Is there any class/role identity really?

Fajin

Like is there? Because literally everyone can tank, everyone can heal, everyone can do damage. Like even everyone can do both single target and aoe damage! The difference is just icons and animations lol.

VaranisArano

Here's what the Devs had to say: https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/57025

Its informative, particularly:
"One of our mantras for ESO is "play the way you want," and in this case, it means any class can fulfill any role (tank, dps, support/healer). To better achieve this ideal while also maintaining the unique fantasy flavor of each class, all class kits need to include the basic tools required to fulfill each role. To be clear, our goal is for every class to be viable, not necessarily optimal, in any role without heavily relying on non-class skill lines."

kehatchb16_ESO

I don't think the ability to heal / tank / DPS is why the classes lack identity. It's because the there is a big reliance on shared non-class skills, a sameness to the class skills themselves, and a general lack of class identity mechanics.

Other games let one class double jump / glide, or one class have mana while one uses combos, or allows one class to port, or limits access to stealth, etc. I am not just speaking about WOW. Most MMORPGs aim for a unique class experience.

ESO has aimed to allow every class to do everything. There are no unique mechanics and most classes / build feel very similar. At least in my experience.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just an approach. Though personally I think they played it a bit too safe. Even in single player elder scrolls builds felt unique. I don't get the same feel here.

idk

Varanis points out the reality well.

While it means less distinction between classes I like that we have choices and are not restricted to an extremely rigid class build like what is found in some other games. I still do not think a NB feels like my Sorc or my Templar.

FakeFox

Whilst any class can play any role to some degree, there is a very narrow meta of what is actually strong. However this does not have much to do with class identity. Classes are for the most part simply different color schemes and what classes are good for which role comes more down to the randomness of buffs and nerfs every patch.

We see Nightblade for example as a very strong tank right now, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the class identity. Nightblades don't even have all that many tanking tools, they just so happen to have the best HP scaling and damage reduction, that's it.

exeeter702

People often misunderstand this.

The distinction is in the class thematics and how each class achieves performance in a given role through their own unique mechanics. It does not have anything to do with the group roles of which they are balanced around. The meta in terms of which class is taken for which role is entirely independent to the identity and themes of each class.

The reality is that you have to look at this in terms of each class essentially being 2 distinct classes maybe even three in some cases. We have what is essentially 12 unique playable classes, a magicka and stamina version of each. Having only one of those be intended to tank or heal is grossly shallow for an mmo of this scale.

Royaji

exeeter702 wrote: »

People often misunderstand this.

The distinction is in the class thematics and how each class achieves performance in a given role through their own unique mechanics. It does not have anything to do with the group roles of which they are balanced around. The meta in terms of which class is taken for which role is entirely independent to the identity and themes of each class.

The reality is that you have to look at this in terms of each class essentially being 2 distinct classes maybe even three in some cases. We have what is essentially 12 unique playable classes, a magicka and stamina version of each. Having only one of those be intended to tank or heal is grossly shallow for an mmo of this scale.

The distinction between classes is in the animations and one mini-game skill they have. There are no unique mechanics which sharply define the way any given class performs a certain role. Warden tanks like a DK. NB tanks like a DK. A magDK does not use more DoTs than magNB. MagSorc does not bring more AoE than a magDK. Everyone heals like a Templar. If your class does not have some skill in class toolkit you just get the same skill from a World skill line.

Trying to cram identity for 4 distinct classes in 15 skills and 12 passives is an impossible task. They should have been split more at class level.

VaranisArano

exeeter702 wrote: »

People often misunderstand this.

The distinction is in the class thematics and how each class achieves performance in a given role through their own unique mechanics. It does not have anything to do with the group roles of which they are balanced around. The meta in terms of which class is taken for which role is entirely independent to the identity and themes of each class.

The reality is that you have to look at this in terms of each class essentially being 2 distinct classes maybe even three in some cases. We have what is essentially 12 unique playable classes, a magicka and stamina version of each. Having only one of those be intended to tank or heal is grossly shallow for an mmo of this scale.

In all fairness, the reason people misunderstand this is that ESO has changed greatly from when it first launched. At the start, the classes really did have very distinct roles, with DKs rather distinctly tank themed and templars taking the role of healers.

