How Subclassing is an Extremely Rigid System for PvP

Kaelthorn_Nightbloom · June 25

I've been using the following.

Note that some skill lines exclude buffs because they require a melee target (e.g. Jabs for Brutality/Sorcery)

Meta

Storm Calling
Assassination
Aedric Spear
Restoring Light
Animal Companions

^ If you're not using at least 1 of these then your build will fall behind.

Major Resolve

Storm Calling
Draconic Power
Shadow
Restoring Light
Winter's Embrace
Bone Tyrant
Soldier of Apocrypha

Major Brutality/Sorcery

Storm Calling
Earthen Heart
Siphoning
Animal Companions
Grave Lord
Herald of the Tome

Major Prophecy/Savagery

Ardent Flame
Shadow
Dawn's Wrath
Grave Lord

I use Contingency with 8% mitigation and Prophecy/Savagery. So I only need to pick 1 skill line for Major Resolve and 1 skill line for Brutality/Sorcery. Or even better, just pick Storm Calling for Hurricane and Crit Surge and get 2 Major Buffs from 1 skill line plus a ton of damage passives.

Also, I think Healing Soul carries way too hard with subclassing.

RobZha · June 25

Stamicka wrote: »

Giving up an entire 5 piece set for something like Rattlecage just isn't worth it.

I actually use Rattlecage on my Templar (Magplar) because losing several slots for buffs really bugs me if they don't give something else I like using. The mages guild version isn't something I like much either. Of course Stamplar has this included with jabs but the mag version doesn't, it's another thing that bugs me quite a bit but I like the healing with the mag version too.

At first I was barely interested in subclassing but for my Templar I picked one of those you listed : Animal Companions. This was mainly to replace RAT with Bird of Prey and also get the mag/stam passive which is awesome. I also decided to get sorcery from the Netch skill though and I think this was where things started going wrong. I still wanted a form of sorcery that interested me more.

That eventually led me to adding the Arcanist skill line Herald of the Tome. I now had sorcery with a skill that gives a damage boost and the skill line helped with spell pen from one of the passives. At this stage though the Templar didn't feel right and my sustain wasn't working properly. Maybe from spamming the Arcanist sorcery skill a bit too much (for the extra damage and the bit of stam/mag it gives back as the buff is there whenever slotted) and also because the Dawn's Wrath skill line had gone so my skills cost 5% more and I'd also lost 10% damage from minor sorcery that didn't help.

I messed around on a Dragonknight too with a Sorc skill line and the Templar jabs I've been so used to. None of this really worked though. Instead I reverted back to my Templar as it originally was and then made a new Arcanist char that I've never done before. I prefer this way more and not subclassing at all at the moment. I'll maybe go back to it soon though.

I still can't believe they nerfed Battle Roar as subclassing arrived too. Like I said the last time the game was down and I was on here I think, they could've just nerfed it when combined with other skill lines if subclassing was what made them do it.

NxJoeyD · June 25

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

NxJoeyD wrote: »

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

I made a post in the past about how subclassing would homogenize the game, but I never got super into specifics so I figured I would do that here. In it's current state, subclassing is one of the most destructive ideas for PvP that I've ever seen in the decade that I've played. It's hard to even think of a way to make it work, but I think that pointing out why it's a rigid system could lead to some insights on how to improve it.

First, if you abstract almost any good PvP build, you see some common things. These are:
- Burst/Delayed Burst
- Multiple sources of healing
- Major Brutality/Sorcery
- Major Resolve
- Mobility/Snare Removal
- Major Breach and Minor Breach (usually, but not always)
- A spammable
- Sustain Buffs/ Skills

So with this in mind, there's an immediate problem: some skill lines provide 3 or more of these common PvP build elements. In some cases, multiple of these elements can be found in a single skill. Because of this, certain skill lines pull way ahead of others without any drawbacks, and they will quickly become the norm for almost any build. I've seen people say that subclassing will make the game come alive again because it provides hundreds of unique combinations, but these PvP build elements actually make the skill line pool very small.

Major Brutality
So first let's look at Major Brutality since pretty much any damage dealing build will need this. Outside of class skill lines there's a few options for Major Brutality such as Rattlecage, Entropy, certain weapon skills like flying blade, scribed skills, and potions. Most of these have some pretty serious drawbacks. For example, major brutality/sorcery potions only restore either mag or stam which is a pretty tough thing to deal with in the hybrid era. Giving up an entire 5 piece set for something like Rattlecage just isn't worth it. Skills like Entropy and Flying Blade require a target and there's just not great skills anyway. So this usually leaves class skills as a source of Major Brutality.

