In case anyone was wondering, re. subclasses

Wereswan · April 12

We currently have seven classes, with three class lines each. For a single subclass, there are three possible combinations for which class lines you keep (A+B, A+C, B+C) and six possible alternatives to choose a skill line from, with three lines each, for a total of 39 possible combinations. For two subclasses, there are again three possibilities (A, B, or C,) six possible alternatives to choose a skill line from for your first replacement, and five possible alternatives for the second (since they cannot be from the same subclass,) for a total of 54 possible combinations.

Including the seven "pure" classes, that's a total of 100 character slots to cover all the options. Those of you who do PTS might want to put your heads together and make sure all the possibilities get covered, because there's no way any one player is doing that themselves.

Wereswan · April 12

And I just realized my math was way off, because it's multiplicative, so it's really 378 possible one-class combinations, and 5,670 possible two-class combinations.

Nevermind, nobody's testing all that.

Cooperharley · April 12

Wereswan wrote: »

And I just realized my math was way off, because it's multiplicative, so it's really 378 possible one-class combinations, and 5,670 possible two-class combinations.

Nevermind, nobody's testing all that.

There ya go lol.

It’s not going to be fully testable to the max over the course of the PTS. It’s a MASSIVE change to the way the game is played and will need to be balanced over time with a much larger sample size for more data (eg, live server).

I imagine from that perspective we’ll be largely testing for bugs and trying to come up with the most obscene combos to see what needs to be balanced off the rip, but we’ll see!

Sarannah · April 12

Wereswan wrote: »

And I just realized my math was way off, because it's multiplicative, so it's really 378 possible one-class combinations, and 5,670 possible two-class combinations.

Nevermind, nobody's testing all that.

Requesting 5670 character slots per server please!

If we get those character slots, I will take the challenge of testing them all!

PS: Not on the PTS though!

Treeshka · April 12

It is not that swapped skill lines are permanent anyway so we can actually test all of the combinations with just 7 characters.

Sluggy · April 12

Considering how people have tested and found deficiencies or bugs in the design of just single skills or sets and then commented rigorously about them during the entire PTS phase... with absolutely no result for months if not years after, I'd say it's safe to conclude that there is absolutely nothing we can do about this one.

ForumBully · April 12

I've mentally tested them all and have determined that this change destroys the delicate, but perfect, balance that we have all come to expect from ESO (especially PvP).

StihlReign · April 12

Nice. Fun times ahead on PTS. The nerfs to classes would (will) get pretty crazy to balance this out. We should probably anticipate Zos reacting by doing something we don't expect, haven't asked for, but was mentioned once...like Every character every racial passive, mix and match pick your 4, create your master race kahjiitargoniOrc.

ForumBully · April 13

StihlReign wrote: »

Nice. Fun times ahead on PTS. The nerfs to classes would (will) get pretty crazy to balance this out. We should probably anticipate Zos reacting by doing something we don't expect, haven't asked for, but was mentioned once...like Every character every racial passive, mix and match pick your 4, create your master race kahjiitargoniOrc.

Locked racial passives make sense...a Sorc not being able to read about frost magic doesn't.

JavaRen · April 13

There was nearly buried bit at the end of the stream about deciding or testing which skill lines would be available, so likely we won't get all 3 for each class.

Vonnegut2506 · April 13

JavaRen wrote: »

There was nearly buried bit at the end of the stream about deciding or testing which skill lines would be available, so likely we won't get all 3 for each class.

After scribing, It boggles my mind that anyone thinks the subclass idea will be as good as they hope it will be.

randconfig · April 13

Wereswan wrote: »

And I just realized my math was way off, because it's multiplicative, so it's really 378 possible one-class combinations, and 5,670 possible two-class combinations.

Nevermind, nobody's testing all that.

While I'm sure it would take a lot of time to refine, I would think the dev team is utilizing machine learning algorithms to do the heavy lifting in identifying outlier combinations that would be game breaking, and update 43's reorganization of the Nightblade skill trees would seem to indicate they've already used machine learning to model different organizations of each classes' abilities and passives to find the one that produces the more balanced set of subclass combinations.

