What ESO's Companions tell us about Subclassing Balance

Erickson9610

If you've used any of the Companions, you may have noticed that the skills they use are correlated to the player's abilities, and that some of them have been shuffled around to fit the Damage Dealing, Tanking, and Healing roles. I've compiled a chart that names these Companion skill lines and lists which player skill line equivalent those skills come from:

It's no surprise that Warden, Arcanist, and Necromancer all have their Damage Dealing, Tanking, and Healing lines already cleanly sorted. But what about Nightblade, Dragonknight, Templar, and Sorcerer?

Surprisingly, Nightblade is the only base game Class which cleanly translates to the three roles — or is it? Mirri Elendis actually cheats by creating a new healer Nightblade ability out of thin air. This ability, Blood Transfusion, is entirely brand-new, and does not have a player Nightblade counterpart:

What this tells me is that ZOS shouldn't be afraid to just create new abilities to make the Subclassing balance better.

Dragonknight is the most developed example, since we have both Bastian Hallix and Tanlorin to thank for these abilities. All three skill lines use Ardent Flame abilities! Many skills on the player Dragonknight skill lines are being sorted by theme, which means abilities useful for tanking or healing may end up in a skill line of primarily damage skills. However, for Dragonknight Companions, the abilities are organized and placed in skill lines with appropriately-themed names.

Templar is an interesting example. The tanking line, Brilliant Shield, uses only Aedric Spear abilities. What's interesting is that Dawn's Wrath abilities are shared between the damage dealer and healer lines, as the Purifying Light morph of Backlash heals, and while most Dawn's Wrath abilities deal damage, one Aedric Spear ability was deemed more of a damage dealer skill than a tanking skill.

And, finally, Sorcerer is probably the weirdest example of them all. The damage dealer skill line called "Lightning Caller" uses one Dark Magic ability, which isn't themed after lightning at all. Of course the Companion equivalent of Lightning Form was deemed to be a tanking skill rather than a damage dealing skill — it would've been especially odd if, in Update 47, the player version of that skill lost the Major Resolve it grants. And the most interesting of all is the healing line, which uses the healing component of certain Daedric Summoning pets as a standalone skill, while also fitting the equivalents of Conjured Ward (Daedric Summoning) and Dark Conversion (Dark Magic). The player's Daedric Summoning line is somewhere between a tanking and a damage dealing line, while the Companion Sorcerer healing line primarily uses skills from there for healing instead.

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So, what are the main takeaways from this analysis?

1. If ZOS wanted to, they could rearrange the player skill lines to be closer to how the Companion skill lines are organized. Cleanly sorting abilities into Damage Dealing, Tanking, and Healing skill lines would make Subclassing easier to balance.
2. ZOS could also create entirely new abilities to replace the underutilized ones. That was the solution to give Mirri another Nightblade skill for healing.
3. As we see by the names of each Companion skill line, there can still be a "theme" the way the base Class skill lines are organized by theme. For instance, Isobel's "Blazing Might" uses a spear of light and two sunlight spells; this name accurately captures the concept of using a fire/holy theme for dealing damage.

LunaFlora

it is interesting how different Companion skill lines are.

i hope that skills don't get moved around, but class Grimoires could introduce player versions of companion skills like Blood Transfusion.

Perhaps we could get different versions of the current class lines as extra options? like skill line morphs

BXR_Lonestar

Erickson9610 wrote: »

If you've used any of the Companions, you may have noticed that the skills they use are correlated to the player's abilities, and that some of them have been shuffled around to fit the Damage Dealing, Tanking, and Healing roles. I've compiled a chart that names these Companion skill lines and lists which player skill line equivalent those skills come from:

It's no surprise that Warden, Arcanist, and Necromancer all have their Damage Dealing, Tanking, and Healing lines already cleanly sorted. But what about Nightblade, Dragonknight, Templar, and Sorcerer?

Surprisingly, Nightblade is the only base game Class which cleanly translates to the three roles — or is it? Mirri Elendis actually cheats by creating a new healer Nightblade ability out of thin air. This ability, Blood Transfusion, is entirely brand-new, and does not have a player Nightblade counterpart:

What this tells me is that ZOS shouldn't be afraid to just create new abilities to make the Subclassing balance better.

