Subclassing Appreciation

BardokRedSnow · November 19

tomofhyrule wrote: »

There are a lot of people who dislike the implementation of Subclassing who would be fine with it if it were released as a balanced product. But, like most things in ESO, it was shoved out in the most destructive way and specifically designed to pit playerbases against each other.

Subclassing is great for people who want to build their characters in a specific way or who want to be in godmode. Subclassing is terrible for people who want there to be any diversity in endgame or who want to bring their specifically-designed character into endgame.

There was a whole thread on PTS offerring solutions to how Subclassing could be done (or even a more free version that doesn't have the restrictions on keep one class line/can't take more than one from the same parent) that also doesn't destroy the balance in endgame. But of course, none of that feedback was taken. As a result, you end up with the "I love subclassing" and "I love balance" sides of the argument and they are opposed, since ESO evidently doesn't consider that Subclassing and balance are compatible concepts. And no amount of players blindly praising it is going to bring around the people who dislike it.

For once I agree with you, the implementation of subclassing was and is my entire issue with it, and personally the lack of any incentive to pure class.

Radiate77 · November 19

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

Most Subclassed builds are reaching near that pre-Subclassing threshold of damage, if someone wants to make a crazy parse monster because they enjoy the inclusion net that creates, that’s not forced, that’s an active decision.

People do not force others into builds.
There is nobody holding you hostage.
…I promise. 😁

You've still got this backwards. High-end content requires a co-ordinated group. Everyone in the group expects the others to do their jobs.

There is no "Well, Bob says he wants to bring a DD that does 33% of the damage of the rest of you. That cool?"

If you have that, great BUT 99.9% do not. It does not work that way.

I love when Bob brings 33% of the damage as the rest of my team, because I know they are actively protecting the group, or providing necessary buffs like Major Expedition in encounters like Xalvakka.

You don’t sacrifice something, without gaining another.

Gabriel_H · November 19

Radiate77 wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

Most Subclassed builds are reaching near that pre-Subclassing threshold of damage, if someone wants to make a crazy parse monster because they enjoy the inclusion net that creates, that’s not forced, that’s an active decision.

People do not force others into builds.
There is nobody holding you hostage.
…I promise. 😁

You've still got this backwards. High-end content requires a co-ordinated group. Everyone in the group expects the others to do their jobs.

There is no "Well, Bob says he wants to bring a DD that does 33% of the damage of the rest of you. That cool?"

If you have that, great BUT 99.9% do not. It does not work that way.

I love when Bob brings 33% of the damage as the rest of my team, because I know they are actively protecting the group, or providing necessary buffs like Major Expedition in encounters like Xalvakka.

You don’t sacrifice something, without gaining another.

If you need Major Exp on Xalvakka then you have bigger problems aside from ignoring the salient point.

Do you understand the vast vast vast vast vast majority of high-end raid groups will tell Bob to go away?

Radiate77 · November 19

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

Most Subclassed builds are reaching near that pre-Subclassing threshold of damage, if someone wants to make a crazy parse monster because they enjoy the inclusion net that creates, that’s not forced, that’s an active decision.

People do not force others into builds.
There is nobody holding you hostage.
…I promise. 😁

You've still got this backwards. High-end content requires a co-ordinated group. Everyone in the group expects the others to do their jobs.

There is no "Well, Bob says he wants to bring a DD that does 33% of the damage of the rest of you. That cool?"

If you have that, great BUT 99.9% do not. It does not work that way.

I love when Bob brings 33% of the damage as the rest of my team, because I know they are actively protecting the group, or providing necessary buffs like Major Expedition in encounters like Xalvakka.

You don’t sacrifice something, without gaining another.

If you need Major Exp on Xalvakka then you have bigger problems aside from ignoring the salient point.

There’s no denying that in encounters where you need to move, and fast, like the Sload or Assembly General execute, being able to get there quick helps people set up their rotation much faster, and protects people who are distracted for half a second.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Do you understand the vast vast vast vast vast majority of high-end raid groups will tell Bob to go away?

How could I, there isn’t a “vast vast” majority of high-end raid groups to begin with.

