Templar Battleforce: Class Builds Guide – Intermediate

I love this game and have been looking for awhile for a builds guide to help me understand the “meta” of various characters, especially as I stepped up to Hard and Brutal. I haven’t been able to find one, so I decided to write my own.

What it covers:
– Templars and how to use them (skills, attributes and talents, and combat tactics)
– Which gear to get

Oh Captain, my Captain.

Captains are best with pistol, sword, and grenade, specialised for ranged combat. Your mileage may vary on Nightmare and up, but for Brutal and below, and anything below NG++, this is best. You want your captain in the thick of things, firing his pistol, dropping grenades or buffs, and tanking melee strikes in chokepoints with Autoblock to protect more vulnerable characters like engineers.

Your Captain goes on every mission and so will be the highest level of your Templar, and thus he will have the most points to spend on stats and gear. Very early game (level 6 and below) you need to focus him on ranged attack, but later on it’s possible to do jack of all trades quite well.

Attributes:
– Focus first. Get it to 16 for autoblock. Add some fortitude if you find he is taking too much damage, but otherwise Focus is the highest bang for buck.
– Fortitude next. Get it to 8.
– Quickness after this, for + ranged chance to hit, and + chance to counterattack.

Skills:
– Get gunnery to 6, then get Tactics to 16.
– Ignore evasion and grenades; I’ve never missed with a grenade and your captain will get so many stat points in quickness (which boosts grenade accuracy) that grenade skill is a waste.
– After Tactics is at 16, put all your points in Warrior. Don’t boost gunnery any further than you need to; most of your accuracy will come from your weapon and talent.

Gear:
– As soon as possible, go for the pistol with 4 range and eventually you want the devastator pistol. Ignore the needle pistols: Your captain’s job is to finish enemies with Arc Fire and grenades, you don’t want them running around taking poison damage – especially since your captain’s range is so short that any living enemy will be close enough to attack him, possibly causing a game over.
– Take the lowest level sword possible, but be willing to step up a gear level if you can get +6-8% autoblock. This stacks nicely with all your points in Focus. Ignore shields.
– Take the heaviest armour possible without losing movement points, and augment this with +autoblock (preferably) or +armour, +deflect auxiliary gear. Heavy armour and high autoblock will save you from needing many points in Fortitude.

This is a *very* late-game Captain on NG+++. Basically everything here is optional except for the Devastator sidearm, the best autoblock gear you can find plus a half decent suit of armour.

Talents:
– As soon as you unlock it, respec to take 1 point in grenade. This only costs 1 AP and can take out 2-4 weakened enemies, you will use it often.
– As soon as you unlock Pressing Need, put 1 point in it. Eventually you want to get this to the point where it adds +2AP. This is extremely useful for moving allies around (e.g. to get an engineer to close those last 2 spaces to the Tact point so you can attack it this turn).
– As soon as you unlock Arc Fire, put most of your talent points in this. The ability to hit 3 enemies at once at up to 4 range is priceless, and the crit chance combined with your high tactics points will give you a 30-40% chance to hit.

Result:
With this build, your captain can take out 3-6 enemies with Arc Fire, drop a pressing need or a grenade to buff an ally/take out a few more enemies, and then stand in a chokepoint to tank melee attacks with high autoblock and counterattack.

Drawbacks:
– devastator pistol becomes outclassed in NG+ on Brutal and above.
– if your captain dies it’s game over, you need to be very careful with him until you unlock mid-game armour and get your autoblock up around 30%.
– Captain with Sword and Board is very hard to kill but the problem is that you have to move him into trouble (surrounded by enemies) in order to deal damage, and this makes him too vulnerable and moves him out of chokepoints which defeats the purpose.

Your first warrior, Dalan Ortho, will be with you the whole game. He will never be an off-tank/DPS like your captain or a weapon of mass destruction like the Neptune, but if you build him right, he will be the backbone of your whole team.

