Do you think ZOS should rollback subclassing and focus on class balance instead?

Iriidius · July 14

Yes

ZOS shouldnt escape critic just by ignoring it until critics give up or making issues worse or more until critics quit and only yesman are left telling critics to shut up and defending every change.

karthrag_inak · July 14

No

Yeah, because anyone who loves subclassing is OBVIOUSLY just a 'yesman'

Iriidius · July 14

Yes

As a player coming from skyrim subclassing and scribing dont make teso feel more like skyrim but like teso in worse and were not things I missed. Sunclassing neither keeps class identity nor makes eso really classfree.

Someone liking egoshooters will not play Skyrim more if you add guns.
Someone liking orange juice will not like milk more if you mix it with orange juice.
Some things should not be mixed.

o_Primate_o · July 14

Yes

Want balance between pure class and subclass? Make subclassed passives half as strong.

the90thmeridian · July 14

No

i voted no - subclassing is fun, but pure classes shouldnt suffer because of it. pure classes should be more powerful than subclassed builds but not as versatile.

Elvenheart · July 14

No

Eskibidus wrote: »

ZOS should roll back to 2017 and restart from there

I wonder if they still have character saves from back then so they could roll our characters back too and lose all the progress we’ve made with them since then? It would be so fun getting to do everything we’ve done since 2017 all over again! 😂

karthrag_inak · July 14

No

Iriidius wrote: »

As a player coming from skyrim subclassing and scribing dont make teso feel more like skyrim but like teso in worse and were not things I missed.

Well, since apparently past game experience is being used as credibility-builder, and as a completer of every ES game since Arena (attached is a picture just taken of original Arena install disks, which still actually boot, amazing as it may be), Khajiit considers the addition of subclassing to be the most iconically ES addition to the game since launch. It may not be to everyone's preference, but it IS more 'Elder Scrolls' than this game ever has been before.

Classes were never anything more than suggestions in any of the ES games, and the addition of classes to ESO was one of the biggest flaws introduced since the beginning that is finally, now, being somewhat rectified. Thank the bright moons.

Alaztor91 · July 14

No

karthrag_inak wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

As a player coming from skyrim subclassing and scribing dont make teso feel more like skyrim but like teso in worse and were not things I missed.

Well, since apparently past game experience is being used as credibility-builder, and as a completer of every ES game since Arena (attached is a picture just taken of original Arena install disks, which still actually boot, amazing as it may be), Khajiit considers the addition of subclassing to be the most iconically ES addition to the game since launch. It may not be to everyone's preference, but it IS more 'Elder Scrolls' than this game ever has been before.

Classes were never anything more than suggestions in any of the ES games, and the addition of classes to ESO was one of the biggest flaws introduced since the beginning that is finally, now, being somewhat rectified. Thank the bright moons.

You know what else would be more ''Elder Scrolls''? Permanently killing quest NPCs(not all were Essential after all), or what about forced PvP in every single zone of the game?(you were free to attack pretty much anyone you wanted).

Having your quest NPC being permanently killed, then being sneak killed by a stealth archer that you won't even see attacking you doesn't sound really fun. What about going around with a bunch of reanimated Trial Bosses and annihilating every player and NPC in your path? Both of those would make the game more ''Elder Scrolls'', but I'm pretty sure that most players wouldn't really call it fun.

karthrag_inak · July 14

No

That's nice.

DeathlyOmen · July 15

No chance they will reroll back and revert an update that’s been out which they already put time and money into making, only thing you can hope for now is for the balance of the system. I personally just came back so haven’t tried it yet but it’s worrisome they are nerfing classes because of it.

Radiate77 · July 15

No

karthrag_inak wrote: »

That's nice.

Best reply I’ve seen all year.

Props for holding onto those! I’m right there with you in agreement that Subclassing feels much more Elder Scrolls.

Scribing as a base game update gives me hope that they’re laying the ground-work for a future where skills are balanced to each other, rather than a skill line power budget.