Year after year, groups have cannibalized themselves. Making the content less fun, and less approachable. Only now am I beginning to see people enjoying raids again, and that’s entirely due to the fact that the right people are running the show.

Radiate77 · November 19

If your experiences with Subclassing in PvE have been negative, and you haven’t been in charge of them, take charge, and make the community you want to see.

Radiate77 · November 19

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

There are a lot of people who dislike the implementation of Subclassing who would be fine with it if it were released as a balanced product. But, like most things in ESO, it was shoved out in the most destructive way and specifically designed to pit playerbases against each other.

Subclassing is great for people who want to build their characters in a specific way or who want to be in godmode. Subclassing is terrible for people who want there to be any diversity in endgame or who want to bring their specifically-designed character into endgame.

There was a whole thread on PTS offerring solutions to how Subclassing could be done (or even a more free version that doesn't have the restrictions on keep one class line/can't take more than one from the same parent) that also doesn't destroy the balance in endgame. But of course, none of that feedback was taken. As a result, you end up with the "I love subclassing" and "I love balance" sides of the argument and they are opposed, since ESO evidently doesn't consider that Subclassing and balance are compatible concepts. And no amount of players blindly praising it is going to bring around the people who dislike it.

For once I agree with you, the implementation of subclassing was and is my entire issue with it, and personally the lack of any incentive to pure class.

I agree with like 50% of what he wrote.

Systems aren’t tearing the community apart, the community is. The same 2-3 people have been on a war path against Subclassing since it’s introduction and have been repeatedly making thread after thread asking for it’s removal, eventually it was bound to pick up steam with those who are upset, but can’t point to why.

Also, nobody is blindly praising a system, and with Subclassing, you can see the flaws from a mile away.

It sucks that you’re stuck with one of your base class skill lines, that you can’t have two from the same class if it isn’t your starting one, that you’re stuck having to use an Armorer or Respec Shrine every time you want to swap skill lines, and it’s annoying that each skill arbitrarily costs 2 skill points.

All of that said, these cons are not enough to outweigh the pros of this system.

Idk, maybe I agree with 10%…

Solely that the system could have been iterative, instead of rammed into the game like it has been.

Gabriel_H · November 19

Radiate77 wrote: »

If you need Major Exp on Xalvakka then you have bigger problems aside from ignoring the salient point.

There’s no denying that in encounters where you need to move, and fast, like the Sload or Assembly General execute, being able to get there quick helps people set up their rotation much faster, and protects people who are distracted for half a second.

How could I, there isn’t a “vast vast” majority of high-end raid groups to begin with.

Year after year, groups have cannibalized themselves. Making the content less fun, and less approachable. Only now am I beginning to see people enjoying raids again, and that’s entirely due to the fact that the right people are running the show.

You don't need to move quick. You only need to have an understanding of DoT damage.

Again, you keep speaking from a personal pov. That isn't what the majority see.

SkaiFaith · November 19

Thread TL;DR

OP is right

Gabriel_H · November 19

Post #1:

Radiate77 wrote: »

Hope everyone’s having a great day, just wanted to say thanks to the team for this incredible system.

Post #27:

Radiate77 wrote: »

Also, nobody is blindly praising a system, and with Subclassing, you can see the flaws from a mile away ... Solely that the system could have been iterative, instead of rammed into the game like it has been.

I mean ... I have no words.

BardokRedSnow · November 19

Radiate77 wrote: »

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

There are a lot of people who dislike the implementation of Subclassing who would be fine with it if it were released as a balanced product. But, like most things in ESO, it was shoved out in the most destructive way and specifically designed to pit playerbases against each other.

Subclassing is great for people who want to build their characters in a specific way or who want to be in godmode. Subclassing is terrible for people who want there to be any diversity in endgame or who want to bring their specifically-designed character into endgame.

There was a whole thread on PTS offerring solutions to how Subclassing could be done (or even a more free version that doesn't have the restrictions on keep one class line/can't take more than one from the same parent) that also doesn't destroy the balance in endgame. But of course, none of that feedback was taken. As a result, you end up with the "I love subclassing" and "I love balance" sides of the argument and they are opposed, since ESO evidently doesn't consider that Subclassing and balance are compatible concepts. And no amount of players blindly praising it is going to bring around the people who dislike it.