From a game developer perspective, they likely want each set of class skill lines to be contain a balanced distribution of power and utility, instead of having one of the three skill lines being packed with all the good stuff (i.e. Arcanist's Herald of the Tome skill line having multiple crux generation options, the mean green killer beam that also gives a damage shield, the Tome Bearer's Inspiration buff that further augments the green laser of doom, and all four passives for the tree buffing damage).

Also for those who didn't see update 43's Nightblade changes:

Sluggy · April 13

@randconfig I'm not sure I see any evidence from that particular change that ML was used. It looks more like someone was just looking at their skill bar, likely in light of upcoming future changes about 6 months down the road, and said, "Hey, this would work better if..."

As far as ML for balancing goes... I don't know about that one either. The initial setup would require quite the cost in manhours. Afterward, the the changes could of course be determined quite quickly but I doubt they would seem any less arbitrary or opinion-based than anything a human would do which would likely lead to a lot of filtering required.

At the end of the day, how it feels in actual play is more important than how it looks in a spreadhsheet with a more-or-less arbitrary cost analysis system. This is something the community has had to hammer on about for years now. ML analysis isn't likely to do much better than what they have now.

ADarklore · April 13

JavaRen wrote: »

There was nearly buried bit at the end of the stream about deciding or testing which skill lines would be available, so likely we won't get all 3 for each class.

If that is the case, I think a lot of players- myself included- will not return. They said EVERY class skill line, with 3000+ options, and that they saw in internal testing that there would be some power creep, but they were OK with it. So I do not see them saying, "Oh wait, you can have access to abc, but not xyz".

Stx · April 13

Subclassing will be a lot easier to balance if they bring the original 4 class trees closer to what the 3 new classes have which is a dedicated tree to damage, healing, and tanking. Sustain is sprinkled everywhere which will also be an issue, also self healing or passive mitigation.

The goal should be to balance skill trees against each other across the board. Certain sysnergies will be tricky to balance but this game has never had great balance so it is what it is.

NoSoup · April 13

So because they said there's over 3000 different combinations and not "over 5000" I can only guess this means you can only swap the 1st class line for the 1st class line of a different class, the 2nd from the 2nd etc. Meaning you wouldn't be able to have say Animal Companion and Daedric Summoning on the same Character but you could have Animal Companion and Dark Magic????

Wereswan · April 13

randconfig wrote: »

Wereswan wrote: »

And I just realized my math was way off, because it's multiplicative, so it's really 378 possible one-class combinations, and 5,670 possible two-class combinations.

Nevermind, nobody's testing all that.

While I'm sure it would take a lot of time to refine, I would think the dev team is utilizing machine learning algorithms to do the heavy lifting in identifying outlier combinations that would be game breaking, and update 43's reorganization of the Nightblade skill trees would seem to indicate they've already used machine learning to model different organizations of each classes' abilities and passives to find the one that produces the more balanced set of subclass combinations.

From a game developer perspective, they likely want each set of class skill lines to be contain a balanced distribution of power and utility, instead of having one of the three skill lines being packed with all the good stuff (i.e. Arcanist's Herald of the Tome skill line having multiple crux generation options, the mean green killer beam that also gives a damage shield, the Tome Bearer's Inspiration buff that further augments the green laser of doom, and all four passives for the tree buffing damage).

Also for those who didn't see update 43's Nightblade changes:

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/04/researchers-find-ai-is-pretty-bad-at-debugging-but-theyre-working-on-it/

I really, truly hope you're wrong about that.

Stx wrote: »

Subclassing will be a lot easier to balance if they bring the original 4 class trees closer to what the 3 new classes have which is a dedicated tree to damage, healing, and tanking. Sustain is sprinkled everywhere which will also be an issue, also self healing or passive mitigation.

The goal should be to balance skill trees against each other across the board. Certain sysnergies will be tricky to balance but this game has never had great balance so it is what it is.