Gradually, players have expanded those roles. In some cases, ZOS wrecked those expanded playstyles, like the lamented nightblade sap tank. In other cases, ZOS has extended those roles, such as giving DKs some healing morphs to better let them serve as healers.

Similarly, gameplay changes like the loss of soft caps led to the dichotomy of magicka/stamina builds that have since become the meta. That wasn't the case at launch, but has been the meta long enough for ZOS to start addressing the disparity in magicka/stamina skills.

So while ZOS has since clarified that they don't intend to tie role to specific classes anymore, there's good reason why many experienced players still associate certain roles with specific classes: that's not how ESO is balanced now, but it certainly was in the past.

lolli42

my problem with this is rather, every dps has a 2hander on the mainbar and a bow on the backbar, no mather what "character" one is going to play
"play as you want"? not rlly
"play as you get the best dps, because otherwise, you get kicked out of dungeons and there is very few variety to that"
but that already started with the whole skill design
whats the point of a "nightblade", running around with a huge 2 hand stat stick, not using it because you will just always just pull out some summoned daggers to stab your enemies

KillsAllElves

In this game these terms are an oxymoron.

Class identity comes from specific themed abilities.

Best in slot tank-DK
Best in slot healer-templar.

Trying to make all classes have the abilities to fill all roles is not only ridiculous, it shows the lack of imagination on the developers part.

idk

lolli42 wrote: »

my problem with this is rather, every dps has a 2hander on the mainbar and a bow on the backbar, no mather what "character" one is going to play
"play as you want"? not rlly
"play as you get the best dps, because otherwise, you get kicked out of dungeons and there is very few variety to that"
but that already started with the whole skill design
whats the point of a "nightblade", running around with a huge 2 hand stat stick, not using it because you will just always just pull out some summoned daggers to stab your enemies

Play as you want never meant every manner someone chose to build their character would be optimal for every situation. So yes, it is still play as you want and if you want to do solid DPS you will make choice to that end.

jcm2606

I've always been optimistic about this whole skill audit, and passed off the recent class identity issues as just a byproduct of being in the middle of an audit that's meant to standardised everything, that's meant to destroy identity in order to help bring it back in a more balanced form down the line.

I still hold onto that optimism, but I now feel like this whole skill audit could have been done much better. Drawing it out over these months has caused massive balance issues, which I feel could have been prevented had they simply have let the changes pile up until they get something they deem acceptable, then ripped the band aid off in one pull.

Class identity has been destroyed, and it was Zenimax's intent to do so. In order for the audit to actually do it's job, in order for them to implement a standard that they can balance against in the future, the game had to be homogenised into a bland goop, so that everything follows the standard. It could have been done better, but it was always going to play out this way.

jcm2606

KillsAllElves wrote: »

In this game these terms are an oxymoron.

Class identity comes from specific themed abilities.

Best in slot tank-DK
Best in slot healer-templar.

Trying to make all classes have the abilities to fill all roles is not only ridiculous, it shows the lack of imagination on the developers part.

There are ways to fulfill both, provided you don't do so in a stupid way, which Zenimax has.

Want every class to be able to tank? DK has naturally high mitigation to help it survive, Templar can sustain itself through its raw healing, Sorc can use their pet(s) to take agro and heal themselves in a pinch, NB can just be hard to hit while taking agro, Warden can buff itself to the moon and back to keep itself going, and Necro can use its debuffs and utility to keep itself alive.

Want every class to be able to heal? DK can share its mitigation with everyone else while healing using generic tools, Templar can use its raw healing to just flood group heals, Sorc can maybe use their pet to provide AoE healing near the players who need it, NB can share its evasive tools with everyone else while healing using their healing skills on top of generic tools, Warden can provide passive healing with some general group support, and Necro can use corpses as healing wells.

Boom. Every class can fit as both tank and healer, in unique ways.

Fajin

Like I just want to have something like class "evolution" at level 50 or something. For example a NB can choose to be a master assassin where he gains a huge bonus to things associated with weapon damage (especially for daggers and bows) and skills that resemble stealth-iness. Or he can choose to be a "life sucker" where he gains a huge bonus to DoTs and debuffs (basically a warlock in WoW). Basically have all the classes still be able to do all 3 roles, but make them COMPLETELY different at doing that. Like add more role play to that because it's a RPG after all.

