you’re not going to insta kill someone, but you’re not going to die either.  Once they are withered down on resources, pop Unstoppable and switch to bar two.  Use Dark Flare into a Vampires Bane and switch back to bar one.  Keep that rotation up and they’ll die eventually.
• Bad Players Will – Keep on attacking you like a rabbit with rabies.  That’s okay, all you do is keep casting Blazing Shields.  If you get in trouble, use Absorb Magic, a potion, and switch to bar two for Breath of Life.  You’re basically thinking to yourself two things, one if they’re close GREAT just keep casing Blazing Shield and keep up resources.  Two, if they’re far away,close the gap and frustrate them.  That’s Bubble Trouble combat.

Fighting a Vamp – Oh yea, TIME TO DIE! I kind of talked about the meta for killing a Vampire but lets discuss it in detail.  You need to understand what they (the Vamps) want to do.  One, they need ultimate for stupid Devouring Swarm.  So they are going to try and close the gap and get near a crowd.  The more enemies around, the better for the Vamp.  So your goal is to create space and stun them.  Timing your burst is important because they can break CC.

I’ll Silver Shards FIRST, this will stun them get the pasty white Vamp frustrated and they use up stamina to break CC (great).  Now it’s a waiting game and start the mental counter for their CC immunity to come off cool-down.  You can see this by a big white circle around their feet.  Once that’s gone, Vampires Bane to get them burning, Dark Flare to heal debuff them, and BANG Silver Shards for massive damage and a stun.  If you’ve done this right, they won’t be able to CC break unless they have tons of stamina, and will be suffering from massive DoT and burst damage.  If they are live, keep doing this over and over.  In summary, create space, frustrate them, and keep up the pressure, they’ll fold eventually.

Survival Mode – Eventually people get upset that they can’t kill me and their buddies start to join in on the fun.  That’s okay, I can survive nearly anything.  First up, I make sure my potions are set to Panacea of Health which restores magicka, stamina, and health.  We are going to need a lot of these.  Second priority is to keep up Unstoppable.  You are ONLY vulnerable when you can’t cast or block and this will be the time you die.  Final priority is keep on casting Blazing Shields and close the gap on the most dangerous target (ranged Nightblade).  So here’s how I do this.

Pop Unstoppable, Absorb Magic, Blazing Shields and a Pancea of Health potion.  Yes, use the crap out of these potions as they don’t help you when you’re dead.  DON’T BLOCK, yes it sounds weird but don’t.  Only block if all your bubbles are down because you need stamina for Unstoppable.  Keep stunning and closing the distance, frustrate and disarm the priority target.  If swarmed by melee, cast your Empowering Sweep.  If being focused by two dozen archers, swap to bar two and Remembrance.  This will give you four seconds to regain stamina and magicka.  By that time you’re ready for more Blazing Shields and Unstoppable.

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Summary

And that’s combat folks, you can take on anything.  You’re not going to be King of damage, but you can dish it out in large groups.  You’re not going to be the best healer, even though you can keep yourself up for hours.  You will be the King (or Queen) of bubbles and people will start fearing the yellow shield of destruction.

What are your thoughts on this build?  Please leave me a comment and let me know.  If you’re looking for something more offensive, check out my previous build The Harvester.  Thanks for reading and enjoy!