It would also be nice if they revamped the other six classes to match how flexible Arcanist is with using magicka or stamina. Of my seven stam alts, the stamarc is a noticeably better experience.

NoSoup wrote: »

So because they said there's over 3000 different combinations and not "over 5000" I can only guess this means you can only swap the 1st class line for the 1st class line of a different class, the 2nd from the 2nd etc. Meaning you wouldn't be able to have say Animal Companion and Daedric Summoning on the same Character but you could have Animal Companion and Dark Magic????

Or like me, they did a back-of-the-envelope calculation that was a bit off and came up with the wrong number. It happens, especially when you're just throwing out a number on a stream instead of sitting and working through all the possibilities.

gc0018 · April 14

The attempt to balance is meaningless. As long as there is a best, it will stand out and rule the whole population. It is called nature selection.

Ragnarok0130 · April 14

Wereswan wrote: »

And I just realized my math was way off, because it's multiplicative, so it's really 378 possible one-class combinations, and 5,670 possible two-class combinations.

Nevermind, nobody's testing all that.

The real question is how can ZoS conceivably balance that many permutations when they failed at balancing 7 pure classes? I think we're in for a wild nerf ride and a metric tonne of "snips" and time outs here on the forums once this goes live. I hope the mods stocked up on alcohol.

Sluggy · April 14

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

Wereswan wrote: »

And I just realized my math was way off, because it's multiplicative, so it's really 378 possible one-class combinations, and 5,670 possible two-class combinations.

Nevermind, nobody's testing all that.

The real question is how can ZoS conceivably balance that many permutations when they failed at balancing 7 pure classes? I think we're in for a wild nerf ride and a metric tonne of "snips" and time outs here on the forums once this goes live. I hope the mods stocked up on alcohol.

I agree. Which honestly is why I don't really concern myself with it at this point. The game is a mess from a balance perspective and hasn't been in a state where competition is relevant in a long long time anyway so who really cares? Let's just have fun with it while we watch it all burn to the ground

If I was a dev, I'd probably feel the same way honestly.

ragnarok6644b14_ESO · April 14

I also think people have some weird motte and bailey argument with balance.

"Balance means most things are viable"
"They are"
"No they aren't, I mean relequen's is hands down the best stamina DPS set"
"Viable isn't best"
~silence~

Even in a fully perfect world, every situation will have a "best option" and a "worst option", even if the difference is 0.00001%.

When people say "I want everything to be balanced", they should accompany that phrase with what they mean by balanced. Because "all things are equal" is absurd on the face of it.

Tommy_The_Gun · April 14

So... it kinda sounds like they wanted to add new class or new skill line etc., but for whatever reason they could not (memory limitations on older gen consoles or time or budget restrictions), so instead they pulled "Infinitive Archive trick" and re-used old content & added it to a "new" skill lines that are using old skill lines at the cost of class identity & game balance.

Cuz this is what eventually will happen. Even with all those possibilities, there will be only like 2 meta builds cuz every class will literality be the same now. And what is worse is that ZOS will have to balance each class skill not only to the overall class power-budget, but also to prevent broken min-maxing (cloak + streak or stacking sustain skills from multiple classes & creating unkillable builds etc).

Elvenheart · April 14

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

So... it kinda sounds like they wanted to add new class or new skill line etc., but for whatever reason they could not (memory limitations on older gen consoles or time or budget restrictions), so instead they pulled "Infinitive Archive trick" and re-used old content & added it to a "new" skill lines that are using old skill lines at the cost of class identity & game balance.

Cuz this is what eventually will happen. Even with all those possibilities, there will be only like 2 meta builds cuz every class will literality be the same now. And what is worse is that ZOS will have to balance each class skill not only to the overall class power-budget, but also to prevent broken min-maxing (cloak + streak or stacking sustain skills from multiple classes & creating unkillable builds etc).

When someone figures out what those two builds are, can you share them on the forums? I’d like to use one of them.