Plus, if you bring him on every mission he will end up higher level than your captain as he needs fewer xp to level up, so he’ll be your first late-game character with elite gear.

Attributes:
– Focus first, always. Get it to 16 for autoblock.
– Fortitude to 8. Soldier is weaker than captain, so consider adding 3-4 fortitude points before maxing autoblock if you find he is getting hit a lot.
– Strength is a waste of time but you can add points here if you have nothing else.
– I usually just run my soldiers overheated or use an engineer to cool them (more on this later) and rarely add more than 1 point of willpower.

Skills:
– Gunnery first as it’s used in shooting and overwatch, and you’ll be short on accuracy at the start. Get it to 6 or so.
– Get tactics to 8 as soon as possible after this. Tactics lets us move the whole team faster, which is vital on many missions especially if you want to max your experience bonuses.
– Max tactics, then max gunnery.
– After this, put points in whatever you like. I usually ignore grenades since the soldier can never have more than 3, and evasion is useless – you’re better off with points in Warrior as melee enemies are more dangerous. If you use a Plasma soldier you should take Warrior because all your enemies will be close range, if you use a normal rifle then either warrior or evasion is fine.

Gear:
There are two ways I know of to build a soldier.
Type 1) A mid-range soldier (5-6 range) doing medium damage with solid overwatch. He will never be as good as a Neptune, but with the bonus movement buff on the team, a soldier will be critical to moving the gang through hostile territory and keeping enemies at a distance while doing so (especially on escort missions).

Type 2) An elite plasma slayer that has only 3 range but deals up to 300 damage per hit using the plasma relics and a maxed Shredding Fire talent. This is a very late game build – you will spend 80-90% of your first playthrough with a Type 1 soldier.

Here is a very lategame Type 2 soldier. Everything here is optional except for the plasma rifle and the strikepoint kit, plus whatever defensive gear you can put together:

Type 1 Soldier:
– Use a range 5 rifle and aim to keep penetration around 40-50% which keeps damage high
– use your two auxiliary gear slots to add penetration and damage as a priority. Later, once you have the Neptune, you can use them for whatever.
– Wear the lightest armour possible to free up gear points for damage. Especially early on when points are limited, your soldier should aim to kill all enemies before they get close enough to strike – you don’t need armour for this. Get used to using the captain to tank for the soldier.

This same build works for late game, just swap your early gear for relics and enjoy stronger armour.

Type 2 Soldier – late game Plasma:
– Get a Plasma rifle with 3 range.
– Use the Aegis gauntlet, the +8% autoblock is solid combined with your high focus. With minimal investment you’ll already be blocking 1/4 enemy attacks. 3-4 full attacks are enough to kill most templars, so this level of block already adds massively to survivability.
– Get the strikepoint kit which adds +16 plasma damage and doubles plasma damage on penetrating hit
– It’s a tossup between the Plasma rifle that adds +62 plasma and lower penetration, vs the one that adds +42 plasma and has 112% penetration. The higher plasma damage will hit for 250 damage when it penetrates, but it will only penetrate 2/3rds of the time. The Plasma Gun relic has lower damage but will penetrate always, and it may be slightly better but use either.
– At 3 range you need heavier armour.

Talents:
I will focus on the plasma build here as the conventional soldier works the same as the neptune and is pretty easy to figure out – just stack overwatch talents and damage.

– Overwatch 3. Especially early game your guy will be overwatching a lot, and even with the plasma build I find this is useful on hard difficulties for defending against charging enemies from the fog of war.
– Get 1 point in Grenade when you unlock it. Soldier grenades suck and you never get more than 3, but every once in a while, you’ll be able to take out a weakened enemy with it to save one of your allies from an attack.
– Shredding Fire 10. Get this as high as you can, especially once it starts adding penetration as it will cause the Strikepoint Kit to trigger much more often for insane damage.
– Rallying Charge. Get this to the point where it adds +2MP to the squad. Use it frequently – at the start of every level – to give yourself a massive headstart. It lasts 4 turns (+8 movement points) and is like getting 1 extra turn free.