When that happens, we might finally get schools of magic, and man let me tell you I’ve been waiting to craft a certain Conjuration spell for quite some time.

randconfig · July 15

No

Base classes were never balanced. Subclassing adds more variety and choice, so the game is objectively better with it.

karthrag_inak · July 15

No

Radiate77 wrote: »

they’re laying the ground-work for a future where skills are balanced to each other, rather than a skill line power budget

Agree with this. Now, balancing a poorly or over-performing skill (khajiit has heard them called 'over-tuned' which was most amusing) can be done in without constraints regarding underlying class concerns.

tomofhyrule · July 15

No

karthrag_inak wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

they’re laying the ground-work for a future where skills are balanced to each other, rather than a skill line power budget

Agree with this. Now, balancing a poorly or over-performing skill (khajiit has heard them called 'over-tuned' which was most amusing) can be done in without constraints regarding underlying class concerns.

I will save the excitement for them balancing an over/under-performing skill for when they actually do it.

Because so far it's "if you're not running these exact three lines and this array of skills on your bars, you're memetically underperforming"

Mathius_Mordred · July 15

No

Subclassed passives and skills should not hit quite as hard as on a pure class. This is the obvious solution.

Hapexamendios · July 15

No

No, I don't think they should roll it back. I do think they should reconsider some of the ways they've cone up with for balancing. Everything seems to be going towards a major or minor buff. They're taking away the uniqueness of the class line buffs and it's becoming far too homogenized.

Desiato · July 15

No

Hapexamendios wrote: »

No, I don't think they should roll it back. I do think they should reconsider some of the ways they've cone up with for balancing. Everything seems to be going towards a major or minor buff. They're taking away the uniqueness of the class line buffs and it's becoming far too homogenized.

This is actually the entire reason the major/minor buff system exists!

Previously, the abilities and sets that used it at the time of its introduction had unique buffs and stacking them was one of the early major balance issues in the game.

Like imagine if you could stack all of the sources of major brutality/sorcery. Now imagine if you could do that with all major buffs. It becomes very difficult to add new sets and abilities because power goes through the roof. The system was designed to avoid things like hard/soft caps and diminishing benefits.

I agree there's a lot of reasons why it's not ideal in this case, but ult gen is op at the moment (12s barriers) and it's trivializing a lot of content that was designed to be challenging. It's not just barriers, of course. Just to be clear, 12s barriers is what the theorycrafter who made the video thinks is theoretically possible, but in practice it was more like 15-30s. Still crazy.

When I was new to trials, what made them so exciting was all the mechs and new players learning them continue to experience that because it's essential to the experience IMO. With the current barrier meta, there's so much that can just be ignored.

I mean, that's what end game pve is supposed to be about. I think many experienced players take that for granted because it's been so long since they were at that stage. It gets to a point where it's all easy, even without the u46 boost in power.

The benefit of doing it this way is that most players who don't play in optimal groups will continue to have similar ult gen as they had before.

Really, ZOS should have addressed this before subclassing went live because it was very obvious this would happen and many of us predicted they'd have to homogenize a lot of unique aspects of skill lines. It would have been a lot less frustrating to players if it all happened in u46 because they'd have all the upsides of subclassing to console them. But that's spilt milk at this point.

katanagirl1 · July 15

Yes

In a perfect world, yes. We all know neither a rollback or balancing will happen.

I mainly just wanted to see the vote here.

Cooperharley · July 15

No

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

Subclassed passives and skills should not hit quite as hard as on a pure class. This is the obvious solution.

Nah, I enjoy subclassing. Not for this at all.

The problem is this just alienates people that enjoy subclassing which is not the solution. Ultimately, they just need to make targeted balance changes that make sense and don’t completely rock pure class players.

Iriidius · July 15

Yes

Alaztor91 wrote: »

karthrag_inak wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

As a player coming from skyrim subclassing and scribing dont make teso feel more like skyrim but like teso in worse and were not things I missed.

Well, since apparently past game experience is being used as credibility-builder, and as a completer of every ES game since Arena (attached is a picture just taken of original Arena install disks, which still actually boot, amazing as it may be), Khajiit considers the addition of subclassing to be the most iconically ES addition to the game since launch. It may not be to everyone's preference, but it IS more 'Elder Scrolls' than this game ever has been before.

Classes were never anything more than suggestions in any of the ES games, and the addition of classes to ESO was one of the biggest flaws introduced since the beginning that is finally, now, being somewhat rectified. Thank the bright moons.

