A big thing that this makes me consider is what ZOS's idea of a timeline is.

I am happy seeing that Kevin's latest post here is talking about balance changes and buffs for pure classes. The way that that post reads (and the questions of the survey) make it seem like there's a desire to shift things back to pure classes having their niche with strengths and weaknesses of their own, while Subclass builds are designed around trading your own power to cover your weaknesses, which is how I would have wanted this from the start.

However... how long is this going to take? And what is the team going to be doing in the interim?

We already see that, since U46, the Combat team has spent nearly 100% of their time on Vengeance because there are few, if any, balance changes. It really does feel like the only major balance shift they considered due to subclassing was 1) neuter DK sustain, 2) force Sorcs back into pet builds (partially reverted), 3) disallow ultimate passives from stacking, 4) change the giga buff from Grim Focus to a different very strong buff, 5) throw one bone to Necros in U48.

Are we expecting the team to do nothing but balance next year, considering how much needs to be done? Does this mean that we won't have the chance of seeing new Grimoires/Skill Lines/Classes until that's all done? And, after the fact that Solstice was a bit of a let down overall mostly due to the lack of new additions, does this bode well for the game if the Combat team doesn't add any of these?

Furthermore, the power level pre-U46 and post-U46 is off the charts. Nobody wants a bunch of hard-hitting nerfs (see U35), but is the Combat team okay with the current level of power possible, considering most standard trials have a strategy of "burn it hard enough that we don't need to see the mechanics." Are they going to consider taking power away? Or buffing PvE enemies? Or are they intending that the Encounter team's mechanic design is only for lower DPS groups and it's fine to burn through them?

I feel like the rebalance from this is a monumental task, but I do think that the team should have seen at least some of these issues coming when they planned Subclassing - after all, withing 24h of it leaking, the large raider Discords were already pointing all of these issues out without even having seen it. Is the Combat team really so detached from the players that they couldn't see that? (Don't answer that). Is that raising no alarm bells?

I want this balanced, I really do. At least I can still do my dungeon tris as a pureclass since I'm good enough at my role and have friends who don't mind me taking a harder route, but I can't just "lol I want to eat self nerfs!" in trial tri progs. But... I also want new things - 2025 was a pretty boring year since we didn't get anything really new to play with, just throwing a bunch of old stuff in a blender. I want to play with some new Grimoires (Werewolves desperately need something, and I also think a channelled beam that steals Overload's Heavy Attack animation to make a Fatecarver-esque elemental beam would be awesome). And I desperately want a new Class to be able to play with three all-new Skill Lines (bonus points for an Artificer with automata summons, grenades and traps, and tonal magic).
...but is this asking for having my cake and eating it too? Will we only get one or the other?

I appreciate the thought....
I just got disillusioned when the age-question came up

If you don't share your age, the survey ends here.

What does that mean to me?
I'm playing the game since beta, meaning I hang around here since 2013
meaning I know how to play my class, meaning I know how it feels to get castrated for the sake of pvp, screaming injustice and last but not least anything that's got nothing to do with my kind of playing the game and then being confronted with an over-uber-not-ever-getting-nerfed class called the arcanist...

I understand that your primary target is not players my age, but a group of youngsters who rule the market. I completely get your thought about oldies. But let me just tell you one thing: My age doesn't have anything to do with my playstile, desires or wishes in an mmorpg (the kind of which I played for more than 30 years now) - I wouldn't have answered any question in a different way if I was a teen or twen - which I still am (not only inside my head) but by heart.

So allow me to just state a fact: The age commiting restriction was truly *** and will lose you some dedicated players like me. (Not that you mind, I think...but still... spare us a thought, as you throw us aside for profit and commerce)

After playing for 11 years, of course I am tempted by the new abilities, especially the one that everyone uses or is talking about: fatecarver.

I don't want this to be nerfed, I want other classes to have abilities this cool. When I first used it, I was farming XP fighting lots of mobs at once, and I was laughing constantly of how ridiculously fun to use was this ability. Compare the fun factor of this with sap essence from night blade. I keep playing this game because it still makes me laugh. I don't care so much about the stats anymore, I just want it to be fun, but not silly.

In my opionion, you need to ditch the least used ability of each class and come with something else, or add new class abilities which feel fresh and fun. Maybe new morphs in certain cases, I don't know.

What I also dislike a lot about the ESO classes, is that all of them play like magic heroes. I can't make a brawler/knight build that is viable and feels like a hero that doesn't have any inclination for magic. Also, there is little difference between magic schools in terms of visuals.

I would like skills like shields to be from the alteration school, and have the visuals we know from earlier games. I get it that some things are too far on the road to be changed now, but at least you are going in some direction with custom visual effects.

I want more colors or themes for visual effects, for example to have a Nocturnal inspired nightblade instead of a vampire-like one, which became so boring to me after so many years. Or a sorc that is pure fire-mage or storm.