Result:
Soldier hits everyone with rallying charge, boosting squad damage and moving the team farther. He shoots an area effect with either Burst or Shredding Fire, taking out 2-3 enemies. If an enemy survives wounded, he finishes them with a grenade, and then sits on overwatch to protect the most vulnerable area. He’s not good in melee but can be used as a meat-shield to protect an engineer or block a chokepoint.

During the campaign you will get – and need – two scouts. These should be built different and late-game there are relics for each. This Scout is our main Scout and similar to the Soldier, he will appear on most missions and end up a similar level as the Captain.

Attributes:
– Fortitude to 6. Scouts are squishy and their armour sucks, and two hits can kill them.
– Willpower to 6. Scouts spend most of their time overheated and Willpower is really important, even more than Fortitude. Low willpower will kill a scout.
– Focus to 16 for autoblock.
– After this, get Willpower to 8 and then put any leftover points in strength. Remember you can respec any time between missions for free, so don’t be afraid to put a tonne of points in willpower and fortitude if you know you have an “overheat” mission coming up.

Skills:
– Gunnery to 6
– Stealth to 10. Respec stealth to 16 whenever you have a mission where you rely on Stealth.
– Tactics to 10, and then 16 (on non-stealth missions).

Eventually you want tactics at 16, stealth at 16, and any spare points in Gunnery. The Scout has relatively low accuracy, but this particular build is for Critical Hits.

Gear:
– Get the Scanner relic as soon as humanly possible, this is a life-saver especially on your first playthrough. It lets you cast Scan anytime for no heat which you should spam whenever your scout isn’t shooting.
– Take the Aegis gauntlet, don’t forget this. Again the +8% autoblock for Scout is really important, given how fragile they are.
– Avoid the Needle Rifles, those are for the other scout. Get stronger sniper rifles as soon as they come available, eventually taking the Synchro Sight relic, which can be unlocked relatively early.
– Stay with the early armours (with higher armour & deflect) as long as humanly possible. Most Scout armour is garbage and the evasion on armour is pointless because enemies have so many attack dice (especially in melee). If your Scout is close enough to get hit, you’re doing it wrong – you are better off tanking the rare hit when it happens.
– For pilot suit, swap between the +movement suits (for missions with lots of exploration), and take a +damage, +pen relic otherwise.

Very late game once you have the Synchro Sight, choose all of your gear to max +critical% chance.

Talents:
– Get piercing strike to 3. Generally you want to shoot the two most powerful enemies once each, stripping their armour so characters with more modest damage potential can finish them off.
– Get Crippling Fire to 4. The -MP is good but the -1AP is lifesaving as it limits all enemies to attacking only once. When you get caught offside by a Carapace Tusk or Siege Goliath and your captain doesn’t die because he only gets hit once, you will thank your lucky stars you had a Scout with this talent.
– Get overdrive to 3 for +3 MP. The Bonus MP comes in handy in so many missions for reaching switches etc, it’s well worth the talent investment. Again, you can respec out of it when it’s not needed.

Result:
This Scout stays close to your squad, stripping the defences of tough enemies like Carapace/Goliath and crippling enemies to keep them at a distance. Can also use overdrive and scanner to explore the surrounding area and collect bonus objectives without taking a slower templar off-course.

This is your second Scout, who you will get later in the campaign. It should be your primary stealth specialist and you’ll use it much less often than the first one, so they will spend most of their time at the minimum level (65-75% of the Captain’s level).

As a result, unless you use both scouts often for some reason, you’ll need to be extremely economical with gear and stat points for this build.

Attributes:
– Fortitude to 4
– Willpower to 8
– Max focus
– Willpower to 10
– Quickness if any extra stat points left over

Skills:
– Max stealth first. This Scout’s most important ability is to be invisible.
– Put a couple of points in gunnery along the way if you notice you are missing shots. This scout will spend a lot of time in enemy territory, so it’s important that you hit *every* time.
– Use the relic scanner if you like. I prefer it on my main scout so it gets used more often, but it is viable here too.

