How Subclassing is an Extremely Rigid System for PvP

Stamicka · May 25

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.

YandereGirlfriend · May 25

I appreciate the thoughtful post. And agree that subclassing can use some better balancing. Particularly for the underachieving skill lines.

However, let's not pretend that this is a novel situation. Instead of specific skill lines, we currently have this with classes instead. Compare the ratio of open-world Nightblades and Sorcs to Arcanists and Necromancers, for example. The ratios are astronomical because the differences in class kit, and specifically to the PvP attributes that you cite, were already extreme.

So yes. War, war never changes. (Well that and Nightblade somehow getting buffed every patch.)

Treeshka · May 25

Well subclassing may need a balancing but no matter what they change pure classes will get a hit. I think that is on the major community concerns nowadays.

Stamicka · May 25

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

I appreciate the thoughtful post. And agree that subclassing can use some better balancing. Particularly for the underachieving skill lines.

However, let's not pretend that this is a novel situation. Instead of specific skill lines, we currently have this with classes instead. Compare the ratio of open-world Nightblades and Sorcs to Arcanists and Necromancers, for example. The ratios are astronomical because the differences in class kit, and specifically to the PvP attributes that you cite, were already extreme.

So yes. War, war never changes. (Well that and Nightblade somehow getting buffed every patch.)

You're right that a lot of people class hop to whatever is over performing, but solving that issue is much easier than solving subclass balance issues. So with pure classes, there's 3 known skill lines on each class to balance against the other classes. Now though, whenever the developers make a change to one skill line, they have to think about how it interacts with all others. They had a much better shot at balancing 7 classes than they do at subclassing which has 100s of possibilities on paper. Subclassing is virtually unbalanceable in a reasonable way, while keeping identity and uniqueness.

Balancing the pure classes is a very possible task, it's even nearly been achieved before. If you go back to the Homestead patch notes, you'll see that Templar got Power of the Light buffed to be a usable PvP burst skill, and Dragonknights got a series of buffs which made them much better in PvP. Nightblade and Sorcerer were very strong as usual so they didn't need big changes, but Templar and DK got the exact things they were missing. It was probably one of the most balanced PvP patches ever and they could learn a lot from it. Unfortunately that patch was followed by Morrowind which came with a disastrous change to the CP system and over the top sustain nerfs. Anyway, point is, we've seen good balance before with pure classes. There's just been a lot of missing the mark since 2017.

Sarannah · May 25

Or ZOS could just do nothing... with subclassing everyone now has access to the same 'overpowered'/powerful skilllines. Which makes nerfing or changing anything from those skilllines pointless, as everyone will flock to the next best skillline if one is nerfed.

Subclassing removes the entire point of ever having to nerf anything ever again. ZOS could release new extremely powerfull class skilllines(or classes), and it won't change anything. As everyone can use those skilllines! Keeping the power in check between any player vs player interaction.

Even if something is nerfed that is perceived as overpowered by pvp players, these pvp players will flock to the next best 'overpowered' thing and ask for it to be nerfed. It is a neverending cycle. A cycle which has already messed up many skills/gearsets/mythics/etc, a cycle that has removed many fun things from the game already.

Alaztor91 · May 25

At this point I just assume that ZOS isn't considering PvP balance issues with regards to Subclassing because they plan on eventually implementing ''Vengeance style'' rules to Cyro/IC/BGs.

Stamicka · May 25

Sarannah wrote: »

Or ZOS could just do nothing... with subclassing everyone now has access to the same 'overpowered'/powerful skilllines. Which makes nerfing or changing anything from those skilllines pointless, as everyone will flock to the next best skillline if one is nerfed.

Subclassing removes the entire point of ever having to nerf anything ever again. ZOS could release new extremely powerfull class skilllines(or classes), and it won't change anything. As everyone can use those skilllines! Keeping the power in check between any player vs player interaction.

Even if something is nerfed that is perceived as overpowered by pvp players, these pvp players will flock to the next best 'overpowered' thing and ask for it to be nerfed. It is a neverending cycle. A cycle which has already messed up many skills/gearsets/mythics/etc, a cycle that has removed many fun things from the game already.

Yea I mean you're basically just describing how this system will lead to homogenization and that's part of the problem. Before someone might ask "What's the DK meta?" or "What's the Templar meta?", now it's just "What's the meta?". Things will get way more stale and boring when everyone is using the same skill lines. At least in the current system you have people who make a particular class work even if it's not great.

Also is there really a reason to offer so much choice when some choices are miles and miles ahead of others? As I said in an earlier reply, I've seen the game in a nearly balanced state during the Homestead patch. Balance with pure classes is possible and with that comes natural class diversity and identity. This subclassing system has none of that and leaving it as is will drive many people away.

