Subclassing is coming. How can we help them balance it?

TumlinTheJolly · April 14

As title indicates, subclassing has been announced. There's nothing we can do about that now. What we CAN do, is identify balance issues before they occur, and minimize the damage that subclassing will do upon release. This thread is intended for people to comment issues that they foresee, and follow that with how the issue could possibly be balanced.

I'll start us off:

-Obviously, burst damage will be a massive issue again. E.g., people will be able to queue up skills with delays to all pop at the same time, such as subs, curse, PotL (limited by the number of skill lines you can swap). They'll then be able to throw a skill like spectral bow as the delayed burst is occurring. This will result in 1-shotting people in pvp with minimal counterplay (especially if an invis pot is used). The only solution I can see here is to significantly nerf the damage of every burst skill. Another thing that would help would be buffing the Impen trait again (although this won't fix non-crit/High WD burst).

-Tanky builds will also be a big issue. People will be able to weave the strongest heals and shields together. E.g., Hardened Ward + warden or DK burst heals. The solution to this could actually be quite obvious, and is something that should have been done years ago... Buff defile again. Make major and minor defile debuffs much stronger, to negate the unhealthy playstyle of building to never die.

-Everyone will have access to good purges, such as templar cleanse. This will slightly nerf debuffs in PvP, though I don't think this is a huge issue, as groups currently can just run 1 good purger already. Making debuffs such as DoTs stronger would have negative flow-on effects to PvE, so probably isn't worth touching.

-If burst skills got nerfed, and DoTs were effectively nerfed due to easy access to purges, I could imagine a meta where people stacked WD and relied more heavily on their spammables? TBH, I think that's the healthiest possible meta I can imagine at this point in time. At least there would be some build diversity due to the sheer number of viable spammables in the game.

I'll probably have further thoughts as the theorycrafting around subclassing progresses, but am keen to hear other issues people have identified, as well as what they could do to fix them!

chongguang · April 14

PPL would need time do experiments of making class combo and then 100% chance for few op overpower combos would show up. Forcus on these op combos to see how to adjust them.

Jestir · April 14

Give feedback in the proper ZOS assigned topic and not take part in the 80 topics people are going to make to argue in

ForumBully · April 14

I think the best way to help is to encourage launching the system as advertised and give a cycle to shake out the problems. Everyone has their crystal ball out now and can tell you exactly what's going to happen, but I think it's more valuable to see what actually does happen. I believe, looking into my own crystal ball, that players dreaming up their combos are going to find out that they are going to be sacrificing more than they think trading skill lines...maybe it's a passive that is in the skill line they traded away, or a buff, or sustain. I don't think there is a skill line that is devastating to the game on its current class, so I don't think it will suddenly become so on another. What I think we will see is that there are and have been some very powerful advantages enjoyed by some classes and some very serious detriments suffered by other classes for a very long time. I don't know how anyone thinks that preferable.

I'm more worried about whatever set we're going to see today than I am about subclassing, since that's historically where imbalance in PVP comes from. I'm also worried that some existing problematic sets will fly under the radar again

ForumBully · April 14

Oh, and I think it's important to avoid releasing a watered down, percentage nerfed version of subclassing. The calls for this kind of thing are thinly veiled attempts to make it useless and unusable. People know it's coming, and if they can't stop it, they intend to see it released in a form that no one will want to use

Artim_X · April 14

Buff defile and buff resource cost poisons!

ItsNotLiving · April 14

Don’t worry about balancing everything interesting and fun about all the classes will be turned into reskinned versions of each other for the sake of this “feature”

Eldartar · April 14

Jestir wrote: »

Give feedback in the proper ZOS assigned topic and not take part in the 80 topics people are going to make to argue in

This every time

randconfig · April 14

Step 1: Wait to see the first PTS patch notes to know what changes occur to each class to balance for the subclassing system. No sense in theory crafting the current organization of class abilities and skill lines if they're planning to shift things around.

Firstmep · April 14

Keep in mind you don't just pick up a skill line, you also lose one interest process. And most classes have their strongest skills spread in all 3 lines. If you think you are just going to pick up 2 different burst skills like it's nothing than keep In mind that you will trade of powerful defensive passives or heals in the process.