Gear:
– The highest level needle rifle you have
– Wear the Blitz kit pilot suit for +1MP as soon as you unlock it. Consider the +2MP and -10 heat kit on missions where you need extra movement.
– Spend remaining points on whatever you want. Aegis gauntlet is always a good cheap upgrade.

Talents:
– Crippling fire to 3
– Overdrive to the point where your total stealth with Overrive on adds to 16. After this, keep overdrive at the point where it adds +3MP. Go to 4MP late game if you have a spare talent point.
– All other points in crippling fire until it deals -3MP and -1AP. Ignore Null Field as you’ll rarely use it.
– Late game, add 1-2 points in scanning and take Crippling Fire to -4MP.

Result:
This Scout’s job is to cloak and run off deep into enemy territory to activate objectives and bonus objectives, using Stealth to stay invisible. When enemies are close, hit them with crippling fire which reduces their move rate and attacks, and will kill them over time with poison. Each enemy only needs one crippling hit – then just leave them alive and run away. With this approach you can move 10+ tiles a turn and cripple 2 enemies.

Do you even Tact Point, bro?

This engineer you’ll get very early in the campaign, and he will be your main engineer for the game. He doesn’t appear on every mission and has relatively high experience requirements, so will end up a few levels lower than your captain. Given his high need for talents, he needs to be built carefully.

Attributes:
– Fortitude to 8
– Focus to 16
– Add 2 points in willpower. Engineers have high resistance by default so can tolerate overheating well without much point investment. They also get a tonne of really powerful heat relics, so heat is not a huge concern for them in my experience.

Skills:
– Engineer to 16
– Remaining points in Tactics
– 2 to 4 points in gunnery late game if you have accuracy issues

Gear:
– get the cyclone reactor relic for +1MP and +60 max heat as soon as humanly possible.
– Get a range 4 pistol as soon as possible.
– Otherwise wear whatever you want. Generally take bonuses for either +movement or +defence, since your engineer is not for dealing damage and will rarely fire his weapon.
– The engineer is squishy and losing one can be a gamebreaker so I generally try squeeze in extra armour and deflection where possible. Prioritise movement and heat first though.
– Flame tank is a trap that requires too much investment in NG, don’t do it. Make a second engineer be a flame tank if you must.

Talents:
– ASAP, get Capture Tact Point to the point where it only costs 2AP to use. This, combined with higher movement range lets you move to a Tact Point and either wipe it out or take it over in a single turn and will rapidly accelerate your campaign. Seriously, this alone is often worth an extra 5-15% experience and requisition points after a mission, it pays for itself.
– After this, get the heat shedding ability to 2-3 points. This is important for cooling your Soldier so you can use their +max movement buff more often.
– Add 2-4 points in turrets
– Add 1 point in landmine. Landmines deal almost no damage with low point investment BUT you get 3 of them, and enemies will tend to attack them first. So if you’re moving a lot and being pursued by enemies, you can drop a landmine and distract them for a turn or two. Outstanding tactical value for low point investment.

After this, spend on whatever you want. IGNORE the engineer’s shooting talent as it scales too slow to be useful. If you find you are shooting a bit, get a better handgun or add a couple of points to gunnery and quickness.

Result:
This engineer moves rapidly to claim enemy tact points & stanch the flow of enemies, while dropping turrets and landmines to slow pursuing enemies. Due to his relics and high heat capacity, he can reduce the heat of other templars allowing them to keep buffing the team and keep everyone moving. Very occasionally he might fire a shot or two to finish a mortally wounded enemy, but otherwise should be kept out of combat.

It’s in the title. This Neptune is for holding key points and deleting large swarms of enemies. If you’re like me, you’ll use him on every mission – even more than your soldier – and he’ll end up around the same level as your captain with plenty of points to spend on gear.