NoSoup · May 25

Personally I think Shadow is a better option for Major resolve as you can also gain Major Savagery, Major Evasion, Minor Resolve, Major Resolve, Increased recoveries by 15% and max health. On top of all this you gain a guaranteed Critical strike and an escape mechasim.

mrreow · May 25

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

I appreciate the thoughtful post. And agree that subclassing can use some better balancing. Particularly for the underachieving skill lines.

However, let's not pretend that this is a novel situation. Instead of specific skill lines, we currently have this with classes instead. Compare the ratio of open-world Nightblades and Sorcs to Arcanists and Necromancers, for example. The ratios are astronomical because the differences in class kit, and specifically to the PvP attributes that you cite, were already extreme.

So yes. War, war never changes. (Well that and Nightblade somehow getting buffed every patch.)

Not true at all. Classes always worked rock, paper, scissors even if it was really barebones and balance was all over the place.

Each of the classes had its own strengths. If you wanted these strengths you needed to play the whole class and accept its weaknesses.

Only by playing around the class weak spots and strategically making the most use of the strong aspects you could hope to be good in PvP.

The balance changed many times over the years from bad to worse from worse to meh. However at the peak of eso PvP all classes were more or less competitive at least in some aspect, at least in one type (Magicka or stamina).

All these had their meta builds that maximised strengths and tried to minimise weaknesses.

This was very nice but we had no idea how good we had and that suddenly someone will want to make this very core of all mmo class systems disappear…

James-Wayne · May 25

You don't have to subclass, it's option but if you feel for PvP it's not viable then just don't subclass. Simple.

mrreow · May 25

James-Wayne wrote: »

You don't have to subclass, it's option but if you feel for PvP it's not viable then just don't subclass. Simple.

Right, because losing again and again to much superior version of your original archetype, an omnipotent uber class that has all the strongest of your skills with none of the weakest, is super fun.

Stamicka · May 25

James-Wayne wrote: »

You don't have to subclass, it's option but if you feel for PvP it's not viable then just don't subclass. Simple.

No, this is not how it works and it's an oversimplification. Look at hybridization for example and apply the same logic: "Hybridization is optional and if you want to remain as a pure Magicka or pure Stamina build, you can." This isn't true for anyone who wants to have a decent experience in PvP.

Imagine making a pure Magicka Nightblade build and trying to fight a hybrid. The pure mag build would probably be in 5 piece light, it would not have vigor, it would be forced into less ideal morphs like Sap Essence over Power Extraction, and they might need to reconsider their weapon choices with resource restoring in mind. I can tell you right now, not having vigor and being in so much light armor wouldn't be very fun against a hybrid build.

Same goes for subclassing, you just won't have a very good experience against people who choose the good skill lines when you don't.

Stamicka · May 25

NoSoup wrote: »

Personally I think Shadow is a better option for Major resolve as you can also gain Major Savagery, Major Evasion, Minor Resolve, Major Resolve, Increased recoveries by 15% and max health. On top of all this you gain a guaranteed Critical strike and an escape mechasim.

Yea I mentioned that Shadow isn't a bad option compared to Restoring Light. A lot of people don't like relying on invisible cloak though, me especially. The healing potential and sustain would be significantly worse with Shadow as well, but it could work as a slightly different "flavor" of the build I described in the post.

YandereGirlfriend · May 26

mrreow wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

I appreciate the thoughtful post. And agree that subclassing can use some better balancing. Particularly for the underachieving skill lines.

However, let's not pretend that this is a novel situation. Instead of specific skill lines, we currently have this with classes instead. Compare the ratio of open-world Nightblades and Sorcs to Arcanists and Necromancers, for example. The ratios are astronomical because the differences in class kit, and specifically to the PvP attributes that you cite, were already extreme.

So yes. War, war never changes. (Well that and Nightblade somehow getting buffed every patch.)

Not true at all. Classes always worked rock, paper, scissors even if it was really barebones and balance was all over the place.

Each of the classes had its own strengths. If you wanted these strengths you needed to play the whole class and accept its weaknesses.

Only by playing around the class weak spots and strategically making the most use of the strong aspects you could hope to be good in PvP.

The balance changed many times over the years from bad to worse from worse to meh. However at the peak of eso PvP all classes were more or less competitive at least in some aspect, at least in one type (Magicka or stamina).

All these had their meta builds that maximised strengths and tried to minimise weaknesses.

This was very nice but we had no idea how good we had and that suddenly someone will want to make this very core of all mmo class systems disappear…

This is a pretty Rose-Colored Glasses take on class balance, heh. Especially over the last few years.

Reality is that the overwhelming majority of players just surf the meta and play what's easiest to win on at any given moment in time. A few, probably Malacath-followers, embrace playing the underdog classes for the challenge or the clout but players who succeed on those classes would be even better on literally anything else.

