i love Subclassing ^_^

I don’t think this poll is going to have the desired outcome you want.

These forums are a small subset of the actual playerbase. More than 90% of the people who used to participate here have either been banned, or no longer use this place to communicate.

Compared to older threads, each of our newer ones only receive a fraction of the interaction that they used to, and most of the people who are left over are all unhappy about one thing or another.

Edit: If I’m wrong, I welcome that. That said if people don’t want to see others trample over their favorite systems, they should speak up.

Radiate77 wrote: »

I don’t think this poll is going to have the desired outcome you want.

These forums are a small subset of the actual playerbase. More than 90% of the people who used to participate here have either been banned, or no longer use this place to communicate.

Compared to older threads, each of our newer ones only receive a fraction of the interaction that they used to, and most of the people who are left over are all unhappy about one thing or another.

You are definitely right, most make a forum account so they have a place to air their dislikes about the game without offering any constructive advice. Zos should never make critical changes to the game based on these forum threads, only the participations numbers in game.

Subclassing (+ Skill Styles) literally brought me back to playing the game and having fun again.

I've been having a blast turning my NB main into a NB/Warden/DK with the Nocturnal skill styles to have something not only thematic to my character but also much better at DPS than I've ever achieved before.

Same with my Warden tank now running Warden/DK.

And my Nocturnal-themed healer that I previously made as a Templar to build into a vet Healer being more thematic with the purple/lilac skill styles + subclassing as Templar/Warden/Necro. Not only is she now visually thematic to a Nocturnal character, but I can heal through things like vet March of Sacrifices and vet Kyne's Aegis no problem, and I'm not even running endgame trial gear on her yet.

And my Deadlands daedra themed DK/NB assassin brawler. That one's been pretty fun as well.

I'm sure I'll find other combinations I like once I play around with a few more of my toons, after I fine-tune what I'm currently playing with exactly to my liking. Really happy with the change honestly.

SwordOfSagas wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

I don’t think this poll is going to have the desired outcome you want.

These forums are a small subset of the actual playerbase. More than 90% of the people who used to participate here have either been banned, or no longer use this place to communicate.

Compared to older threads, each of our newer ones only receive a fraction of the interaction that they used to, and most of the people who are left over are all unhappy about one thing or another.

You are definitely right, most make a forum account so they have a place to air their dislikes about the game without offering any constructive advice. Zos should never make critical changes to the game based on these forum threads, only the participations numbers in game.

Tales of Tribute, Curated Drops, the companions Sharp and Azandar, Wandering World Bosses, reverted the planned change of removing all unique ultigen sources from class skill lines on PTS, home tours, activity finder, add-ons on console, Scribing, the upcoming opt-in overland difficulty increase...all things that appear to be their response to feedback on the forums prior to implementation.

I don't think we have to be the majority of players to have valid feedback and good ideas have come from the forums.

I want to like it, I really do. But I can't overlook the glaring issues with subclassing, such as the loss of class identity, the even more rigid meta (hi beam builds), and the weird "balance" attempts that inexplicably tried to nerf skills/ultimate rather than actually balancing subclassing. Taken in that context, I can't say that I like subclassing as it stands now.

Yes, but not in the way they implemented it and I think many people fall into this category. ZOS basically dropped a nuke on the game and didn't have the deceny to provide shelter, food, or water for the starving in the underground shelters.

It is appauling how slow they are with developement on a major, game changing, core combat feature. For some reason, U47 and U48 was nearly abscent of any meaningful changes outside of 2 minor nerfs.

What subclassing needs to do is introduce build variety by first making the core class combinations matter. For the most part, DPS skill lines are good, but DPS skills in support lines are dead. So for example, they could add "combo" effects to them to make pairing multiple lines advantageous because outright adding equal DPS passives to those lines won't cut it, it would inflate them out of their budget.

Eg. Haunting Curse deals a dot or applies major breach to enemies who've been hit by a Storm Calling or Dark Magic ability within the past 4 seconds.

The design philosophy should be to buff, not nerf, avoid punishing currently strong combinations, figure out why they're strong and reward combining unique idea's to bring them up to par. In addition to combo effects, consider swapping some skills around that are currently in lines they probably shouldn't be in. I'm not saying all of them, but some of them need to swap around.

And this "combo" idea shouldn't be limited to pure classing, it is the easiest, and the first place I'd implement it, but it should be extended outwards in a more vague way for subclassing too.