Attributes:
– Get Fortitude to 8. Neptunes have 10 toughness at 8 fortitude which is around a 10% damage reduction for most hits.
– Get Focus to 16 for autoblock.
– After this put points in strength and willpower as you see fit.

Skills:
– Get Gunnery to 8
– Tactics to Max
– remaining points in gunnery or whatever you want.

Gear:
– Just use the best gun available and unlock the Relic Dragoon Mk21 (6 range) as soon as possible. This weapon will carry you through the campaign and should be prioritised ahead of relic weapons for literally every other class.
– pair this weapon with whatever +damage and +penetration gear you’ve unlocked.
– Take the lightest armour possible to keep gear points free for damage. The Neptune shoots at distance 6 so should be getting hit very rarely.
– Aegis gauntlet is always good where possible.

This is a very lategame Neptune:

Talents:
– Get Full Auto to 5 for the greater damage area.
– Get Suppressing Fire to 1 for occasions where you need to slow a group of hunters/goliaths and your scout isn’t around.
– Otherwise spend on whatever you like, I like the self buff to damage and accuracy. A few levels in this can add huge mileage when you know you’re about to go on overwatch for an extended period.

Result:
This Neptune can take out 4-5 enemies with Full Auto and then overwatch to take out another 3-5. Use him to defend key chokepoints and also to bring massive firepower if you need to push into enemy territory. He is the guardian angel of your squad and with a scout nearby your squad will be safe from everything except a scittering horde which can rush in from multiple angles offscreen.

Ok i’ll be honest with you, I haven’t completely figured out the Hydra yet. He does great area effect damage with his talents, and dropping a napalm charge on an enemy spawn point appears to disable it for an extended period of time which is extremely useful. However his raw single-target damage is usually disappointing, even when built for damage, and he remains vulnerable in melee. These are my observations:

It’s in the title. This Neptune is for holding key points and deleting large swarms of enemies. If you’re like me, you’ll use him on every mission – even more than your soldier – and he’ll end up around the same level as your captain with plenty of points to spend on gear.

Attributes:
– Fortitude to 8
– Max Focus for autoblock
– whatever you want after this. Willpower is pointless for my hydras I find, since they get a lot of +Heat items naturally and it’s hard for them to overheat even on longer missions.

Skills:
– Tactics to 8 to maximise the number of enemies you can catch with Napalm charge (maximum # of targets is capped by your Tactics score).
– Gunnery to 8
– Max Tactics for crit chance and # of targets.
– After this spend on whatever you want, usually Gunnery.

Gear:
– Get the strongest range 4 flamer you can. Range 3 is fine at the start, but by late-game I find the Range 4s are superior as they deal more fire damage at longer range, and penetration is so low on both types they’ll rarely penetrate anyway.
– Get Boosted Reactor auxiliary gear (+1MP, +10 max heat) as soon as you can.
– Wear light armour (focus on damage) and minor defensive items like Aegis gauntlet or warding plates (+8 armour, +8% deflection) add a lot of value for minimum cost.

This is a very lategame Hydra:

Talents:
– Get his main damage dealing talent to 5 for bonus area effect
– Add a couple points in Napalm charge to get more charges. Casting Napalm Charge directly on an enemy spawn point (the black holes in the ground) seems to shut it down, but you must target the centre of the explosion on the spawn point, being inside the fire cloud is not enough.
– Other than this, whatever you want. I find the -MP attack talent is pretty useful lategame especially if your Hydra holds the flanks like mine does – it makes him a target and keeps enemies away from engineers or escort targets.

Result:
The end result is a mobile Hydra suitable for auxiliary cleanup work on the flanks, shutting down enemy spawn points on a forced march, or slowing nearby enemies and tanking a hit or two to protect your escort or spawn point.

This is not my favourite build so I would like some input if you have a better one.

Some people like an offensive Paladin, but for me they are an auxiliary character that only comes out once every 4-5 missions when healing is needed. Consequently, they end up a fair bit behind your Captain in terms of levels and power – in many cases my captain is a better tank. If you use your Paladin all the time, other guides may be better.