The class skill lines with Major Brutality/Sorcery are: Animal Companions, Earthen Heart, Storm Calling, Herald of the Tome, Aedric Spear, Grave Lord, and Siphoning. In terms of PvP, these are not equal in the slightest. Now I won't break every single one down, but there's one option here that stands above the rest in a massive way, and that's Animal Companions.

Animal Companions provides Shalks which fulfills the delayed burst requirement as well as major and minor breach. It provides the Netch, which is a purify, it's free, it requires no target, and it restores resources. Those 4 things put the Netch way above other sources of Major Brutality. Then Animal Companions also has Falcon's Swiftness, which is not a bad idea at all for a mobility skill since it also provides some offensive buffs. Lastly, the passives of Animal Companions aren't exactly the best, but they're pretty good when paired with all of the other things you get. So this one skill line provides 5 of those PvP build elements: Delayed Burst, Brutality, Breach, Sustain Buffs, and Mobility/Snare removal.

There are some other skill lines that wouldn't be terrible choices. For example, Storm Calling gives mobility through Streak, Brutality/Healing through Surge, and Major Resolve through Hurricane. However, I don't think it's good enough competition for Animal Companions in this department.

Major Resolve
Major Resolve is another important PvP buff. You can get this buff through Chudan which might give some room for skill line flexibility, but that's a pretty significant opportunity cost since there's other great monster sets. Once again, this leads us to class skill lines. For Major Resolve we have: Restoring Light, Stormcalling, Winter's Embrace, Soldier of Apocrypha, Bone Tyrant, Draconic Power, and Shadow. Once again there's a standout skill line, and that's Restoring Light.

Restoring Light gives access to Rune Focus which is major resolve, a heal, and a strong resource restore all in one skill. Then there's also the purify which is not only extremely useful in PvP for you and your allies, but it's a pretty good HoT too. So Restoring Light gives access to: 2 multifunction heal over times, a resource restore, and Major Resolve which checks 3 of the important PvP build elements, and the purify is a very good bonus. That's not even mentioning the passives in Restoring Light which put it above some other healing skill lines.

Once again, there's a little bit of competition here. Shadow gives access to Dark Cloak and Refreshing Path as well as Major Resolve, it's not a horrible option for both healing and Major Resolve. Storm Calling as I mentioned earlier isn't horrible, but definitely not the strongest competitor here. The rest don't do quite enough.

Spammable/Burst
Spammables and burst are very important for any damage dealing builds in PvP. Animal Companions, which I mentioned earlier, provides Shalks which is a great burst skill. Then there's Assassination. It's pretty much not worth mentioning any Spammable/Burst skill line other than Assassination. I don't know how it's going live, but it's an insane skill line in its current state. The Spectral Bow, Surprise Attack/Concealed, Incap, and the passives put it so far beyond most other choices. It's a tough skill line to pass up for the sake of being creative, and you'll probably be pretty disadvantaged.

The Tempdenblade
I mentioned 3 standout skill lines: Animal Companions, Restoring Light, and Assassination. These 3 skill lines work extremely well together and provide everything a PvP build would need in a reasonable amount of skills. So a build can fit 10 skills and 2 ultimates. Let's look at a possible skill bar layout:

Bar 1: Surprise Attack, Vigor, Shalk, Camo Hunter/Flex, Merciless Resolve, Ult: Incap

Bar 2: Race against time/Falcon swiftness, burst heal (probably healing soul), Purify/Ritual, Rune, Netch, Ult: Possibly Temporal Guard

This is a very strong option because it checks all of the boxes very well. You can also shuffle these skills to different bars to make it even better. There's lots of healing, the Shalk Merciless Resolve combo is insane burst, it has the mobility and needed buffs, both Rune and Netch are great resource restores, and the passives synergize very well with each other. The fact that this is possible is not only ridiculous, but it's significantly better than most other options that can be made with this system.

Other Options
You can throw in some other decent skill lines that I didn't mention like Aedric Spear or Green Balance, but you'll have to compromise and you'll probably lack something when compared to other builds. As you can see though, the number of viable skill lines is small and the ways that these skill lines can be combined limit things further.

Summary/Conclusion
Subclassing is not the diverse and freeing system that it appears to be on first glance due to how PvP builds are constructed. The number of viable skill lines and combinations of those skill lines is actually very small. There's also options that are both extremely broken and far better than any other combination. So from this it would appear to be that a possible solution to avoid the homogenization that this system would cause, is to give more skill lines a variety of utility and buff skills. However, it's a big mess and there's no great way to balance this all while keeping skill lines unique. At this point though, the homogenization is going to happen without question and I think that this will destroy a large portion of the very very small PvP community that is left.