The same situation will exist after subclassing just with different names to describe it.

fizzylu · May 26

Alaztor91 wrote: »

At this point I just assume that ZOS isn't considering PvP balance issues with regards to Subclassing because they plan on eventually implementing ''Vengeance style'' rules to Cyro/IC/BGs.

Isn't that probably the sad truth.

Major_Mangle · May 26

Sarannah wrote: »

Or ZOS could just do nothing... with subclassing everyone now has access to the same 'overpowered'/powerful skilllines. Which makes nerfing or changing anything from those skilllines pointless, as everyone will flock to the next best skillline if one is nerfed.

Subclassing removes the entire point of ever having to nerf anything ever again. ZOS could release new extremely powerfull class skilllines(or classes), and it won't change anything. As everyone can use those skilllines! Keeping the power in check between any player vs player interaction.

Even if something is nerfed that is perceived as overpowered by pvp players, these pvp players will flock to the next best 'overpowered' thing and ask for it to be nerfed. It is a neverending cycle. A cycle which has already messed up many skills/gearsets/mythics/etc, a cycle that has removed many fun things from the game already.

Most balance changes made to the game has been because of PvE, not PvP. Personally I don´t have any issues with ZOS not separating the two (even though battle spirit could be used more), but it still baffles me why some players think that PvE should be some untouched "kitties and rainbows - sanbox fantasy land" where balance doesn´t exist. I don´t find it fun when there are a few things that are so out of line in terms of balance that everything else becomes obsolete, and no the solution is not to "buff everything" because that what´s brought us in this never-ending mess of power creep to begin with.

cuddles_with_wroble · May 26

Sarannah wrote: »

Or ZOS could just do nothing... with subclassing everyone now has access to the same 'overpowered'/powerful skilllines. Which makes nerfing or changing anything from those skilllines pointless, as everyone will flock to the next best skillline if one is nerfed.

Subclassing removes the entire point of ever having to nerf anything ever again. ZOS could release new extremely powerfull class skilllines(or classes), and it won't change anything. As everyone can use those skilllines! Keeping the power in check between any player vs player interaction.

Even if something is nerfed that is perceived as overpowered by pvp players, these pvp players will flock to the next best 'overpowered' thing and ask for it to be nerfed. It is a neverending cycle. A cycle which has already messed up many skills/gearsets/mythics/etc, a cycle that has removed many fun things from the game already.

You have the wrong perspective, yes people will always play the meta and you can’t stop that no matter what you do so fighting against it is pointless.

99% of the skills in eso are worthless when you compare them to any of the “meta” skills so really the fix is not to nerf what’s strong but to rework and buff the very other skill lines

Games are way more fun when everything is op in its own way rather than how eso normally is where everything is trash and you just pick the best looking piece of trash out of the pile

DeadlySerious · May 26

Alaztor91 wrote: »

At this point I just assume that ZOS isn't considering PvP balance issues with regards to Subclassing because they plan on eventually implementing ''Vengeance style'' rules to Cyro/IC/BGs.

This is my biggest fear and the main reason I'm moving toward stepping away from ESO. Nearly all my friends have already left the game anyway.

The_Meathead · May 26

We saw with Hybridization that the end result was homogenization.

I think most of us see the same coming with Subclassing, save on an even larger scale.

This post and your detailed examples are extremely appreciated, but as others have said here and I voiced a few days back in another thread I truly feel like we're gonna eventually be told that Vengeance is where to go if you want *any* sort of Balance, while everything else for PvP is just gonna be "the Wild West," like WoW did a few years back with WPvP. Things will get worse, and they'll just stop trying outside the singular campaign.

It's not what I want, but I definitely feel like we're being herded to Vengeance and that they're gonna put very little if any effort anywhere else for PvP balance.

Stamicka · May 27

The_Meathead wrote: »

It's not what I want, but I definitely feel like we're being herded to Vengeance and that they're gonna put very little if any effort anywhere else for PvP balance.

I’m not sure where they stand on that. I think Vengeance has potential with some tweaks and additions.

Right now it’s likely the only reason I’ll play once subclassing gets released. I’ll gladly take Vengeance over how bad subclassing is going to be.

NxJoeyD · June 20

Agreed … Subclassing has made PvP far worse than it had been before, for the exact reasons we all thought; because skill sets aren’t balanced from a mechanical or logical standpoint.

IMO the way you get around all the issues is to get rid of metas, and before anyone says that’s impossible, no, it’s really not. The logic isn’t that difficult and we see parallels in “balance” in other competitive environments so the logic baseline exists, it would just need to be applied here.

As for subclassing, yeah, we all knew it would be like this … arguably NB & Templar were the top two classes in PvP, and just as expected, players are running right to those class lines .. but since nothing was done to address mitigation, clumsy mechanics, or busted gear sets it’s only made existing problems worse.