KillsAllElves

jcm2606 wrote: »

KillsAllElves wrote: »

In this game these terms are an oxymoron.

Class identity comes from specific themed abilities.

Best in slot tank-DK
Best in slot healer-templar.

Trying to make all classes have the abilities to fill all roles is not only ridiculous, it shows the lack of imagination on the developers part.

There are ways to fulfill both, provided you don't do so in a stupid way, which Zenimax has.

Want every class to be able to tank? DK has naturally high mitigation to help it survive, Templar can sustain itself through its raw healing, Sorc can use their pet(s) to take agro and heal themselves in a pinch, NB can just be hard to hit while taking agro, Warden can buff itself to the moon and back to keep itself going, and Necro can use its debuffs and utility to keep itself alive.

Want every class to be able to heal? DK can share its mitigation with everyone else while healing using generic tools, Templar can use its raw healing to just flood group heals, Sorc can maybe use their pet to provide AoE healing near the players who need it, NB can share its evasive tools with everyone else while healing using their healing skills on top of generic tools, Warden can provide passive healing with some general group support, and Necro can use corpses as healing wells.

Boom. Every class can fit as both tank and healer, in unique ways.

L O L 😂

Kadoin

In PvP?

No.

Because of CP and how healing works, everyone is a tank, healer, and damage dealer.

The same is also true in PvE, but let's not talk any more about that or we gonna get some nerfs handed out again

Finedaible

Nope. 0 identity this patch. Zilch. Nada.

Stamblades are better off using weapon and guild abilities in pvp over their own class skills. Devs copied Nightblades' unique Grim Focus over to sorcs. That's how bad class identity is this patch.

Necro is the only one that remain's somewhat unique this patch with their corpse mechanic, but some abilities still buggy/unreliable.

RavenSworn

Initially, there were clear definitions of class roles. And I'm saying this not like a "derp derp templars are heals DKs a tanks snort" kinda thing but more of how each class tank, heal and dps.

There were Sap tanks of NBs, pet healing of Sorcs, etc etc.

What's more important now is ZoS needs to reintroduce class specific mechanic. Or at least how each class approach each role distinctively.

Anotherone773

They are basically all the same. Every class can do everything in every gear with every weapon. Every class has the same formula for skills to make sure they are roughly the same.

In other games a class will be strong at X, average at Y, and weak at Z. A different class will be average at X, strong at Y, and weak at Z. Another class will be weak at X, average at Y, and strong at Z, etc. etc.

In ESO, a class will be slightly above average at X, average at Y, and slightly below average at Z. Another class will be slightly below average at X, average at Y, and slightly above average at Z. Etc. Etc. Zzzzzzz....zzzzzz...zzzzzz.

They call that snooze fest balance, i call it Xeroxing. They do the same with gear sets. ZOS creates some beautiful worlds but their character/class development is pretty much 50 shades of grey. It requires zero strategy and thought to pick a character and class in this game.

Vanos444

Fajin wrote: »

Like is there? Because literally everyone can tank, everyone can heal, everyone can do damage. Like even everyone can do both single target and aoe damage! The difference is just icons and animations lol.

True, they are trying to make all classes generic as possible.
Basically, catering to the causals or selling their boring and broken box to new players.

If there was a class identity and they hold true to their infamous quote" play how you want, then..." We would have gotten just that.... like how FFxiv as done, even WoW handles well with class identity.

Also, If they truly cared for what their infamous quote sells then, we would have got more variation of skill trees rather than the boring, underpowered, lost identity and most generic class like necromancer.

In skill trees, they could have given us the option to make one handed weapon go magika, so a player can use 1 hand for spells and the other hand a magic sword or bounded sword that uses magicka similar to the tes games. ( Lol! This game says it's tes but it's just fake )

Likewise, they could have added spears, magic shields, etc....but they choose not to and sell their crap on crown store to catch whales attention.

SmukkeHeks

Isn’t identity also tied to abilities? Or roles?

When everyone can be anything, none will have something they excellent in, yes?

When they don’t expect players can separate kitty’s from wood elves, only due to both abilities in stealth, how will they ever expect from us to recognize other races from each other.

