Scribing Enables Subclassing Too Much.

evLRise

I'm gonna start off saying that I really like the concept of subclassing. It's something new and intriguing, it's interesting, it opens up LOTS of possibilities.

From a PvP perspective, a major issue with subclassing is that, while it should feel like a trade-off, whenever I drop a skill line for another one, it doesn't really feel that way. And scribing is the main issue.

Why? Because it fills the gap too easily with skills that are not only stronger, but more versatile than class skills in lots of scenarios.

Example: I'm playing a nightblade and wish to get the Deep Fissure from warden. Im gonna trade siphoning for it and oh... I lost my burst heal. But WAIT! I didn't. I can just scribe Wield Soul instead of my Healthy Offering and... it's really not much of a difference really.

It's even worse when some scribing skills are better than their class variants.

Healing Ritual from Templar is a very solid example in such a case. It has the EXACT same heal numbers as a healing burst with a healing focus script. It does have better range ( 10m vs 8m ), BUT:

- It costs more ( 5200 mag vs 4700 ).
- It has 1 specific buff vs 1 customizeable buff ( I can just put minor expedition on Healing Burst and it's the same as hasty prayer ).
- It lacks the extra utility provided by signature scripts ( Healing Burst with an extra Heal over time AND minor expedition is objectively better than hasty prayer ).

So, the issue with scribing in relation with subclassing is how INCREDIBLY EASY it is to fill the gaps. Because of it, dropping a skill line for another doesn't really feel like a trade-off in many situations. The advantage of scribing skills should be how easily they can fill a gap, and therefore should ALWAYS be weaker than a pure class skills with the exact same functionality.

In order to introduce a healthy way to handle subclassing :

- Class skills should ALWAYS be stronger than scribing skills with the same functionality. The main upside of scribing is how easily customizeable they are in order to fix very specific gaps. If you make them equal to class skills in terms of numbers, they will outshine class skills 10/10 times, making the subclass trade-off almost non-existent.
- Morphs for certain class skills should be optimized in a way that fundamentally changes the skill. Hasty prayer in this example is a morph that doesn't really offer much other than being able to basically "scribe" a very very specific version of Healing Burst, which in most cases is not what you need.

I'm not really a group PvE player, but from a group PvE PoV this feels even more extreme. While PvP requires both healing, tankiness AND damage for a well rounded build, group PvE Builds are spec'd towards a single purpose ( DPS / Heal / Tank ). As such, the trade-off is entirely irrelevant in so many situations. Do I care about Restoring Light on my templar DD when doing dungeons? Not in the slightest. Are the passives useful for a DD? Not exactly. Therefore, I'm basically not losing anything.

Now, I know there's lots of people that complain about the power creep aspect of things. Personally I don't really care about that, as if everyone is stronger by the same degree, things are balanced from a proportions perspective. It's always funny how people complain that there's not enough players to do organized end-game consistently, yet when things are made more accessible and therefore more players can get into it, they start complaining and pumping gatekeeping theories into the forums. But I digress.

TLDR: I feel like subclassing should involve more decision making and losing a whole skill tree should feel impactful.

madmufffin

It's funny how different things are for the two modes in this game, because I don't think Scribing will see use at all in PVE now aside from a few niche builds.

Zyaneth_Bal

evLRise wrote: »

I'm gonna start off saying that I really like the concept of subclassing. It's something new and intriguing, it's interesting, it opens up LOTS of possibilities.

From a PvP perspective, a major issue with subclassing is that, while it should feel like a trade-off, whenever I drop a skill line for another one, it doesn't really feel that way. And scribing is the main issue.

Why? Because it fills the gap too easily with skills that are not only stronger, but more versatile than class skills in lots of scenarios.

Example: I'm playing a nightblade and wish to get the Deep Fissure from warden. Im gonna trade siphoning for it and oh... I lost my burst heal. But WAIT! I didn't. I can just scribe Wield Soul instead of my Healthy Offering and... it's really not much of a difference really.