For once I agree with you, the implementation of subclassing was and is my entire issue with it, and personally the lack of any incentive to pure class.

I agree with like 50% of what he wrote.

Systems aren’t tearing the community apart, the community is. The same 2-3 people have been on a war path against Subclassing since it’s introduction and have been repeatedly making thread after thread asking for it’s removal, eventually it was bound to pick up steam with those who are upset, but can’t point to why.

Also, nobody is blindly praising a system, and with Subclassing, you can see the flaws from a mile away.

It sucks that you’re stuck with one of your base class skill lines, that you can’t have two from the same class if it isn’t your starting one, that you’re stuck having to use an Armorer or Respec Shrine every time you want to swap skill lines, and it’s annoying that each skill arbitrarily costs 2 skill points.

All of that said, these cons are not enough to outweigh the pros of this system.

Idk, maybe I agree with 10%…

Solely that the system could have been iterative, instead of rammed into the game like it has been.

I tend not to blame the community for using the best combinations of what's available. What do the politicians say, the buck stops with x? The buck stops with Zos in this case.

Speaking to the overall discussion here, not to you specifically, you can't tell people in an mmo especially ones in the hardcore community etc not not try and use the best of the best skills and gear.

This isn't Skyrim where you gotta nerf yourself so the game is fun, I shouldn't have to be in charge of balancing my experience in their game. That's a poor position to hold.

That said I agree that the community can be toxic but show me an online community for anything multiplayer that isn't. And its definitely more than just a handful of people that feel this way even if the forums only make it seem like a few, the population of people here vs the rest of the community lol, its less than 1 percent.

Im definitely no longer in the camp of this needs to be rolled back, I was a few months ago, but now yea I think it would be pretty simple to touch on both this and scribing, and I wish they'd take a step back and refine these systems rather than introducing more and more systems to sell their content. That's how you make an mmo die.

Radiate77 · November 19

@BardokRedSnow that is a fair take. I know it wasn’t directed at me, but I want to reinforce the idea that I don’t believe people should hinder themselves for the sake of it.

People should do what they enjoy, but we should also try to find the good in people, and to make room for everyone at our table.

BardokRedSnow · November 19

Radiate77 wrote: »

If your experiences with Subclassing in PvE have been negative, and you haven’t been in charge of them, take charge, and make the community you want to see.

I will say that subclassing seems to be even worse for pve than pvp, when I saw that the meta was all beams I put out any idea of wanting to dps for trials etc. At least with dungeons you can lazy one bar dps under 40k and be fine lol. Can do what you like.

PvP is much better off contrary to popular belief imo than pve, takes forever to get a game going. Even ToT seems better off than the state of PvE, aside from the occasional monster set I need for cyrodiil, I literally have no reason to step into a dungeon or trial. Furnishings at best.

They really need to bring the idea of build diversity over from pvp to pve as well, make it fun to do. Tanking is about the only healthy part of it.

This is all assuming cyrodiil isnt nuked by more vengeance tests for pvers in the future.

twisttop138 · November 19

The point about if it should be rolled back or not is moot. It's brought division and caused us to lose people as much as it's maybe people who want to make thematically cool builds happy. It's helped bring people into mid tier raiding, what I think is the largest tier but it has also helped us to lose veterans who's game knowledge and raid experience including raid leading is a detrimental loss. These are the facts. There's no going back now, we play the hand we're dealt. We can make hate threads or glaze threads but it becomes what do we do about it. How do we fix it so many people are happy.

BardokRedSnow · November 19

twisttop138 wrote: »

The point about if it should be rolled back or not is moot. It's brought division and caused us to lose people as much as it's maybe people who want to make thematically cool builds happy. It's helped bring people into mid tier raiding, what I think is the largest tier but it has also helped us to lose veterans who's game knowledge and raid experience including raid leading is a detrimental loss. These are the facts. There's no going back now, we play the hand we're dealt. We can make hate threads or glaze threads but it becomes what do we do about it. How do we fix it so many people are happy.

