Path of Exile gives players six different characters to choose from at the start of the game, with a seventh unlocking later down the line. Every character has a unique playstyle, and the one we’re exploring today is the Templar, a fun blend of melee and spellcasting.
Templars toe the line between being a powerful line of defense for your party and a backline caster that shreds groups of enemies. If this blend of offense and defense is what you’re looking for, this Templar build should help you get started.
Path of Exile: Templar basics
Before we get started on the Templar build itself, it’s important to know how play the Templar class first. The Templar is a Strength-Intelligence hybrid class that excels in close quarters and at range. This makes them perfect defenders that can stack heavy armor with Strength requirements and energy shield items with Intelligence requirements.
Just like the other classes in Path of Exile (except Scion), the Templar has access to three separate Ascendancy classes. Depending on the class chosen, your Templar will lean more toward one particular playstyle. These are the Templar’s choices:
- Inquisitor: The pure offensive class for the Templar. Excels at dealing high damage through critical strikes that ignore enemy resistance.
- Hierophant: A hybrid of offense and defense. This class is a great option for Brands and other spell-based Totem builds.
- Guardian: The defensive option for the Templar. A great frontline tank and support that can provide energy shields to allies.
When it comes to choosing an Ascendancy class for this Templar build, the Hierophant comes out on top. The class starts a bit slow compared to the other two, but builds up power quickly as you level up. With its mix of offense and defense, the Hierophant is also a great Ascendancy class for beginners with its blend of damage and survival.
Now that the basics are sorted, we start with the Hierophant build that will help you scale your Templar to the endgame.
Best Hierophant build in Path of Exile
There are several viable Hierophant builds to choose from as you level up. While the focus of Hierophant builds might seem all over the place, there are a few that specialize in certain playstyles. Our build of choice is the Storm Brand Hierophant build, which focuses on the namesake Storm Brand skill that’s great for mapping.
Storm Brand is quite a fun skill to play around with. When you cast it on an enemy, a brand attaches itself to them, dealing damage by firing beams all around the branded target. Casting this on multiple enemies ensures screen-wide devastation, the likes of which very few other builds can manage. One thing to note is that once the targeted enemy dies, your Storm Brand will vanish as well.
Additionally, Storm Brand is quite a powerful skill on its own, which means you don’t need a lot of expensive gear to push this build to its limit. But, that also means that the build isn’t as strong as certain other endgame Templar builds, but it will help you get there much faster.
Since getting to the endgame can be quite challenging, don’t forget to check out our Path of Exile beginners guide to ease you into the start of your League journey.
Getting started
To start with the Hierophant build, your first order of business is to ascend your Templar to a Hierophant. You can do this in the same way as other classes do, by clearing The Labyrinth. When you complete it for the first time, you will unlock all three Ascendancy options available for your Templar. When the time comes to choose an Ascendancy class, simply select the Hierophant to get started.
When you first ascend into a Hierophant, you will also gain access to a unique Ascendancy skill tree with minor and major passives. The first Ascension will also grant you two skill points to spend on these passives. For the sake of this build, these are the minor passives we have chosen.
- Mana Regeneration, Mana: Increased mana regeneration and mana pool.
- Mana Regeneration, Arcane Surge Effect: Increased mana regeneration and Arcane Surge effect on your Templar.
- Mana Regeneration, Brand Damage: Increased mana regeneration and Brand damage.
For this build to function, we have chosen these three minor passives that you can level up as you push for your major passives. There are also major Ascendancy passives that we will discuss in detail later, but for now, we will tackle the common passive tree that is available to every class in the game.
The passive choices that we select here will define this build’s strengths going forward.
Passive choices
Like every character class in Path of Exile, most builds focus on picking the right passives from the huge network of passive skills available. These passives are the backbone of the build and the class as a whole, and picking the right ones can skyrocket the power of your Templar even further by pumping up their damage and resource management.
For the Hierophant, your passive tree begins at the Templar’s starting point, which lies in the western half of the passive network. Start from here and work your way northeast, picking up a lot of important passives along the way.
Get Damage and Mana with Intelligence nodes, then move west from the branch and pick up Light of Divinity and Holy Dominion. Keep going west and pick up an essential passive, Runebinder, followed by Brand Mastery and all its neighboring passives. Afterward, go back to the branch and head east for the rest of your passives.
Go east, and when you get to the first branch, go north and pick up Mind Over Matter and Brand Mastery. When you reach the top, go southwest to pick up Critical Mastery and Reservation Mastery along with Purity of Flesh. Keep going south and pick up Armour and Energy Shield Mastery, then keep going south until you reach the end of the branch and choose Overcharge.
After this, go back to the first branch (near Mind Over Matter) and head east for the rest of the passive skills.
From here, there are two paths to take. The first path takes you all the way east. After the first branch at Arcanist’s Dominion, keep going east to pick up Heart and Soul and Deep Wisdom, finally ending up with Pain Attunement. Then, head back to Arcanist’s Dominion and go northeast from there after picking up Lightning Walker.
From here, keep going north until you get to another branch, then head west to pick up Recovery Mastery, Charge Mastery, Mana Mastery, and Life Mastery. Then, head back to the branch and go east, picking up Breath of Rime and Presage. Finally, go east to pick up Energy Shield Leech and the final passive, Eldritch Battery.
For a thorough look at the passive tree for this build, check out the passive skill tree on the main Path of Exile website.
Gear options
The next part of this build involves getting the right gear for your Hierophant. The gear listed here will bring out the best of your Storm Brand and its relative damage while also enhancing your defenses by improving your energy shields.
- Weapon: Tulfall
- Shield: Malachai’s Loop
- Helmet: Willclash
- Body Armor: Inpulsa’s Broken Heart
- Gloves: Life/Resistance gloves
- Boots: Replica Inya’s Epiphany
- Amulet: Badge of the Brotherhood
- Rings: Call of the Brotherhood
- Belt: Darkness Enthroned
Tulfall is a great choice as it adds flat Cold damage with no substantial downside. Malachai’s Loop is a good defensive option and will be most effective when your minimum and maximum Power Charge are equal. Willclash grants you increased evasion and energy shields. Inpulsa’s Broken Heart gives you increased life and damage when you shock enemies.
Replica Inya’s Epiphany grants you increased life and increased damage per Power Charge. The Brotherhood jewelry options are perfect for this build, as is Darkness Enthroned, making your Hierophant nearly unstoppable as you reach that coveted level 100.
Ascendancy nodes
The final part of this build involves picking up the right major Ascendancy passives by activating their nodes. The passives chosen here are listed in the order of priority of importance relative to the Storm Brand build, so picking them up in this manner should work out best.
- Conviction of Power: You gain additional minimum Endurance Charges and minimum Power Charges. You also gain additional maximum Endurance Charges and maximum Power Charges. This is great offensively and defensively.
- Divine Guidance: You gain increased maximum mana. Additionally, a percentage of the damage you take goes to your mana instead of your health.
- Sanctuary of Thought: You gain extra maximum energy shield from a percentage of your mana pool. Additionally, your skills cost less mana.
- Arcane Blessing: You gain increased spell damage with Arcane Surge.
That’s everything you need to know to run a powerful Hierophant in Path of Exile.