The “play as you like” is dumbing down the game. Choices will include something you don’t get. In my opinion it’s not a negative to have races that are strong in one role.

jcm2606

SmukkeHeks wrote: »

Isn’t identity also tied to abilities? Or roles?

When everyone can be anything, none will have something they excellent in, yes?

When they don’t expect players can separate kitty’s from wood elves, only due to both abilities in stealth, how will they ever expect from us to recognize other races from each other.

The “play as you like” is dumbing down the game. Choices will include something you don’t get. In my opinion it’s not a negative to have races that are strong in one role.

Identity comes down to how a class approaches a particular role. Being tanky can be done in a variety of ways, including through straight passive mitigation, active mitigation, passive healing, active healing, etc.

Take Warrior, Guardian and Necromancer from GW2, three incredibly tanky classes. While all three can be incredibly sturdy, they do so in different ways.

Warrior combines high passive mitigation with passive healing, allowing you to face tank moderately heavy hits, at the cost of being unable to recover if your passive mitigation/healing is overwhelmed.

Guardian combines multiple active mitigation and active healing tools, offering a slew of tools that enable you to deal with hits and recover if your main tools are overwhelmed, at the cost of having all tools on cooldowns and requiring an active playstyle.

Necromancer uses a unique class mechanic that basically offers a second health pool that can be charged and used to eat heavy hits that you'd otherwise die from, at the cost of pushing most of the class's offense into this same mechanic forcing you to make the choice between killing or surviving, and dealing with the moderately long cooldown once you deactivate the second health pool.

ESO classes can be set up in similar ways, approaching roles or playstyles in different ways. As I outlined above, if every class is meant to have options to make them tanky, DK can mirror Warrior with high passive mitigation and aggressive healing, Templar can mirror Guardian with multiple active mitigation and healing options, NB can rely on its evasiveness to avoid being hit in the first place, Sorc can use their pets to share agro and provide some off heals, Warden can use the myriad of buffs and high sustained healing to keep itself alive, and Necro can debuff opponents while using their raw utility to mitigate or heal through damage.

It's not hard.

SmukkeHeks

jcm2606 wrote: »

SmukkeHeks wrote: »

Isn’t identity also tied to abilities? Or roles?

When everyone can be anything, none will have something they excellent in, yes?

When they don’t expect players can separate kitty’s from wood elves, only due to both abilities in stealth, how will they ever expect from us to recognize other races from each other.

The “play as you like” is dumbing down the game. Choices will include something you don’t get. In my opinion it’s not a negative to have races that are strong in one role.

Identity comes down to how a class approaches a particular role. Being tanky can be done in a variety of ways, including through straight passive mitigation, active mitigation, passive healing, active healing, etc.

Take Warrior, Guardian and Necromancer from GW2, three incredibly tanky classes. While all three can be incredibly sturdy, they do so in different ways.

Warrior combines high passive mitigation with passive healing, allowing you to face tank moderately heavy hits, at the cost of being unable to recover if your passive mitigation/healing is overwhelmed.

Guardian combines multiple active mitigation and active healing tools, offering a slew of tools that enable you to deal with hits and recover if your main tools are overwhelmed, at the cost of having all tools on cooldowns and requiring an active playstyle.

Necromancer uses a unique class mechanic that basically offers a second health pool that can be charged and used to eat heavy hits that you'd otherwise die from, at the cost of pushing most of the class's offense into this same mechanic forcing you to make the choice between killing or surviving, and dealing with the moderately long cooldown once you deactivate the second health pool.

ESO classes can be set up in similar ways, approaching roles or playstyles in different ways. As I outlined above, if every class is meant to have options to make them tanky, DK can mirror Warrior with high passive mitigation and aggressive healing, Templar can mirror Guardian with multiple active mitigation and healing options, NB can rely on its evasiveness to avoid being hit in the first place, Sorc can use their pets to share agro and provide some off heals, Warden can use the myriad of buffs and high sustained healing to keep itself alive, and Necro can debuff opponents while using their raw utility to mitigate or heal through damage.

It's not hard.

I don’t play any other mmo. Or rpg.

And I’m not implying it’s hard - or difficult - but purely making the point that any choice also comes with the opposite.

But when every race theoretically should be able to every role, none of the races will have a naturally adapted one. It will become a good-enough with none excellence.

Kind of like when you mix every color in the world and ends up with a brownish mess. The clear identity of the single for color is destroyed, to create the whole.