Eg. If I want to make a Pet Tamer, the most obvious and intuitive option should be to stack Pet Skill lines, but currently it just punishes you for trying. Daedric Prey should buff all pets, but Daedric ones a bit more. Maybe consider making Flame Skull, Boneyard, Cliff Racer, and Flies deal "pet damage". It would make sense, introduce some build diversity, while doing absolutely nothing to players who don't care to build into a pet playstyle, they'd continue playing the same way they always have.

Pets are an obvious one, but you can extend outwards to other obvious areas. For example, ask yourself when using the current 21 skill lines, what combination should make the best: Pyromancer (fire mage), Cyromancer (frost mage), Aeromancer (air mage), Electromancer (shock mage)... etc.. etc. Do passives support that? Are they specific and strong, or vague and inconsequential. For all of these but frost, I'd argue the current +5% is inconsequential, leaving little to no incentive to actually match elements, not to mention many lines have a mixed bag so it's usually impossible to optimize for any way. 8% for dual elements and 15% for single elements (or types like dot for Necro) seems fair and fun to me.

These are idea's the dev team should be asking themselves because right now, subclassing has created this hodge podge of mix matching skill lines that have nearly nothing to do with one another in both pvp and pve from a fundamental style and fantasy perspective. Just combine the highest damaging skills and passives, or the most ult gen, or the most support and defense with utility. Those are all fine to exist becasue we have that freedom, but if niche, specific fantasy's can't be strong, can't be even decent, in fact, most of them are outright terrible, than you get a situation like we're in now. You give up on experimenting, and you follow the meta because it's vastly stronger.

It's not a yes/no situation for me, and probably for a large portion of the community. I think a lot of us like the idea, but don't like the issues of balance and the muddying of class identity.

Like: Increase in DPS
Dislike: No true freedom if you value your performance

Other:

There is nothing inherantly wrong with the concept, though I would have preferred actual sub-classing - further specialization, rather than the mutli-classsing system ZOS came up with.

However, while taking the number of builds in low/medium-end content from 1,000 to 10,000 it took the number of builds in high-end content from about 6 per role to 1 per role.

While some of the blame for that falls on raid leads, ZOS created the system that allows it. It needs adjusting.

Nope. Hate it. Almost all my chars are useless in any way now or they feel useless. Was thinking about to quit the game. I play just pure and left a trial gruop cuz they wanted to play me this way.

Every vote I've seen on this across here and Reddit has shown a very similar pattern; the only real conclusion is that it's just a divisive change, with broadly speaking as many people enjoying it as not.

I was initially very sceptical, but as I generally run in support roles, where the build diversity has been lacking for many more years than DD, it has brought an interesting element to build variety and allows raid leads to move buffs/debuffs around the group. To the point where I think I've actually changed groups during the season towards someone who has enjoyed it on the whole.

I really hope supports do get some new meta-disruptive sets over the next couple of years, without taking away the current options. The last few updates have just narrowed the expected or interesting play styles for supports because of nerfs.

One of the issues is players' perception of what having particular lines means. I've been made aware of even more ridiculous gatekeeping in the group finder. I've heard from multiple guildies who have been kicked from a group, with the reason given that they are not running the arc DD line, which I find infuriating.

Nope. It killed the R in RPG for me.

Majority of people who do care about the integrity and combat are definitely more skewed into the no camp by the nature of it. Vast majority of people though, who care more about creating their own flavour and ease of use for those, "accessibility" and genuine accessibility etc. are definitely more into the yes camp, yet again by the very nature of it.

For me it's a no - less distinct identity, visual, gameplay one and one just making sense in-universe, less replayability resulting in less fun.

Radiate77 wrote: »

I don’t think this poll is going to have the desired outcome you want.

These forums are a small subset of the actual playerbase. More than 90% of the people who used to participate here have either been banned, or no longer use this place to communicate.

Compared to older threads, each of our newer ones only receive a fraction of the interaction that they used to, and most of the people who are left over are all unhappy about one thing or another.

Edit: If I’m wrong, I welcome that. That said if people don’t want to see others trample over their favorite systems, they should speak up.

It doesn't matter if people "trample". No poll or post on these forums is going to make Zos so something if they don't want to. If it worked, we'd have no more hip flaps and shoulder pads, the crown store would just be all stuff you could buy directly etc. None of this matters beyond people liking to express themselves.

KalevaLaine wrote: »

Nope. Hate it. Almost all my chars are useless in any way now or they feel useless. Was thinking about to quit the game. I play just pure and left a trial gruop cuz they wanted to play me this way.

That is just end game mindset period. Before subclassing you were already required to run specific classes and builds most of the time. If the raid lead knew you cooked with dk or necro they might have made an exception.

We were clearing content like vDSR with 80k DPS, requirements of 120-150k is kind of silly but let them spend the time looking for people wanting to do old content at those levels.