It's even worse when some scribing skills are better than their class variants.

Healing Ritual from Templar is a very solid example in such a case. It has the EXACT same heal numbers as a healing burst with a healing focus script. It does have better range ( 10m vs 8m ), BUT:

- It costs more ( 5200 mag vs 4700 ).
- It has 1 specific buff vs 1 customizeable buff ( I can just put minor expedition on Healing Burst and it's the same as hasty prayer ).
- It lacks the extra utility provided by signature scripts ( Healing Burst with an extra Heal over time AND minor expedition is objectively better than hasty prayer ).

So, the issue with scribing in relation with subclassing is how INCREDIBLY EASY it is to fill the gaps. Because of it, dropping a skill line for another doesn't really feel like a trade-off in many situations. The advantage of scribing skills should be how easily they can fill a gap, and therefore should ALWAYS be weaker than a pure class skills with the exact same functionality.

In order to introduce a healthy way to handle subclassing :

- Class skills should ALWAYS be stronger than scribing skills with the same functionality. The main upside of scribing is how easily customizeable they are in order to fix very specific gaps. If you make them equal to class skills in terms of numbers, they will outshine class skills 10/10 times, making the subclass trade-off almost non-existent.
- Morphs for certain class skills should be optimized in a way that fundamentally changes the skill. Hasty prayer in this example is a morph that doesn't really offer much other than being able to basically "scribe" a very very specific version of Healing Burst, which in most cases is not what you need.

I'm not really a group PvE player, but from a group PvE PoV this feels even more extreme. While PvP requires both healing, tankiness AND damage for a well rounded build, group PvE Builds are spec'd towards a single purpose ( DPS / Heal / Tank ). As such, the trade-off is entirely irrelevant in so many situations. Do I care about Restoring Light on my templar DD when doing dungeons? Not in the slightest. Are the passives useful for a DD? Not exactly. Therefore, I'm basically not losing anything.

Now, I know there's lots of people that complain about the power creep aspect of things. Personally I don't really care about that, as if everyone is stronger by the same degree, things are balanced from a proportions perspective. It's always funny how people complain that there's not enough players to do organized end-game consistently, yet when things are made more accessible and therefore more players can get into it, they start complaining and pumping gatekeeping theories into the forums. But I digress.

TLDR: I feel like subclassing should involve more decision making and losing a whole skill tree should feel impactful.

Scribing was and is still great. The problem is that subclassing (which is in fact multiclassing) is being abruptly dumped into the game in the most raw form possible. The game that was being balanced around separate classes for years absolutely can not handle the borders between them suddenly disappearing. I’m confident that this should have been obvious to everyone.
Scribing is not to blame here. If it was an issue it would’ve been long known on live. The game simply is not ready for such a sudden change at its very core. So the problem is not scribing being a great tool to polish a build as it was designed to be but replacing skill trees resulting in a huge increase of raw power instead of a trade off or change in gameplay. All because of the fact that skills that were never designed with a possibility of being used together in mind are now being mixed.
An obviously horrible decision with no regard for the game’s future whatsoever.

evLRise

Zyaneth_Bal wrote: »

Scribing was and is still great. The problem is that subclassing (which is in fact multiclassing) is being abruptly dumped into the game in the most raw form possible. The game that was being balanced around separate classes for years absolutely can not handle the borders between them suddenly disappearing. I’m confident that this should have been obvious to everyone.
Scribing is not to blame here. If it was an issue it would’ve been long known on live. The game simply is not ready for such a sudden change at its very core. So the problem is not scribing being a great tool to polish a build as it was designed to be but replacing skill trees resulting in a huge increase of raw power instead of a trade off or change in gameplay. All because of the fact that skills that were never designed with a possibility of being used together in mind are now being mixed.
An obviously horrible decision with no regard for the game’s future whatsoever.

This doesn't address in any way the main issue that I raised, which is that no scribing skill should have equal ( or even worse - more power ) than a class skill with the EXACT same purpose and functionality, as scribed skills are generic / available to everyone and the ability to customize is where the power resides. If you add numbers to rival or outmatch class skills which function on the exact same niche, then there's little point to ever run said class skills, as they become simply useless.