Shaloknir

Fajin wrote: »

Like is there? Because literally everyone can tank, everyone can heal, everyone can do damage. Like even everyone can do both single target and aoe damage! The difference is just icons and animations lol.

In my opinion there is a distinctive identity to classes. In general magicka classes seem to have better identity than stamina classes due to using more class abilities.

Here is what I think the class identity is with each class (excluding necromancer, never played one):

• Nightblades are the assassins of ESO. Identity skills - cloak, killers blade, teleport strike. Pretty straight forward. Teleport strike got copied into dual wield skill line. Which is a high crime in my opinion!
• Templars are the devout knights or healers of Tamriel. Identity skills - puncturing sweeps, power of the light, aurora javelin and extended ritual. They are the "good" guys always helping others.
• Dragonknights is pretty cool and unique class! They are the dark knights with draconic powers: ability to spread wings and jump your enemies like the mighty Dovah! Identity skills - Ferocious leap, whip, spiked armor, fiery breath.
• Sorcerers are the magic users of ESO. Lightning hurling mages or warriors that are enveloped in powerful winds. Identity skills - frags, fury, streak, power surge, Atronach, overload, hurricane, shields. Stamina sorcerers give me huge Thor/Odin vibes.
• Wardens are the druids or rangers of Tamriel. They have animal companions and can call magic predators from the sky. Strong identity in flora/fauna of Vvardenfell. Also they use cold magics (huge miss in identity department in my opinion). Identity skills - cutting dive, netch, bear, permafrost, wings (cant recall the name)

Kadoin

Shaloknir wrote: »

Fajin wrote: »

Like is there? Because literally everyone can tank, everyone can heal, everyone can do damage. Like even everyone can do both single target and aoe damage! The difference is just icons and animations lol.

In my opinion there is a distinctive identity to classes. In general magicka classes seem to have better identity than stamina classes due to using more class abilities.

Here is what I think the class identity is with each class (excluding necromancer, never played one):

• Nightblades are the assassins of ESO. Identity skills - cloak, killers blade, teleport strike. Pretty straight forward. Teleport strike got copied into dual wield skill line. Which is a high crime in my opinion!
• Templars are the devout knights or healers of Tamriel. Identity skills - puncturing sweeps, power of the light, aurora javelin and extended ritual. They are the "good" guys always helping others.
• Dragonknights is pretty cool and unique class! They are the dark knights with draconic powers: ability to spread wings and jump your enemies like the mighty Dovah! Identity skills - Ferocious leap, whip, spiked armor, fiery breath.
• Sorcerers are the magic users of ESO. Lightning hurling mages or warriors that are enveloped in powerful winds. Identity skills - frags, fury, streak, power surge, Atronach, overload, hurricane, shields. Stamina sorcerers give me huge Thor/Odin vibes.
• Wardens are the druids or rangers of Tamriel. They have animal companions and can call magic predators from the sky. Strong identity in flora/fauna of Vvardenfell. Also they use cold magics (huge miss in identity department in my opinion). Identity skills - cutting dive, netch, bear, permafrost, wings (cant recall the name)

Nice, ...but what are necros?

Shaloknir

Kadoin wrote: »

Shaloknir wrote: »

Fajin wrote: »

Like is there? Because literally everyone can tank, everyone can heal, everyone can do damage. Like even everyone can do both single target and aoe damage! The difference is just icons and animations lol.

In my opinion there is a distinctive identity to classes. In general magicka classes seem to have better identity than stamina classes due to using more class abilities.

Here is what I think the class identity is with each class (excluding necromancer, never played one):

• Nightblades are the assassins of ESO. Identity skills - cloak, killers blade, teleport strike. Pretty straight forward. Teleport strike got copied into dual wield skill line. Which is a high crime in my opinion!
• Templars are the devout knights or healers of Tamriel. Identity skills - puncturing sweeps, power of the light, aurora javelin and extended ritual. They are the "good" guys always helping others.
• Dragonknights is pretty cool and unique class! They are the dark knights with draconic powers: ability to spread wings and jump your enemies like the mighty Dovah! Identity skills - Ferocious leap, whip, spiked armor, fiery breath.
• Sorcerers are the magic users of ESO. Lightning hurling mages or warriors that are enveloped in powerful winds. Identity skills - frags, fury, streak, power surge, Atronach, overload, hurricane, shields. Stamina sorcerers give me huge Thor/Odin vibes.
• Wardens are the druids or rangers of Tamriel. They have animal companions and can call magic predators from the sky. Strong identity in flora/fauna of Vvardenfell. Also they use cold magics (huge miss in identity department in my opinion). Identity skills - cutting dive, netch, bear, permafrost, wings (cant recall the name)

Nice, ...but what are necros?

