My opinion on how to balance subclassing

Major_Toughness

I'll start off by saying that I don't even want the changes I'm proposing, but it's the lesser of two evils compared to the current thoughtless inclusion of subclassing.
It would also take a long time. This is purely from a balance perspective, and hope it leads to more (and better) suggestions.

Each class would need to have a skill line for each "role":
A design which has already been taken with the three DLC classes; Warden, Necromancer, and Arcanist.
There was also a small change to Nightblade in a similar vein where two skills were swapped around, namely the Concealed Strike spammable into Assassination, the Nightblades damage line.

• Damage (Animal Companions, Grave Lord, Herald of the Tome)
• Healing (Green Balance, Living Death, Curative Runeforms)
• Tanking (Winters Embrace, Bone Tyrant, Soldier of Apocrypha)

Once that is done, then only allow the ability to swap skill lines for a skill line of the same role from a different class.
Damage for damage, healing for healing, tanking for tanking.
This means there will be little to no power creep as you can't just take 3 damage lines in PvE, or 2 in PvP and whatever the best defensive line is.

There are downsides to this, and considerations to take into account for what each "role" skill line will contain.

• All classes would feel the same, but with different skins/themes. Already a common thought among players is that Necromancer is a reskinned Warden.
• You don't need 5 heals or 5 defensive skills for each class. Some form of utility and DoTs would have to be present in those lines.
• Especially for base classes the themes of the skill lines themselves would need revisiting as they do not fit into the different "roles".
• Necromancer and Arcanist specifically have mechanics which are required in all skill lines and would need to make sure that power is not removed from remaining skill lines when subclasses. Namely corpses, and crux.

Things like Aedric Spear & Dawn's Wrath on Templar are both filled with offensive abilities. Whilst Restoring Light has both healing and tanking abilities. You can't just moved Radiant Oppression into Aedric Spear as you designated this the damage line, it doesn't fit. A whole class overhaul would need to be done.