Example: Why would I run coagulating blood on a DK if I have wield soul with heal, resource restore and vitality? Cheaper, stronger, better buff.

ForumBully

I agree because I've never scribed and would really like to avoid it.

Wereswan

Get on PTS and start making broken builds that [ab]use it. The only way things are going to change is if ZOS sees hard data that this will be a balance nightmare.

Erickson9610

evLRise wrote: »

Example: Why would I run coagulating blood on a DK if I have wield soul with heal, resource restore and vitality? Cheaper, stronger, better buff.

Wield Soul doesn't proc Draconic Power passives the way Coagulating Blood does.

Besides, players shouldn't be forced into using Class abilities.

xylena_lazarow

Thanks to Scribing and Subclassing I made a legit ow PvP cryomancer. I love this update.

MashmalloMan

I agree to some extent, but not in the way that scribing is the problem. Scribing is incredibly basic/dull imo actually. The freedom of choice is nice, but it only gets so far, very baseline. The problem is class skills and the overall design, how the lines come together, how the skills interact with their passives and the entire class as a whole. That's the area that needs to be more competitive to warrant real reasons to keep skill lines. This is especially true when considering CC/Support/Utility skills vs scribing, for damage skills, it's a lot harder to drop because they have better design, they actually feel unique. There is no scribed version of Grim Focus, Scorch, Jabs, Crystal Frag, Blastbones, etc, but there is plenty skills like Hasty Retreat, Healthy Offering, Hard CC, Immobilizes, Pulls, etc.

For the Hasty Retreat example, we're talking about a skill that has seen little to no use for 10+ years of this game, I think that speaks volumes. They for some reason never buff these abilities in any meaningful way.

Healthy Offering is possibly the strongest ST burst heal, but is pretty narrow in scope compared to scribing as it gets no hot. Passives prop it up a bit, but unless you're using at least 3 skills from the line, 2 is super easy to drop when you could trade those skills and passives for much better damage related ones. Simple changes like reducing the ult gen passive from a 4s CD to a 1s CD would be an interesting start to reward players for specializing in the skills that come from that line, it's already well rounded. It has a dot, spammable, resource management, burst heal, and AOE spammable.

From a Sorc perspective, we have the same issue with Daedric Summoning having no impactful non pet Sorc passives anymore, but abilities I enjoy using like Haunting Curse, Hardened Ward, and Bound Armaments. Since the passives do jack for me, I'll probably drop the line, get a burst damage skill elsewhere, then use Wield Soul as a burst heal replacement. So is scribing the problem here or is it Daedric Summoning? I'd argue it's Daedric Summoning.

Dark Magic, same thing but kinda flipped, passives are decent (still not enough imo), but I only use Dark Deal and Crystal morphs. Crystal Weapon is already a carbon copy of Crushing Weapon so what exactly am I losing? Why not just get Siphoning for a better Dark Deal, then rely on how overloaded Assassination is to cover everything I lose from Dark Magic and Daedric Summoning? I'd have to use an alt, but hell, it's a way better version of what I was already playing. Again I wouldn't put the blame on NB, I'd say it's because those 2 Sorc lines and the class as a whole were designes poorly. Assassination is very strong, but I wouldn't call for nerfs, it's imo 1 of the good examples for the standard at which other lines should meet.

Zyaneth_Bal

evLRise wrote: »

Zyaneth_Bal wrote: »

Scribing was and is still great. The problem is that subclassing (which is in fact multiclassing) is being abruptly dumped into the game in the most raw form possible. The game that was being balanced around separate classes for years absolutely can not handle the borders between them suddenly disappearing. I’m confident that this should have been obvious to everyone.
Scribing is not to blame here. If it was an issue it would’ve been long known on live. The game simply is not ready for such a sudden change at its very core. So the problem is not scribing being a great tool to polish a build as it was designed to be but replacing skill trees resulting in a huge increase of raw power instead of a trade off or change in gameplay. All because of the fact that skills that were never designed with a possibility of being used together in mind are now being mixed.
An obviously horrible decision with no regard for the game’s future whatsoever.