You know what else would be more ''Elder Scrolls''? Permanently killing quest NPCs(not all were Essential after all), or what about forced PvP in every single zone of the game?(you were free to attack pretty much anyone you wanted).

Having your quest NPC being permanently killed, then being sneak killed by a stealth archer that you won't even see attacking you doesn't sound really fun. What about going around with a bunch of reanimated Trial Bosses and annihilating every player and NPC in your path? Both of those would make the game more ''Elder Scrolls'', but I'm pretty sure that most players wouldn't really call it fun.

After 11 years it is a bit late to turn teso into skyrim.
Coming from Oblivion and Skyrim I would have prefered having the 5 schools of magic over classes and staffs but ZOS decided to add classes insteat of skyrem schools of magic because it is an MMORPG and I got used to classes same as everyone playing the game and started liking class identity.
Then after 11 years where everyone played with and got used to classes they suddenly decide that classes are against the „play how you want“ thing but insteat of keeping pure classes viable and subclassing as a roleplay alternative they make subclassing builds superior to every pureclass build so every competitive player uses strongest skillline combination no matter how bad it thematically fits together or looks.
Subclassing is neither like skyrim schools of magic nor keeping class identity but just a bad imitation.

EnochianWing · July 15

Yes

If they aren't going to rollback subclassing they need to make it true subclassing not multiclassing or buff pure classes. Pure class is getting a double nerf with the upcoming nerfs. Any changes need to hit subclassed characters only or they need to buff pure classes, otherwise what is the point? Classes are intended to have give and takes, just like roles are. Stop pandering to the players that want their characters to be able to do everything. There is even less variety in builds now than before. It makes sense that a pure class character gets a boost of some kind because they are a master of one class should get a benefit for all their skill trees and being a master of a class over some mut that has pieces from here and there. Some sort of master passive for the class or subclasses (multi-classed) should have reduced stats on the abilities they are using outside of their primary class.

True subclassing, which I thought it would be when it was announced and actually excited for, would have been much more detailed and less lazy than this multiclassing. An example of this is:

Primary class: Dragonknight
Subclass: Templer: You can now scribe/morph the fiery breath ability to deal breathe the light flames that heal allies and damage enemies.

Subclass: Warden: You can now scribe/morph the fiery breath to be an ice breath that damages and immobilizes enemies.

Subclass: Nightblade: You can now scribe/morph the fiery breath to fire one magma ball that damages enemies and applies bleed and burn.

Subclass: Arcanist: You can now scribe/morph the fiery breath to have extended range and duration.

Sublcass: Necromancer: You can now scribe/morph fiery breath to blue flames which deal disease and flame damage.

Subclass: Sorcerer: You can now scribe/morph fiery breath to lightning breath what slows enemies or knocks them off balance.

Subclass Dragonknight: You can now scribe/morph fiery breath to leave an AOE scorched earth in addition to its effects now.
This is to keep pure classes relevant and this may not even be needed at all.

This would have been true subclassing that would have given actual variety to builds and what you see of abilities. It didn't even have to be all abilities, they could have just started with 1 specific ability for each skill tree that could be morphed or players choice of 1 ability per skill tree. Now, look at most death recap you will see sorc, nb, and warden skills 9/10 times. Not to mention the boost they gave PVE players who with no skill had a power jump just by multiclassing. This just looks like an attempt to hop on trends for subclassing from other games or games that are coming up the pipeline, but rather than doing it right they called multiclassing subclassing. Honestly, if the nerfs continue to pure classes because of this system I won't renew my ESO+ and jus wait for AoC to come out. They're at least listening to community and balancing their game with some thought and intent behind it not trying to push people to subclass only.

Iriidius · July 16

Yes

Desiato wrote: »

Hapexamendios wrote: »

No, I don't think they should roll it back. I do think they should reconsider some of the ways they've cone up with for balancing. Everything seems to be going towards a major or minor buff. They're taking away the uniqueness of the class line buffs and it's becoming far too homogenized.

This is actually the entire reason the major/minor buff system exists!

Previously, the abilities and sets that used it at the time of its introduction had unique buffs and stacking them was one of the early major balance issues in the game.