RlyDontKnow · April 14

Why is everyone’s first reaction to buff/nerf individual skills to balance things?
If a skill line ends up overperforming too much when combining it with certain others, you can swap some skill or passive with another one of the classes skill lines to make the skill line less attractive for subclassing.
If you have an issue with too many delayed skills hitting at once, you can change the delays, so they become interchangeable instead of stackable (e.g. make the delayed skills all hit at 6s instead of 3/6/8.5/9s). That way you limit just how bursty things can become without needing individual skills into the ground.
You can also limit the applicability a bit in a way that keeps a passive or skill the same for the original class, but makes it weaker when combining with others.
There are a lot of options how to balance subclassing that don’t involve nerfing existing builds into the ground or buffing them out of proportion. Try to think a bit more outside he box folks 😉

ForumBully · April 14

RlyDontKnow wrote: »

Why is everyone’s first reaction to buff/nerf individual skills to balance things?
If a skill line ends up overperforming too much when combining it with certain others, you can swap some skill or passive with another one of the classes skill lines to make the skill line less attractive for subclassing.
If you have an issue with too many delayed skills hitting at once, you can change the delays, so they become interchangeable instead of stackable (e.g. make the delayed skills all hit at 6s instead of 3/6/8.5/9s). That way you limit just how bursty things can become without needing individual skills into the ground.
You can also limit the applicability a bit in a way that keeps a passive or skill the same for the original class, but makes it weaker when combining with others.
There are a lot of options how to balance subclassing that don’t involve nerfing existing builds into the ground or buffing them out of proportion. Try to think a bit more outside he box folks 😉

It's how we've been conditioned since launch I guess. I think everyone's initial first thoughts are going to hit some hard realities when they start actually making builds. No one seems to be thinking about the lines they give up to get others. Buffs lost, passives lost, etc. I'd rather get a full cycle before buffs are considered, but we'll see what we get soon.

ADarklore · April 14

According to Rich, based on their internal testing (which I'm sure AI helped), is that they saw some power creep but are OK with what they saw. So I'm really not sure they need any 'help' in balancing... bug fixes, yes. Afterall, that's what PTS is for.

ZDunlain · April 14

Structure all skill lines as dd/healing/tanking becuase if not, structured skill lines classes will be better for this system that non structured ones.

Firstmep · April 14

ZDunlain wrote: »

Structure all skill lines as dd/healing/tanking becuase if not, structured skill lines classes will be better for this system that non structured ones.

Depends on what content. Id argue in pve structured classes are better, since you can pick up multiple damage skill lines, but in pvp its the opposite, since on a structured class you cant cover you bases as easily if you want to swap a defensive line for an offensive one.

RlyDontKnow · April 14

Firstmep wrote: »

Depends on what content. Id argue in pve structured classes are better, since you can pick up multiple damage skill lines, but in pvp its the opposite, since on a structured class you cant cover you bases as easily if you want to swap a defensive line for an offensive one.

For optimized endgame groups I'd agree. For normal players I think they will struggle *way* more than they realize if they trade away all their sustain and defensive skills without any support to cover for them.

Thumbless_Bot · April 14

We can't. In case you haven't read between the lines, subclasses is their idea of balance. You think x is stronger than y, then slot x. Boom, you have balance.

gc0018 · April 15

We can't do anything unless ZOS realize it is impossible to balance all these massive amounts of combinations. Their aim is too big to be done even within 1-2 years.
I would rather they begin with some skill and add new skill slowly.

TumlinTheJolly · April 15

RlyDontKnow wrote: »

Why is everyone’s first reaction to buff/nerf individual skills to balance things?
If a skill line ends up overperforming too much when combining it with certain others, you can swap some skill or passive with another one of the classes skill lines to make the skill line less attractive for subclassing.
If you have an issue with too many delayed skills hitting at once, you can change the delays, so they become interchangeable instead of stackable (e.g. make the delayed skills all hit at 6s instead of 3/6/8.5/9s). That way you limit just how bursty things can become without needing individual skills into the ground.
You can also limit the applicability a bit in a way that keeps a passive or skill the same for the original class, but makes it weaker when combining with others.
There are a lot of options how to balance subclassing that don’t involve nerfing existing builds into the ground or buffing them out of proportion. Try to think a bit more outside he box folks 😉

This is a really good post... I hadn't thought of these solutions. I really like the idea of making all delayed skills have the same delay timing so you can't stack them. That's a PERFECT idea!

TumlinTheJolly · April 15

Jestir wrote: »

Give feedback in the proper ZOS assigned topic and not take part in the 80 topics people are going to make to argue in

Yes. Definitely. Unfortunately this post is older than the official feedback thread. It is more specific though!