This doesn't address in any way the main issue that I raised, which is that no scribing skill should have equal ( or even worse - more power ) than a class skill with the EXACT same purpose and functionality, as scribed skills are generic / available to everyone and the ability to customize is where the power resides. If you add numbers to rival or outmatch class skills which function on the exact same niche, then there's little point to ever run said class skills, as they become simply useless.

Example: Why would I run coagulating blood on a DK if I have wield soul with heal, resource restore and vitality? Cheaper, stronger, better buff.

I don’t see a problem with a skill being customized to fit a very specific role to be good. Would you like it to be bad instead?

You present healing ritual as an example but it really is just a bad and useless ability by all standards, it has nothing to do with healing soul being good.
You created a whole thread just because one iteration of a single skill is a little better than some others for a specific purpose in specific content. I don’t see how something so minor is worth any attention.

And why is the name of thread about scribing enabling subclassing yet your post says the exact opposite? You say numbers but numbers are perfectly fine. It seems to me like you simply had some impression and got tunnel vision but don’t actually understand what you are talking about.

If you want to use a class burst heal then feel free to, they aren’t much behind btw, so once again I fail to see how this is a big deal.

Major_Mangle

The ship to balance scribing sailed a long time ago and I doubt ZOS actually cares. Scribing was a super un-necessary power creep that never should´ve been implemented the way it was. I was honestly surprised that ZOS managed to add an even greater game breaking power creep than scribing, aka subclassing (which is more multiclassing than subclassing).

As much as I agree that class sourced skills should feel more impactful, I find it tiresome to even bother with giving them feedback since they seem to ignore 90% of it the last few updates (just look at the complaint on Rush of Agony, people asking to revert Azureblight etc etc). ZOS might eventually change something, but for some reason they seem to like waiting 12+ months to do balance changes.

TL:DR = Don´t get your hopes up on ZOS actually doing some sensible balance decisions.

evLRise

Zyaneth_Bal wrote: »

If you want to use a class burst heal then feel free to, they aren’t much behind btw, so once again I fail to see how this is a big deal.

Make so much sense that generic skills are stronger than class skills, right? Lmao.

Since you're so concentrated on the Hasty Prayer example, Wield Soul spec'd into heal is a better heal than pretty much every single single-target burst heal out there, except maybe some specific ones like Polar Wind if you have enough HP for the breakpoint.

Honor the Dead < Wield Soul
Resistant Flesh < Wield Soul
Coag Blood < Wield Soul
Any U46 Sorc Heal < Wield Soul
Runemend < Wield Soul
Healthy Offering kinda = Wield Soul, minus the utility.
Polar Wind < Wield Soul unless you run 40k HP

The fact that you don't see how a generic skill is outright better than pretty much any class-equivalent is concerning.

Just to help you a bit, imagine if Poison Injection or Entropy would be outright better than almost every class-based single target DoT in-game. Or if Carve would outdamage every AoE DoT in-game. Wouldn't that be stupid?

Why would we even have class skills at that point?

Lystrad

evLRise wrote: »

Just to help you a bit, imagine if Poison Injection or Entropy would be outright better than almost every class-based single target DoT in-game. Or if Carve would outdamage every AoE DoT in-game. Wouldn't that be stupid?

Why would we even have class skills at that point?

I don't think that would be stupid. Poison injection being strong enables bow builds to be bow builds and carve being strong would enable 2handed builds to have functional AoE. I don't see the problem with this? As a counter point, if poison injection, entropy, and carve aren't on par with their class based equivalents then why even have them?

Every ability should be good at what it does, regardless of whether there is a class specific equivalent. Neutral abilities should be functional abilities for specific build archetypes, not consolation prizes for class kits that have holes in them.