Wereswan · April 14

Elvenheart wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

So... it kinda sounds like they wanted to add new class or new skill line etc., but for whatever reason they could not (memory limitations on older gen consoles or time or budget restrictions), so instead they pulled "Infinitive Archive trick" and re-used old content & added it to a "new" skill lines that are using old skill lines at the cost of class identity & game balance.

Cuz this is what eventually will happen. Even with all those possibilities, there will be only like 2 meta builds cuz every class will literality be the same now. And what is worse is that ZOS will have to balance each class skill not only to the overall class power-budget, but also to prevent broken min-maxing (cloak + streak or stacking sustain skills from multiple classes & creating unkillable builds etc).

When someone figures out what those two builds are, can you share them on the forums? I’d like to use one of them.

Afraid you'll have to wait to see what survives PTS. I'm already anticipating that Patch 47 is going to include a nerf for Radiant Destruction and its morphs, because so many builds will [ab]use it.

Ragnarok0130 · April 16

Sluggy wrote: »

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

Wereswan wrote: »

And I just realized my math was way off, because it's multiplicative, so it's really 378 possible one-class combinations, and 5,670 possible two-class combinations.

Nevermind, nobody's testing all that.

The real question is how can ZoS conceivably balance that many permutations when they failed at balancing 7 pure classes? I think we're in for a wild nerf ride and a metric tonne of "snips" and time outs here on the forums once this goes live. I hope the mods stocked up on alcohol.

I agree. Which honestly is why I don't really concern myself with it at this point. The game is a mess from a balance perspective and hasn't been in a state where competition is relevant in a long long time anyway so who really cares? Let's just have fun with it while we watch it all burn to the ground If I was a dev, I'd probably feel the same way honestly.

I enjoy endgame PVE so I'm not about to just give up and not leave feedback.I'll leave feedback even if the devs ignore it if for no other reason than the shareholders can question them about the level of community discontent on the quarterly shareholders call. Some of the shareholders actually do their homework regarding player sentiment; I've actually seen this happen in the Battlefield community.

shadyjane62 · April 17

My new plan for ESO is never play another char to level 50. This is all way too complicated and presages disaster.

As a pure Templar I see no hope for the future.

I do see a future in the lowest PVP campaign.

Wereswan · April 17

shadyjane62 wrote: »

My new plan for ESO is never play another char to level 50. This is all way too complicated and presages disaster.

As a pure Templar I see no hope for the future.

Honestly, it's not that dreadful: the subclass skill lines are account-wide, so if you have a couple of spare alts, you can just level them up to 50 one at a time, switch back to the class skill you dropped, and then you're future-proofed if you ever decide to use it.

Likewise, it's week one of PTS and they've already indicated things may change before this goes live, so wait and see.

Edit to add: it's worth remembering that Scribing, in the form it originally debuted on PTS, was significantly grindier than what finally got released. They listened then, hopefully they will again.

mocap · April 17

Wonder if there are players still want class change token.

Wereswan · April 17

mocap wrote: »

Wonder if there are players still want class change token.

On the one hand, it's going to make some base classes essentially irrelevant and on the other, the stupidly overpowered builds are all building on like three base classes, so I would only expect the calls for class change tokens to get even louder.

Elowen_Starveil · April 17

Wereswan wrote: »

And I just realized my math was way off, because it's multiplicative, so it's really 378 possible one-class combinations, and 5,670 possible two-class combinations.

Nevermind, nobody's testing all that.

Are we just throwing AI at everything now? Can't we let ChatGPT play through all of these combos and give us the breakdown?

Wereswan · April 17

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

Wereswan wrote: »

And I just realized my math was way off, because it's multiplicative, so it's really 378 possible one-class combinations, and 5,670 possible two-class combinations.

Nevermind, nobody's testing all that.

Are we just throwing AI at everything now? Can't we let ChatGPT play through all of these combos and give us the breakdown?

I'm starting to suspect that this is more-or-less what actually happened: they put it through machine learning, the robot told them it was fine, and now they're being blindsided by the 170K+ frankenstein builds they've enabled.