Like imagine if you could stack all of the sources of major brutality/sorcery. Now imagine if you could do that with all major buffs. It becomes very difficult to add new sets and abilities because power goes through the roof. The system was designed to avoid things like hard/soft caps and diminishing benefits.

I agree there's a lot of reasons why it's not ideal in this case, but ult gen is op at the moment (12s barriers) and it's trivializing a lot of content that was designed to be challenging. It's not just barriers, of course. Just to be clear, 12s barriers is what the theorycrafter who made the video thinks is theoretically possible, but in practice it was more like 15-30s. Still crazy.

When I was new to trials, what made them so exciting was all the mechs and new players learning them continue to experience that because it's essential to the experience IMO. With the current barrier meta, there's so much that can just be ignored.

I mean, that's what end game pve is supposed to be about. I think many experienced players take that for granted because it's been so long since they were at that stage. It gets to a point where it's all easy, even without the u46 boost in power.

The benefit of doing it this way is that most players who don't play in optimal groups will continue to have similar ult gen as they had before.

Really, ZOS should have addressed this before subclassing went live because it was very obvious this would happen and many of us predicted they'd have to homogenize a lot of unique aspects of skill lines. It would have been a lot less frustrating to players if it all happened in u46 because they'd have all the upsides of subclassing to console them. But that's spilt milk at this point.

The ultigen of most players who don't play in optimal group will not stay similar when they turn all the class passives giving the player ulti into major or minor heroism or if they give them a common cooldown as they give ulti only to the user and not to allies.
Therefore it hits solobuilds who get most of their ulti from selfish sources more than organized groups who get only a part from selfish sources and much from group sources.

Lucasalex92 · July 16

Yes

i definitly belive yes otherwise it will be nerf to ground really badly until it wont be worth subclassing

moderatelyfatman · July 16

Yes

Lucasalex92 wrote: »

i definitly belive yes otherwise it will be nerf to ground really badly until it wont be worth subclassing

I think they'll nerf all the builds except for 3-4 skill lines which combine to buff the arcanist beam. Everything else will be so much lower that it will be a case of hobbling yourself just for the sake of being different.

LadyTatsu · July 16

No

I personally am enjoying subclassing, and while I believe it needs quite a bit of work, it's a fun new experience.

BXR_Lonestar · July 16

Yes

Desiato wrote: »

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

I don't think they will, but IMO it is something they should consider doing. I realize there are a lot of people excited about the game, but the more and more I play around with subclassing (and not building cookie-cutter builds that are being posted online), the more frustrated I find myself getting with the system. The system is supposed to make it easier to do higher DPS and have builds that have greater synergy between your main skill lines, and the more I play around with non-META builds, the more frustrated I keep getting because I see my dps drop in comparison to where my builds were before. It's not just me, as I see other people saying the same thing.

No, you don't have to make a meta build. But that doesn't mean any combination is going to result in an improvement!

It's a game. Game have to be played by the rules. To do that, one must have an understanding of the rules. Many who play ESO do not, but after playing their classes for years, they either followed a guide or advice at some point or intuitively figured it out after a process of trial and error.

In general, if one wants their dps to improve, they must combine skill lines that provide the basics such as Major Brutality/Sorcery and Major Savagery/Prophecy. Next, they should consider passives. Then there are the minor buffs and things like berserker. Then they need to imagine their combat rotations.

Are you missing something important? Do not despair, you can lean into Scribing. Truthfully, Scribing can fix pretty much any shortcomings.

If one does those things, it is unlikely they will end up worse off than before. It doesn't even have to be 3 dps lines. For example, Warden's Lotus Flower from the Green Balance line grants Major Savagery/Prophecy when active. Warden is actually a good dps class and probably one of the best for overland and dungeons.

Of course, all of this also requires learning about the classes you want to subclass!

If one wants to meme or play a themed build, well of course they shouldn't expect it to just work. But again, they can lean into Scribing to correct any shortcomings.

Why would class purists struggle with this? Well, if someone is a purist and especially someone who has only played one class, of course they are predispositioned not to be flexible. That's on them, but it's also fine because their pure class is perfectly fine if they don't want to explore new realms with basic logic -- this is not rocket science, but some effort is required.

