Templar Follower Skills and Gearing Guide (Updated for Patch 2.7.2 and Season 25)

As discussed in the general follower guide, the Templar is currently considered the weakest of the three followers and should only be considered for fragile builds, characters that are just starting out and are low on survivability, or perhaps for additional safety in Hardcore play. The setup below assumes you are taking the Templar for Greater Rift solo progression purposes, as his thoroughly defensive powers are objectively useless in standard rift farming for keys or Greater Rift speed farming.

The recommended abilities for the Templar are:

• Level 5: Heal — The highlight of Templar abilities, his healing scales with Strength on gear and is uniquely affected by cooldown reduction on gear. Its decent base 30 second cooldown can be cut down by more than half with enough Cooldown Reduction investment, and can be attractive to fragile builds with low sustain — i.e. Demon Hunter Cluster Arrow variants.
• Level 10: Loyalty — a source of Life Regeneration that also scales based on the Templar's Strength, this skill is another decent boon to low sustain character builds and attains additional for setups that include Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard.
• Level 15: Onslaught — on a decent 20 second cooldown, the Templar can boost you with a 10% damage increase against enemies affected by this skill, again — with a Strength-scaling duration.
• Level 20: Guardian — this skill offers you a cheat death alternative (or addition) to the one present in your character passive skill lineup. For most builds, this allows you to drop your own cheat death passive slot during GR progression.

The following setup reflects the best-in-slot item choices and gear rolls for a Templar taken to Greater Rifts with the intent of pushing leaderboard. Note the focus on Cooldown Reduction with the inclusion of the craftable Cpt. Crimson set, since the Templar can take advantage of CDR on gear for his Heal. Tal Rasha's Relentless Pursuit is included due to its innate Increased Attack Speed roll, but is not a necessary part of the setup. The Gloves of Worship are included to make the build semi-viable for standard rift farming and bounties as well, though we do not recommend the Templar for the purpose; there simply is not a great option for the slot otherwise.

To help you with farming the gear you need for your builds, we have two very useful guides that you can access by clicking the links below: a Salvage Guide to help you quickly check whether or not you can safely salvage a piece of gear and a Legendary Farming Guide to help you efficiently farm legendaries and set items.