Again I think what they need to do is use scribing to let us customize our class skills, but they're only available if all of that one class's skill lines are present. That way subclassing vs pure classing is a real and valid choice, while also expanding the scribing system.

My idea was that they could do this with introducing the college of winterhold or a precursor, as I forgot exactly when it is founded, and the city of winterhold itself. Shalidor is the founder, his wife is shown to have been the progenitor of magic spell crafting streamlined and more easily available than scribing later in the mages guild specifically. It'd be a good opportunity to expand on scribing and doing something for the fanbase that prefers to maintain class identity. Pure classing needs an incentive.

Radiate77 · November 19

twisttop138 wrote: »

The point about if it should be rolled back or not is moot. It's brought division and caused us to lose people as much as it's maybe people who want to make thematically cool builds happy. It's helped bring people into mid tier raiding, what I think is the largest tier but it has also helped us to lose veterans who's game knowledge and raid experience including raid leading is a detrimental loss. These are the facts. There's no going back now, we play the hand we're dealt. We can make hate threads or glaze threads but it becomes what do we do about it. How do we fix it so many people are happy.

I don’t believe it is fair to assume that Subclassing is the primary reason players have left. This has been one of the lightest content years, maybe THE lightest year we’ve had.

Glaze thread indeed. 👀

Radiate77 · November 19

What’s crazy, is not how beautiful that donut is above this comment; but that every thing about this year, bar the Writhing Fortress; has been a mix of pre-existing assets. Wild to think about.

No wonder some people have lost interest in ESO.

twisttop138 · November 19

Radiate77 wrote: »

twisttop138 wrote: »

The point about if it should be rolled back or not is moot. It's brought division and caused us to lose people as much as it's maybe people who want to make thematically cool builds happy. It's helped bring people into mid tier raiding, what I think is the largest tier but it has also helped us to lose veterans who's game knowledge and raid experience including raid leading is a detrimental loss. These are the facts. There's no going back now, we play the hand we're dealt. We can make hate threads or glaze threads but it becomes what do we do about it. How do we fix it so many people are happy.

I don’t believe it is fair to assume that Subclassing is the primary reason players have left. This has been one of the lightest content years, maybe THE lightest year we’ve had.

Also; you know how we get down baaby!

Subclassing for life, yo.

I would point out that I never said it was the primary reason. Just that it was a reason for people leaving. I know this is a fact because I know some. I think this year in general has left a sour taste.

Also love the picture. Glazing is one of the young people words I learned from my teenagers. I like to throw them in there every once in awhile. I had actually typed lickspittle but thought that kind of insulting, as I wasn't just talking about you but the legion of threads for and against.

Radiate77 · November 19

Some people might have been offended either way.

The very concept of appreciating anything gets certain people riled up, you can even lead with “Hope everyone’s having a great day” and those individuals will still show up to try to derail the topic rather than skipping past it.

luc76985 · November 19

I like subclassing. I've mastered all the classes and have changed my build multiple times trying different things to see what I like. You don't have to chase the meta folks.

Radiate77 · November 19

luc76985 wrote: »

I like subclassing. I've mastered all the classes and have changed my build multiple times trying different things to see what I like. You don't have to chase the meta folks.

If you had to pick a favorite combination, what would you settle on? I’ve been having a blast with Draconic Power, Grave Lord, and Restoring Light.

I love the synergy between Blastbones and Skeletal Archer with Repentance. I never run out of stamina in PvP, and have access to one of my favorite ultimates in the game, Ferocious Leap.

There’s a surprising amount of synergy in those three.

Radiate77 · November 19

Radiate77 wrote: »

It sucks that you’re stuck with one of your base class skill lines, that you can’t have two from the same class if it isn’t your starting one, that you’re stuck having to use an Armorer or Respec Shrine every time you want to swap skill lines, and it’s annoying that each skill arbitrarily costs 2 skill points.

I’m curious.

Other than the above “problems” I have with the system, what would everyone like to see different?