Dragonknight is the most developed example, since we have both Bastian Hallix and Tanlorin to thank for these abilities. All three skill lines use Ardent Flame abilities! Many skills on the player Dragonknight skill lines are being sorted by theme, which means abilities useful for tanking or healing may end up in a skill line of primarily damage skills. However, for Dragonknight Companions, the abilities are organized and placed in skill lines with appropriately-themed names.

Templar is an interesting example. The tanking line, Brilliant Shield, uses only Aedric Spear abilities. What's interesting is that Dawn's Wrath abilities are shared between the damage dealer and healer lines, as the Purifying Light morph of Backlash heals, and while most Dawn's Wrath abilities deal damage, one Aedric Spear ability was deemed more of a damage dealer skill than a tanking skill.

And, finally, Sorcerer is probably the weirdest example of them all. The damage dealer skill line called "Lightning Caller" uses one Dark Magic ability, which isn't themed after lightning at all. Of course the Companion equivalent of Lightning Form was deemed to be a tanking skill rather than a damage dealing skill — it would've been especially odd if, in Update 47, the player version of that skill lost the Major Resolve it grants. And the most interesting of all is the healing line, which uses the healing component of certain Daedric Summoning pets as a standalone skill, while also fitting the equivalents of Conjured Ward (Daedric Summoning) and Dark Conversion (Dark Magic). The player's Daedric Summoning line is somewhere between a tanking and a damage dealing line, while the Companion Sorcerer healing line primarily uses skills from there for healing instead.

---

So, what are the main takeaways from this analysis?

1. If ZOS wanted to, they could rearrange the player skill lines to be closer to how the Companion skill lines are organized. Cleanly sorting abilities into Damage Dealing, Tanking, and Healing skill lines would make Subclassing easier to balance.
2. ZOS could also create entirely new abilities to replace the underutilized ones. That was the solution to give Mirri another Nightblade skill for healing.
3. As we see by the names of each Companion skill line, there can still be a "theme" the way the base Class skill lines are organized by theme. For instance, Isobel's "Blazing Might" uses a spear of light and two sunlight spells; this name accurately captures the concept of using a fire/holy theme for dealing damage.

Honestly, I think Zos did not really have a clear vision for what the combat would be in this game from the start, and what each class would do. They just took the names of each class to come up with what they imagined that class would do "best" and their skills are largely focused on that role. So the original classes (Templar, Sorc, DK, and Nightblade) are all skewed towards one role or another, with DK being primarily tank (poor at healing, meh at DPS), Templar primarily healing (thought to be poor at tanking - at least in the beginning, and okay as a DPS), and Sorc and Nighblade primarily being mag/stam DPS. This is why you see overlap between class skill lines within these classes. In other words, they're not neatly striated into only DPS skills, Healer Skills, or Tanking skills, at least not to the degree the newer classes are.

This whole philosophy where any class should be able to play any role at a reasonably high level is something that seems to have come after IMO, and to be honest, I think this is where we saw the beginning of the breakdown of class identity. If you are going to have classes to begin with, then there is no problem with some classes performing better in some roles than in others. That is what gives true flavor and variety to the game and what makes it more rewarding to play all the classes - some classes just do some things better than the others.

The fact that they've sought to change this incrementally over the past few years, to me, tells me that they just have no vision for the classes and combat, or at best, the vision has changed. While I know some people are enjoying subclassing, IMO, I don't believe that this is a good direction for the game. People think it is fun now, but just wait till the nerfs start coming. Too much change far too quickly IMO.

But speaking directly to your suggestion that they simply change abilities to fit class skill lines, I would actually be all for this. There are some abilities that just aren't useful or make no sense within some skill lines. Like the Templar healing bubble, and the healing morph of Power of the Light. Why are healing/survivability skills present in what should be a damage skill line? And Aedric Spear is by far and away the best damage skill line for a Templar, but it has your tanking abilities in it (Taunt, damage shield, and Aoe that heals you).

I love my templars, don't get me wrong, but the order of the skills is very strange IMO. They need to take a pass and rework each classline now IMO, especially now that subclassing is a thing. There is a lot of times just no synergy between some skill lines and others, which actually serves to limit your choices and builds.