Attributes:
– Get Fortitude to 8
– Max Focus for autoblock
– Add 2-4 points to willpower. Paladin can accumulate a lot of heat but only if you use a lot of buffs. Go strength instead if all your paladin does is heal.
– Add leftover points to strength, willpower, or fortitude, whatever you like.

Skills:
– Get Medic to 8 (later we will reset this to 6). The Paladin’s most important ability at the start is healing, and you always want to be able to heal at least 100 HP (which will be roughly 50-60% for most of your crew).
– Warrior to 6
– Tactics to 8
– Warrior to 14 or so.
– Remaining points in whatever you like, I suggest Tactics.

Gear:
– Select shield and sword for autoblock. Our paladin is a healer/tank so the bulk of their damage will come from counterattacks. Other than that, they should be spongeing for your allies and can self-heal if needed.
– Heaviest armour you can wear plus aegis gauntlet, plus whatever defensive gear you can equip. Your paladin will be gear-limited for the entire game so I suggest optimising for autoblock.
– Special note: If you have spare RP, it’s worth going into the Berserk tree early, even if you never use Berserks, to unlock the “assault” class of armours, e.g. Cavalry Assault (pictured below) which all give +1 movement point. This is extremely helpful to get the paladin to chokepoints or wounded allies to heal them.

This is a very lategame Paladin:

Talents:
– Battlefield Medic to 4, combined with 10+ skill in medic you should be healing >100 damage which is enough for basically the whole game.
– Put 2-3 points in Warding Fire, combined with at least 6 points in tactics, you can add bigly to your squad’s survivability by increasing autoblock.
– When you have some spare points, add 2-3 to your sword attack. This is the skill that’s used when the Paladin counterattacks. While it’s not essential it helps their damage keep pace over the campaign.
– Battlefield enhancers is great for move + shoot (e.g. escort) missions, but I rarely use this otherwise, respec into this as needed.

Result:
Here you have an off-tank Paladin that’s great for blocking narrow corridors, tying enemies up with autoblock and counterattack, and healing nearby allies. It’s not a strong damage dealer and I find melee too dangerous most of the time due to high gear point requirements to do it effectively, so I mostly keep the Paladin as my healer.

I’ve never been able to use these well even once I’ve unlocked the best gear. Both have good gear that is worth unlocking for the Hydra or Soldier/Captain/Paladin respectively, but as individuals themselves I’ve always found them underwhelming.

Non-Obvious tactics:

A few tricks I have picked up along the way.

– Don’t sleep on fortitude/toughness, especially for characters with a multiplier. 12 fortitude on a neptune is 15 toughness which will (I believe) reduce all incoming damage by 8-15, which is like a 15-20% damage reduction not counting armour. In many cases some extra fortitude would be better than 2 points in gunnery or especially 2 points in Evade.

– Never put points in Evade, Grenade, or Willpower unless you are a Scout (evade/willpower) or going for a special grenade build with your Captain or Berserk. Those points are better spent elsewhere.

– Use Soldier’s Pressing need to give the whole team an extra 2 movement points. In NG+, you can regularly complete missions in less than 50% of the par time just thanks to using this and knowing where to go.

– Use the Captain’s +critical chance debuff on enemies to boost your chance to hit. The Hydra, Neptune, Scout, and Captain’s Arc Fire all get bonuses to crit, and it’s possible to get your crit chance to 60%+ without too much effort.

– If your character has a main talent that gives +accuracy, e.g. your sniper’s main attack is Piercing Fire 6 which gives a lot of bonus accuracy. You can take points away from strength & gunnery and put them in other categories without greatly reducing your chance to hit. Most enemies have 6strong + 6 defence dice or fewer, so if you have 6s + 10 from stats and add another +9 from talents, you don’t need any more points in gunnery.

More ideas to come.

I hope that was helpful. If you’ve found a better build than the ones here, let me know so I can try it out and update my guide!