How would you guys improve this system?

tomofhyrule · November 20

Radiate77 wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

It sucks that you’re stuck with one of your base class skill lines, that you can’t have two from the same class if it isn’t your starting one, that you’re stuck having to use an Armorer or Respec Shrine every time you want to swap skill lines, and it’s annoying that each skill arbitrarily costs 2 skill points.

I’m curious.

Other than the above “problems” I have with the system, what would everyone like to see different?

How would you guys improve this system?

See, I think that if they did any of the suggestions below, then they should totally remove the annoyances above. Subclassing is currently in a half-[snip] state where it’s too restrictive for players who like the freedom, but too open for players who care about competitive balance.

But there are several things that could have been done that would make Subclassing less problematic for people who are into endgame content:

Balance the lines before dropping Subclassing. Most of the DLC classes are extremely delineated by role, while the basegames are more mixed by role and more delineated by theme. Ensuring that you don’t end up with things like all DPS passives in the same line would make choosing lines more of a personal choice rather than a everything-or-nothing “choice” like we have now.
Add bonuses/penalties for lines. Subclassing works most similarly to multiclassing in games like D&D. In those cases, a character who chooses to multiclass for any reason, e.g. because their base class has a weakness that they want to cover for, will then sacrifice being able to access their most powerful spells and abilities in exchange for being able to access a wider range of abilities. These could include
- Buffing tooltips by X% based on the number of parent/same class lines
- Nerfing tooltips by X% based on the number of parent/same class lines
- Allowing only X steps of the passives to be bought based on the number of parent/same class lines
Allow Subclassing only in overland and normal content. Subclassing is great for players who want to customize their characters to be more in line with what they want, but overland is not really a huge problem. Even for harder overland content like the WSolstice WBs, nobody will mind (outside of events) when someone comes in with their 300k DPS build to smoke it. But in leaderboarded content like vets or PvP, having one build which is grossly more powerful than anything else naturally coerces people into that hyperspecific build, and players who are unwilling or unable to are pushed out.
I do want to address the “but I couldn’t get into hard content before and now I can” idea here: yes, any build can do standard vets… which means that a pureclass build can as well without the need to crutch on Fatecarver or Oakensoul. One of the big issues that is currently seen with people who mostly got into vet content because of the Oakensorc build is the fact that they tend to a) resist any other builds, even non-Oakensoul heavy attack builds that are just as easy to play but do more damage, because they are convinced that only Oakensoul will allow them to do content, and b) have learned bad habits due to the survivability and self-healing of the build, and then take unnecessary risks or fail mechanics that require positioning due to the bad habits they learned from the start.
Seriously work on balance. Stop playing with Vengeance for a cycle and look at the balance. Listen to PTS. Look at the parses. Interact with the community.
The PTS is blank right now, and it will be until U49 goes up in mid-January-ish. The team should absolutely put up a patch with combat stuff and iteratively improve it, while interacting with the veteran players who we see do know the game as well as (or better than, in some cases) the devs and have their finger on the pulse of the community. That would really help try to get combat into some semblance of balance before we get the next round of shiny new things.

All of these suggestions (and more) are given and have been presented in every thread since the original PTS feedback thread. Compromise solutions like these would really make players feel less like we are in competition with each other and more like we all care about the betterment of the game for all of us.

Finally, let’s also stop assuming that “I love Subclassing” and “I hate Subclassing” are the be-all-and-end-all. There are actually multiple (overlapping) playerbases and each has a different general view:

The casuals who don’t care about how powerful they are, they really care just what fun skills their character can use. They tend to enjoy Subclassing since they get more skills they can use.
The soloists who like to optimize to do high-level content solo, like WBs, arenas, and soloing dungeons. They tend to enjoy Subclassing since they can build super powerful and don’t much care about what skills are thematically correct.
The casual group players who like their characters the way they are. They tend to be anti-Subclassing since they don’t feel like they need to change, but they are now left behind in terms of ability because Subclassing de facto left pure builds at a power deficit.
The sweaty group players who don’t care which of the tools they have in their toolbox, just they want the most effective for the job. Like group 2, they prefer to slot the most powerful things and don’t care if it makes sense or not.
The casual PvPers, who drop in from time to time and stick with what they know. Like group 3, they now are getting smoked left and right because the builds others use are leaving them no chance.
The sweaty PvPers, like group 4 except PvP.