There were already a lot of abilities and structures that had a lot more reward vs risk prospect and now there’s even less opportunity to properly counter the rat-strats because there’s no element of diminishing returns to subclass pairings,

LPapirius · June 20

Sarannah wrote: »

Or ZOS could just do nothing... with subclassing everyone now has access to the same 'overpowered'/powerful skilllines. Which makes nerfing or changing anything from those skilllines pointless, as everyone will flock to the next best skillline if one is nerfed.

Subclassing removes the entire point of ever having to nerf anything ever again. ZOS could release new extremely powerfull class skilllines(or classes), and it won't change anything. As everyone can use those skilllines! Keeping the power in check between any player vs player interaction.

Even if something is nerfed that is perceived as overpowered by pvp players, these pvp players will flock to the next best 'overpowered' thing and ask for it to be nerfed. It is a neverending cycle. A cycle which has already messed up many skills/gearsets/mythics/etc, a cycle that has removed many fun things from the game already.

Seems like that is exactly the plan to me.

Erickson9610 · June 21

Stamicka wrote: »

Sarannah wrote: »

Or ZOS could just do nothing... with subclassing everyone now has access to the same 'overpowered'/powerful skilllines. Which makes nerfing or changing anything from those skilllines pointless, as everyone will flock to the next best skillline if one is nerfed.

Subclassing removes the entire point of ever having to nerf anything ever again. ZOS could release new extremely powerfull class skilllines(or classes), and it won't change anything. As everyone can use those skilllines! Keeping the power in check between any player vs player interaction.

Even if something is nerfed that is perceived as overpowered by pvp players, these pvp players will flock to the next best 'overpowered' thing and ask for it to be nerfed. It is a neverending cycle. A cycle which has already messed up many skills/gearsets/mythics/etc, a cycle that has removed many fun things from the game already.

Yea I mean you're basically just describing how this system will lead to homogenization and that's part of the problem. Before someone might ask "What's the DK meta?" or "What's the Templar meta?", now it's just "What's the meta?". Things will get way more stale and boring when everyone is using the same skill lines. At least in the current system you have people who make a particular class work even if it's not great.

Has anyone ever asked "What's the Werewolf meta"? There still is one, despite Subclassing, because its skills are mutually exclusive from everyone else, and vice versa.

Yet, no one asks about Werewolf. It's the last bit of identity left in this game's combat system, and it's left out of serious discussion. Why? Because the Werewolf meta isn't meta — it's so far behind the meta that it's not a question that anyone is bothering to ask.

Is it better to have all these different metas if only a select few are worthy of consideration?

fizzybeef · June 21

Alaztor91 wrote: »

At this point I just assume that ZOS isn't considering PvP balance issues with regards to Subclassing because they plan on eventually implementing ''Vengeance style'' rules to Cyro/IC/BGs.

Wich would be a straight reason to quit

Rungar · June 21

they should of modified cp to damage based specialization. This way you have to choose a damage and also gain its weakness, which naturally prevents anything from becoming meta since theres always another build out there to exploit your meta build. Zos not too good at design though so here we are lol.

LittlePinkDot · June 24

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.

NxJoeyD · June 24

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.

Frooke · June 24

Well, I’ve already seen about five different builds that break your rule. Keep in mind that it’s possible to get buffs like Major Resolve with Mighty Chudan, and you can create a healing ability with Scribing, so there’s still a lot of potential to be explored. I enjoy this burst-focused PvP, but I’ve also seen builds focused on DOTs and status effects, using a combo of ice warden with Ardent Flame and Storm Calling, and it’s extremely powerful… so I believe you’re limiting yourself and haven’t explored all the options

Weesacs · June 24

Ive been playing BGs extensively since the recent update and its good to see a plethora of different builds being used. Players also seem to be hitting much harder.

However the most dangerous build ive experienced is the ranged Sorc build with assassin line. When overload is up and merciless resolve triggers, its a huge combo that is very difficult to defend against.

NxJoeyD · June 24

I’ve been doing A LOT of PvP testing and I’m seeing even more of the problems that plagued PvP before the upstate:

Spamming stacking CC without any strategy involved.

Excessive self healing & mitigation.

Hitting set procs much easier (specifically RoA & Vicious Death combined)

While, yes; we’re seeing a degree of new diversity it’s quickly sliding into the minority as the scope of meta shrinks and we’re seeing more of the same skill lines getting slotted in ways that probably shouldn’t exist, OR, shouldn’t exist without at least some form of diminishing return.

This can potentially make combat even less strategic and more mindless spam than ever before. .. throw in everyone’s two most abused gear sets and we’re in for a clumsy ‘ol time.

YandereGirlfriend · June 24

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.