Never played one, so i didn't write about necromancers. Sorry.

Finedaible

I remember when Nightblade Healers' whole identity was based around dishing out damage to heal others. Was it OP in pvp as some claim? Perhaps, but it was a lot more fun than the generic Two-hander, skill-bot builds we have now. Nightblade was fun to play back then.

Nightblades also had a very strong rogue/assassin identity, but now Two-hander skills outperform their own assassination abilities and ultimate so... That's FuN. After all the nerfs over the years, the only reason left for rolling an NB now is for cloak but it is far more unreliable than it was, and there are way too many counters to it.

Sap Tanks. A unique tanking style gone for dumb reasons.

Emma_Overload

Anotherone773 wrote: »

They are basically all the same. Every class can do everything in every gear with every weapon. Every class has the same formula for skills to make sure they are roughly the same.

In other games a class will be strong at X, average at Y, and weak at Z. A different class will be average at X, strong at Y, and weak at Z. Another class will be weak at X, average at Y, and strong at Z, etc. etc.

In ESO, a class will be slightly above average at X, average at Y, and slightly below average at Z. Another class will be slightly below average at X, average at Y, and slightly above average at Z. Etc. Etc. Zzzzzzz....zzzzzz...zzzzzz.

They call that snooze fest balance, i call it Xeroxing. They do the same with gear sets. ZOS creates some beautiful worlds but their character/class development is pretty much 50 shades of grey. It requires zero strategy and thought to pick a character and class in this game.

Other games have dozens of classes, though. If ZOS wanted to differentiate classes the way you want, they would need to create a whole lot more classes. Otherwise, there would only be one or two classes for each role! Now THAT would be boring.

Finedaible

Emma_Overload wrote: »

Anotherone773 wrote: »

They are basically all the same. Every class can do everything in every gear with every weapon. Every class has the same formula for skills to make sure they are roughly the same.

In other games a class will be strong at X, average at Y, and weak at Z. A different class will be average at X, strong at Y, and weak at Z. Another class will be weak at X, average at Y, and strong at Z, etc. etc.

In ESO, a class will be slightly above average at X, average at Y, and slightly below average at Z. Another class will be slightly below average at X, average at Y, and slightly above average at Z. Etc. Etc. Zzzzzzz....zzzzzz...zzzzzz.

They call that snooze fest balance, i call it Xeroxing. They do the same with gear sets. ZOS creates some beautiful worlds but their character/class development is pretty much 50 shades of grey. It requires zero strategy and thought to pick a character and class in this game.

Other games have dozens of classes, though. If ZOS wanted to differentiate classes the way you want, they would need to create a whole lot more classes. Otherwise, there would only be one or two classes for each role! Now THAT would be boring.

Why haven't they created more classes though? It's been 5 years and they only released 2 classes so far, one of which - Warden - was half-baked during development and only released 3 years after launch and even then it was still half-baked. Not to mention there's been no innovation to be added in new weapon skill-lines since release. Sure, we got some new guild skill lines, but only Psijic actually added combat skills and they didn't really change much in the end. There needs to be more game-play innovation because it's all becoming a stagnant re-skin of skills. There needs to be more specializations or something.

Runefang

There hasn’t been class identity for a while, at least in PvE DPS. Many of the skills are the same and rotations are virtually identical. It’s all about buff uptime, dot uptime, LA weaving and filling the rest of your available time with spammables.

Other games have combo based DPS rotations where using skill A a few times procs skill B which can the in turn proc skill C.

Or pet classes where the character only buffs pets or debuffs enemies.

Or pure dot builds which are only about dot management.

Instead we have a single approach for all classes.

Fajin

Or at least they have to make each class viable enough. Or somehow reward creative builds so this "play what you want" feature is correct.