And of course, these all overlap and intermix. Some sweaty people (including me) feel pride in being able to get their trifectas with an off-meta build because we have deep RP and lore for our characters, so we want to see them do well as their lore entails… but with the massive power differential, we are now left with the choice to stop playing the content we want because out characters can’t measure up, or to adulterate our lovingly-crafted characters just to match up. That’s the solution I went with - I pay 1500 gold every week to swap out skills on my main just for my prog, which I no longer find fun because I like my character the way he’s supposed to be, and then I Armory him right back so I can do overland as a pure DK.

Radiate77 · November 20

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

It sucks that you’re stuck with one of your base class skill lines, that you can’t have two from the same class if it isn’t your starting one, that you’re stuck having to use an Armorer or Respec Shrine every time you want to swap skill lines, and it’s annoying that each skill arbitrarily costs 2 skill points.

I’m curious.

Other than the above “problems” I have with the system, what would everyone like to see different?

How would you guys improve this system?

See, I think that if they did any of the suggestions below, then they should totally remove the annoyances above. Subclassing is currently in a half-[snip] state where it’s too restrictive for players who like the freedom, but too open for players who care about competitive balance.

But there are several things that could have been done that would make Subclassing less problematic for people who are into endgame content:
Balance the lines before dropping Subclassing. Most of the DLC classes are extremely delineated by role, while the basegames are more mixed by role and more delineated by theme. Ensuring that you don’t end up with things like all DPS passives in the same line would make choosing lines more of a personal choice rather than a everything-or-nothing “choice” like we have now.

Add bonuses/penalties for lines. Subclassing works most similarly to multiclassing in games like D&D. In those cases, a character who chooses to multiclass for any reason, e.g. because their base class has a weakness that they want to cover for, will then sacrifice being able to access their most powerful spells and abilities in exchange for being able to access a wider range of abilities. These could include
Buffing tooltips by X% based on the number of parent/same class lines

Nerfing tooltips by X% based on the number of parent/same class lines

Allowing only X steps of the passives to be bought based on the number of parent/same class lines

Allow Subclassing only in overland and normal content. Subclassing is great for players who want to customize their characters to be more in line with what they want, but overland is not really a huge problem. Even for harder overland content like the WSolstice WBs, nobody will mind (outside of events) when someone comes in with their 300k DPS build to smoke it. But in leaderboarded content like vets or PvP, having one build which is grossly more powerful than anything else naturally coerces people into that hyperspecific build, and players who are unwilling or unable to are pushed out.
I do want to address the “but I couldn’t get into hard content before and now I can” idea here: yes, any build can do standard vets… which means that a pureclass build can as well without the need to crutch on Fatecarver or Oakensoul. One of the big issues that is currently seen with people who mostly got into vet content because of the Oakensorc build is the fact that they tend to a) resist any other builds, even non-Oakensoul heavy attack builds that are just as easy to play but do more damage, because they are convinced that only Oakensoul will allow them to do content, and b) have learned bad habits due to the survivability and self-healing of the build, and then take unnecessary risks or fail mechanics that require positioning due to the bad habits they learned from the start.

Seriously work on balance. Stop playing with Vengeance for a cycle and look at the balance. Listen to PTS. Look at the parses. Interact with the community.
The PTS is blank right now, and it will be until U49 goes up in mid-January-ish. The team should absolutely put up a patch with combat stuff and iteratively improve it, while interacting with the veteran players who we see do know the game as well as (or better than, in some cases) the devs and have their finger on the pulse of the community. That would really help try to get combat into some semblance of balance before we get the next round of shiny new things.

All of these suggestions (and more) are given and have been presented in every thread since the original PTS feedback thread. Compromise solutions like these would really make players feel less like we are in competition with each other and more like we all care about the betterment of the game for all of us.

