So, I've been wrestling on which class to focus on the most at launch: I'm down to either Templar or Nightblade for reasons being:

Templar:

Up front Two-handed melee gratification and plate pummeling fun + survivability/utility of heals.

Nightblade:

Sneaky Bows and Blades hybrid focus - I like this for the utility during long sieges; where running out to meet the enemy is not an option, so the bow will give me something to do (outside of siege engines).

Both are a toss up to me, but the thought lately crossed my mind about physical skill focus viability of the templar. If I mainly focused down the physical skill trees of Two-hand and heavy armour let's say, do you think it would greatly diminish my overall utility on the battlefield?

Granted I know inherently I would have less skill points to distribute for class skills and racials, but do you think the deficit of class/racial skill bonuses would really be that lack luster for melee, or truly balance out? (Best value question I guess, a bit subjective too).

They (the devs) say that you can play whatever build to suit your play style etc, but I think time will show that particular builds are intrinsically better, or more appropriately suited for AvA and PVE (which is obvious to most veterans). I'm curious how a more physical spec will turn out in both/either areas.

Also, this is what i"m thinking about doing regarding attribute distribution for the Templar (@lvl50):

40% of Attribute points in Health

40% of Attribute points in Stamina

20% of Attribute points in Magicka

So yea, on the low side for Magicka.

Thoughts?

why not make a templar with a bow for a back up?

the thing with this game is there are several options for gap closers and i would never consider going to cyrodiil without at least 1 as a melee player. i think the 40% hp is good but i could not tell you about stamina vs magic. stamina is pve seems less useful than pvp. i expect to be dodging much more in pvp. same goes for sprinting and blocking. i think the magic based skills will be better than the stamina based ones so it might be a matter of more killing power vs better survivability?

I would consider a crossbow, I just don't know how available they are in game - I think it would look much better than a standard bow on a templar imo.

I plan on going 2h templar, myself. I think you should consider that you dont need to base everything off of your weapon, either. If you dont like the idea of using a bow for your secondary/ranged weapon, try having your secondary action bar filled with some of the templar's ranged nuking spells instead. Maybe even use a restoration staff (it does have attacks, from what I've read).

No crossbow. There is one fighters guild skill that pops up a crossbow for the animation but nothing more.