With all that said, is more dps what's truly important for one's activities? A lot of players will be better off with a pure class for the activities they do because pure classes are so well balanced and they're used to playing them. 3 dps line builds might have some serious shortcomings for some players.

I speak from experience. I am levelling subclassing on my mule account when I have spare moments by playing the game instead of grinding. Every build I'm using is completely off-meta and they've all been fine, even with low level skill lines. More than fine, it's been fun. Scribing is the key.

tl;dir: Major Brutality/Sorcery, Major Savagery/Prophecy, Scribing

@Desiato

I've been playing this game a while and I know this as good as anyone. The disappointment isn't that the combinations that I have been trying don't work. The disappointment is the fact that the implementation of the subclass system has been sloppy and poorly thought out, and so subclass skill lines that SHOULD have some synergy together actually have none. Take, for example, petmaster builds. Daedric prey from the Sorc summoning tree doesn't grant its 50% damage buff to other pets outside of the Sorc summoning tree. That means the other pet skill lines are basically a DPS loss.

And nearly every skill line I've added to my HA sorc has been a DPS loss when parsed on the trial dummy in comparison to what my sorc was doing as a pure class build. That includes skill lines that should apply general buffs like the assassination skill line that filled in my build's shortcomings with extra crit chance, crit damage, and a better execute. Still performs more poorly than my pure class for some reason.

Stuff like that wouldn't happen if subclassing was well thought out and the game was purpose-built for it, but this game wasn't. Somewhere someone decided that it would be a good move to just let any class select skill lines from any other class without much thought as to how these classes would fit together.

For a veteran of this game, this is the kind of stuff that wants me to play less, not more. I had builds I was happy with, but those builds are going to be left behind if I don't go through this frustrating process of trial and error and theorycrafting for each one of my characters to find the magic combo for what works for me.

The very least they could have done is put more thought into how subclassing would be BALANCED and not just release subclassing first, and THEN look to balance it with future patches as they are looking to do in U47. That way if you didn't subclass, it didn't feel like such a big penalty to how you choose to play the game. But doing this wasn't that bright either. "Yeah, we know its broken, but we're going to push this stuff out anyways, and we'll fix it later." Tell me where this would work in ANY other industry? Would you buy a car from a dealer had that attitude?

Maybe this crap will be good in 6 months or a year after they've worked out all the kinks, but right now, I'm finding the game to be much less fun than it was before, and I'm not alone because I've seen a noticable dip in my guilds and the number of players who are choosing to play other games instead of this one.

Desiato · July 16

No

@BXR_Lonestar

So you're playing the game according to the rules you want instead of its actual rules, so of course it's not resulting in improvements.

There's really not a lot a huge amount of trial and error involved to get basic improvements. I seem to recall Skinny Cheeks highlighted quite a few HA builds.

karthrag_inak · July 16

No

Desiato wrote: »

karthrag_inak wrote: »

Yeah, because anyone who loves subclassing is OBVIOUSLY just a 'yesman'

Says the guy voting yes!

And of course, when you agree with a change, you see those who are against it as contrarians!

That old subjective reality.

The operative word being 'just', of course. The term 'yesman', which is insulting, infers someone who agrees -only- to agree, regardless of topic or personal opinion. Khajiit does, in fact, love the new system on the strength of its own merits and his own experiences. That being said, khajiit is also open to consider other opinions, and if these opinions should have merit, khajiit would reconsider.

karthrag_inak · July 16

No

tomofhyrule wrote: »

karthrag_inak wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

they’re laying the ground-work for a future where skills are balanced to each other, rather than a skill line power budget

Agree with this. Now, balancing a poorly or over-performing skill (khajiit has heard them called 'over-tuned' which was most amusing) can be done in without constraints regarding underlying class concerns.

I will save the excitement for them balancing an over/under-performing skill for when they actually do it.

Because so far it's "if you're not running these exact three lines and this array of skills on your bars, you're memetically underperforming"

You're not wrong. Khajiit is equal parts curious and concerned about how this may play out.

Muizer · July 16

@BXR_Lonestar is spot on. This is just a technical implementation to give characters access to skill lines of other classes. That falls well short of a release-ready feature both in terms of balancing and design. It's just a rough first draft.