Finally, let’s also stop assuming that “I love Subclassing” and “I hate Subclassing” are the be-all-and-end-all. There are actually multiple (overlapping) playerbases and each has a different general view:
The casuals who don’t care about how powerful they are, they really care just what fun skills their character can use. They tend to enjoy Subclassing since they get more skills they can use.

The soloists who like to optimize to do high-level content solo, like WBs, arenas, and soloing dungeons. They tend to enjoy Subclassing since they can build super powerful and don’t much care about what skills are thematically correct.

The casual group players who like their characters the way they are. They tend to be anti-Subclassing since they don’t feel like they need to change, but they are now left behind in terms of ability because Subclassing de facto left pure builds at a power deficit.

The sweaty group players who don’t care which of the tools they have in their toolbox, just they want the most effective for the job. Like group 2, they prefer to slot the most powerful things and don’t care if it makes sense or not.

The casual PvPers, who drop in from time to time and stick with what they know. Like group 3, they now are getting smoked left and right because the builds others use are leaving them no chance.

The sweaty PvPers, like group 4 except PvP.

And of course, these all overlap and intermix. Some sweaty people (including me) feel pride in being able to get their trifectas with an off-meta build because we have deep RP and lore for our characters, so we want to see them do well as their lore entails… but with the massive power differential, we are now left with the choice to stop playing the content we want because out characters can’t measure up, or to adulterate our lovingly-crafted characters just to match up. That’s the solution I went with - I pay 1500 gold every week to swap out skills on my main just for my prog, which I no longer find fun because I like my character the way he’s supposed to be, and then I Armory him right back so I can do overland as a pure DK.

@tomofhyrule I am a fan of your first #2 and #4.

I see no reason we couldn’t start the balancing process with drawbacks/benefits associated with using more or less skills from a line.

#4 kind of ties into this.

Radiate77 · November 20

tomofhyrule wrote: »

…Some sweaty people (including me) feel pride in being able to get their trifectas with an off-meta build because we have deep RP and lore for our characters, so we want to see them do well as their lore entails… but with the massive power differential, we are now left with the choice to stop playing the content we want because out characters can’t measure up, or to adulterate our lovingly-crafted characters just to match up. That’s the solution I went with - I pay 1500 gold every week to swap out skills on my main just for my prog, which I no longer find fun because I like my character the way he’s supposed to be, and then I Armory him right back so I can do overland as a pure DK.

Is your DK not hitting 100k in content?

90k is enough to clear any and all content. If your group doesn’t trust you enough to pull your own weight doing what you love, why are you playing with those people?

tomofhyrule · November 20

Radiate77 wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

…Some sweaty people (including me) feel pride in being able to get their trifectas with an off-meta build because we have deep RP and lore for our characters, so we want to see them do well as their lore entails… but with the massive power differential, we are now left with the choice to stop playing the content we want because out characters can’t measure up, or to adulterate our lovingly-crafted characters just to match up. That’s the solution I went with - I pay 1500 gold every week to swap out skills on my main just for my prog, which I no longer find fun because I like my character the way he’s supposed to be, and then I Armory him right back so I can do overland as a pure DK.

Is your DK not hitting 100k in content?

90k is enough to clear any and all content. If your group doesn’t trust you enough to pull your own weight doing what you love, why are you playing with those people?

No, I'm not doing 100k in content. I'm usually averaging somewhere around 3-5k based on the logs.
...though I suppose I should remind everyone that support roles exist. It's interesting how many people tend to forget that part.

Fortunately, my dungeon team doesn't force me to Subclass, so I can bring my pure build to all of our trifectas. We're in a bit of a holding pattern right now until we get any new content though, since we have finished literally every 4-man achievement in the game by now.

However, for my PB prog, it is expected that I subclass, because since the DPS all Subclass, then the supports need to source all of the buffs that the DPS threw away because they tossed those lines. As such, I don't really have a choice since my job literally is to make it so they can Subclass, which means I have to.

Monte_Cristo · November 20

I like my elemental mage that combines DK's flame, Ward's frost and Sorc's shock magic.

Radiate77 · November 20

Monte_Cristo wrote: »

I like my elemental mage that combines DK's flame, Ward's frost and Sorc's shock magic.