I don't think it's as bad as you make it out to be. You also completely forgot about scribing and how that can fill in gaps in skill lines.
You also didn't mention stuns. I personally don't know how you can hit anyone with shalks without a stun. And personally I like ranged attacks, I'm either using a bow or a staff. I don't like having to get close to use a skill like surprise attack. Personal preference matters alot.

I don't think Templar restoring light is mandatory either. There's other cool skills like polar wind for example.

I agree, I’m not personally a fan of close quarters mele attacks as my own build …. but … even before Subclassing that was a very large share of PvP builds and now with Subclassing it’s even worse.

And why wouldn’t it be, the risk vs reward prospect for physical martial damage is a much better prospect than ranged. Most of the martial attacks have a 7m range which is kinda bonkers when you think about it (who do you know that has a 20+ foot arm reach) … plus many of those abilities aren’t linear in their mechanic so it enables martial dealers to dispense high damage, from an intermediate range that’s close rough to hit people but still far enough away to avoid defensive / CC self cast abilities. .. and all that is before we even talk about the wonky hit detection that exists in this game with ranged weapons; melee attacks avoid that issue all together.

Then there’s still popular ranged attacks which I’m seeing the majority from the NB & Templar trees.

As for scribed, sure, they provide access to actions but more often than not the scribes trail in effectiveness to established class skills. For example, scribed self heals are sub par compared to just about every class based self heal in the game. Scribes are too niche to be a broad solution. Don’t get me wrong, they’re nice and I use them but they don’t fill the holes the way most people think; especially when you consider potential passives one gives up to run some of them.

IMO subclassing made pre existing gaps in PvP balance worse.

Some animations have a more reliable animation cancel while others are so extended & elaborate it’s very unreliable if at all able. Some have little to no cast time while others have a cast time but paired with their animation mechanics make them less desirable in real use.

Now that Subclassing is here people are going to cherry pick a short list of skills that are heavy reward low risk and crazy easy to apply, and we’re already seeing that. … Sorcs running Merciless Resolve .. I didn’t need the Ms Cleo hotline to see that coming.

IDK about this.

The majority of players in Cyrodiil are still ranged pew-pewers who shun fighting face to face. It's simply an easier way to play.

I can see where we’d see more ranged play, per se, in Cyrodill; because there’s a larger PvE range element in Cyrodill as opposed to the IC or BG .. but a lot of the players who I’m seeing in Cyrodill who are there specifically to duel other players are running martial builds with just some range aspects. Just because one carries a staff nowadays doesn’t mean they’re built for range.

I still see constant “ring around the Rosie” combat with martial players and solid objects.

NxJoeyD · June 25

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

I've been using the following.

Note that some skill lines exclude buffs because they require a melee target (e.g. Jabs for Brutality/Sorcery)

Meta
Storm Calling

Assassination

Aedric Spear

Restoring Light

Animal Companions

^ If you're not using at least 1 of these then your build will fall behind.

Major Resolve
Storm Calling

Draconic Power

Shadow

Restoring Light

Winter's Embrace

Bone Tyrant

Soldier of Apocrypha

Major Brutality/Sorcery
Storm Calling

Earthen Heart

Siphoning

Animal Companions

Grave Lord

Herald of the Tome

Major Prophecy/Savagery
Ardent Flame

Shadow

Dawn's Wrath

Grave Lord

I use Contingency with 8% mitigation and Prophecy/Savagery. So I only need to pick 1 skill line for Major Resolve and 1 skill line for Brutality/Sorcery. Or even better, just pick Storm Calling for Hurricane and Crit Surge and get 2 Major Buffs from 1 skill line plus a ton of damage passives.

Also, I think Healing Soul carries way too hard with subclassing.

Yeah I would agree that most of this is pretty spot on. The skill lines are also what I’m seeing as the lions share of what’s being slotted.

I too use UC with the 8% damage reduction, although, the way they designed the mechanic IMO is a bit clumsy, the wind up (animation) is a bit too long; especially when you factor in GCD. Personally, I think if they’d applied an animation similar to Vamps Blood Frenzy it’d make the ability flow in combat a bit smoother.

Healing Burst is another one I do see a lot although I’m somewhat on the fence with this one. The burst heal it provides is sub par to established class burst heals but the buff access is likely why it’s being used on top of some of the other heals … which .. IMO self healing is PvP is too high as is.