Suggestion for subclassing balance

Uazole2

@ZOS_Kevin

We all know that subclassing has made things different. I suggest a small change with a major game effect.

I suggest that skills in a subclassed line be left alone, leaving all effects the same. However, by being subclassed, the entire line should incur a subclassing penalty. The first subclassed skill line should have the effectiveness of every spell effect in the line reduced by a percentage, and the second subclassed skill line should have the effectiveness of all spell effects in that line reduced by twice as much.

So, if you do not subclass at all, all 3 skill lines work at 100%, if you subclass one line, the you have 2 lines at 100% and one with a penalty (say 15%), finally, if you choose to subclass 2 lines you would have 1 original skill line working at 100%, the 1st subclassed line doing only 85% of normal on all effects, and a 3rd subclass with a double penalty operating at only 70% of normal. Of course these penalties could be any value.

The beauty of this scheme is twofold: First it should be insanely simple to implement as the nerfs only need to be applied to the skill line and not to each individual spell, and second, it will force instant character differentiation. It would totally change build dynamics, because the exact order that a character is built and subclassed, becomes an an additional important factor.

The user will need to put careful consideration into exactly how they build their character. As things are now, there is no functional difference between 2 characters with the same 3 skill lines, except for the name of the base class. Using this scheme a Warden-Sorcerer-Archanist would NOT be functionally the same as an Archanist-Warden-Sorcerer. Put a penalty on the 1st subclassed line and a double penalty on the second subclassed line. This is a simple adjustment that will change everything again.

Erickson9610

I don't think this should happen.

Anysra

I completely disagree with this suggestion, and I strongly feel that it would have a fundamentally negative impact on both build diversity and player satisfaction in ESO.

Firstly, introducing a fixed subclassing penalty for entire skill lines goes directly against the spirit of what subclassing is supposed to encourage, creative synergy, flexible experimentation, and rewarding players who invest time in theorycrafting unique combinations. Imposing blanket effectiveness reductions would only punish players for exploring the very freedom that subclassing was meant to offer.

Secondly, the notion that characters would “need to put careful consideration into exactly how they build” already exists. Players constantly adjust Champion Points, gear sets, rotations, and passives. ESO’s depth comes precisely from the fact that every skill, passive, and set bonus can be tweaked individually — adding a harsh, artificial penalty on top would not make builds more meaningful, but rather frustrate and restrict players who want to test niche or hybrid ideas.

Furthermore, this approach risks making subclassing feel like a trap rather than an opportunity. Many classes already struggle with certain lines being situational or weaker in the current meta. If these lines now also suffer forced penalties just because they are subclassed, it will stifle diversity and push everyone back towards the same predictable, safe meta builds. That is the opposite of what subclassing should achieve.

Lastly, the claim that this would be “insanely simple to implement” overlooks how balancing works in practice. The ESO community has seen time and again how global modifiers often create unintended consequences and drive entire builds into obsolescence overnight. Balancing should remain granular and skill-specific, not handled with blanket percentage reductions.

In short: subclassing is one of the most refreshing changes ESO has introduced in years. It should be nurtured through smart, skill-specific tuning, not arbitrary, broad penalties that discourage players from using the system to its fullest. I strongly hope the dev team continues to balance subclassing with care and precision, rather than resorting to this kind of one-size-fits-all solution.

Trier_Sero

They should just remove it completely. It's their biggest blunder so far, at least since i started playing. It kills what small build diversity there was and with the next update they are gonna remove all the uniqueness of the classes just to try to balance this utter mess.

Treeshka

I think they should just keep everything as is and start balancing the other things around the subclass. Not trying to balance subclass itself with nerfs, and for PvP a complete separation between PvE and PvP is needed at this point. Game is too complex to balance both at the same time.

PzTnT

All they have to do is to nerf the subclassed skills separately from their full class counterparts. So if a skill line is a problem when subclassed it can be nerfed without also nerfing the class it comes from, where it may not even be a problem whatsoever.

katanagirl1

Something needs to be done so that pure classes aren’t further weakened compared to builds with subclassing.

Shadesofkin

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Something needs to be done so that pure classes aren’t further weakened compared to builds with subclassing.

I still think we need pure classes to get an extra skill line, and class item sets/mythics that only work if you're using 2 or more base skill lines.

Bare minimum the item sets thing imo.

Ingenon

Subclassing balance is easy. Simply take the active and passive skills that make any particular subclass powerful and spread them across the three subclasses that make up that class. For example, take Arcanist Fatecarver and Abyssal Impact skills and separate them in different Arcanist subclasses. Do that across all the subclasses, and the majority of players will not subclass because pure classes will be more powerful. /sarcasm

I think that subclassing balance is impossible. I think that ZOS said there are like 2000 possible combinations. I do not think anyone could balance across all the possible combinations.

Uazole2

The changes that are looming are going to be a more serious hit than most imagine. The proposal that I made doesn't change the effects of anything, it just reduces them.

Not counting scribed spells, there are 7 classes, with 3 lines each, each line has 5 actives and 1 ultimate, so 18 spells for each class, and a total of 126 spells that will be messed with.

A single nerf for each class ability line, requires only 21 manipulations that can be easily adjusted, while leaving every spell effect in the whole line unaltered, but nerfed.