How does it play? One of my friends wanted to make one, what advice would you give?

peacenote · November 20

I've wanted to post something on sub-classing for a while. Haven't had time. And this is not that post.

I have mixed feelings on sub-classing - I don't hate it and I've had fun with it, but I also see all the problems and (presumably) unintended consequences with it.

But a couple of thoughts I had just reading through this particular thread.

Because ZOS was on a kick for a while to make it so "each class could do everything kinda sorta equally" (I'll skip the explanation besides a brief Easter egg for the ESO history buffs, dropping in a reference to the fall of the Templar as BiS healer and the rise of Orb as THE skill to heal with), one advantage of going pure class is that it is much easier to use Wizard's or Dressing Room or whatever you use to swap between "more-support-based" and "more-damage-based" without having to respect or bring out the Armory assistant. It's WAY more flexible and easy to have different setups per boss, per pull, whatever. If you sub-class to see the biggest benefit of your role/goal, your tool kit for being hybrid is greatly diminished, because class skills that do other kinds of things are gone at the expense of passives that buff your main job. Since DPS is king in ESO, it's not enough of an edge to call it "balanced" or a true incentive to running as a pure class, because this is something supports would tend to do more... but it's something.

On the flip side, I'm not a lore diehard but I do think class identity is important. Either way, there is something about sub-classing that truly is breaking my brain. It's mostly the removal of the other class skills, I think. I'll be on my healing Warden, and say "oh yea I can throw on Frost Cloak" only to realize, no.. no I can't. But I'm so used to having it there as an option because it's a Warden skill! I'll be on my DPS Arc, and need a little more survivability (usually because I'm solo-ing or duo-ing something), and internally I'll say "oh yea! let me throw on Impervious Runeward." And I CAN'T. Because it's not THERE. I still "know" that my class is my class, and although I also know I sub-classed, my knowledge of my class identity constantly associates things with my class that are missing. Also I have multiple characters of each class so essentially I'm constantly checking "what lines do I have, again?" because it's hard to remember what I did with each character.

I kind of wish sub-classing forced you to only have access to three lines of passives, but left access to all the class abilities. Not sure if that would be too overpowered, but it sure would help me feel more anchored to my class identity without rolling back what people are enjoying.

Alchimiste1 · November 20

Cap

Gabriel_H · November 20

Radiate77 wrote: »

Is your DK not hitting 100k in content?

90k is enough to clear any and all content. If your group doesn’t trust you enough to pull your own weight doing what you love, why are you playing with those people?

You are still not getting it. I completely agree with that sentiment, and view point, but that is not how the world works.

You have to recognise reality before you can work to change it. And often times the changes that you do bring about are very small and don't extend far. The vast majority of high-end raid leads will not allow you to spec how you want. They will min/max the group to get the quickest clear.

Not so long ago I had a back and forth with a YouTuber that ZOS had prompted. The video in question was titled something like "Tanks need this" - it was about Winter's Embrace and in particular Expansive Frost Cloak.

My argument to them was that no tank "needs" that, nor does any group in fact "need" it. And if the DDs really wanted it then one of them should spec it. There argument back was that would cost dps, and my retort to that was yes, but only to the tune of adding about 15s to a 30m run - that was deemed unacceptable by them and other commentors.

That is the reality of high-end trials. As I have already said - If you have a group who let you run how you want that's great, but it is not like that for most. Before sub-classing there were half a dozen builds per role that were deemed acceptable by most trial groups, but sub-classing has cut that down to one. The blame for that is on both the raid leads and on ZOS - their system is grossly imbalanced towards min/maxing.

I have over 3 decades of experience playing MMOs, and leading raids/trials. I do not min/max my groups - I find it detriemental to players in the long run. I know how much dps is needed to clear them, and as long as you are hitting that base number and you know the mechs you get a spot. I know how much healing is needed and when, and if you can keep people alive and know the mechs you get a spot. I know every boss fight in this game, and if you can hold a boss, position it right, and know the mechs you get a spot as a tank. Iam very much an exception when it comes to end-game raid leads.

Edit: Typos