Dragonknight Rework?

Radiate77

Now that we know Dragonknight will be our first class on the chopping block, what Skill Line do you guys feel is too strong, too weak, or too weird?

I am curious to hear any reasons!
Ex. Corrosive Armor should be Corrosive Weapons because of XYZ… ect

SneaK

It’s really not a question of too weak/strong, it’s only an issue cause of subclassing.

Pure DK before subclassing was fine.
But if they’re shooting to rebalance lines based on dmg/tank/heal then Earthen Heart would be the outlier as far as competitiveness goes compared to other healing skill lines like green balance.

Radiate77

Earthen Heart

SneaK wrote: »

It’s really not a question of too weak/strong, it’s only an issue cause of subclassing.

Pure DK before subclassing was fine.
But if they’re shooting to rebalance lines based on dmg/tank/heal then Earthen Heart would be the outlier as far as competitiveness goes compared to other healing skill lines like green balance.

Yet, before Subclassing, Dragonknights were ran over as Damage Dealers by Arcanist, and they were practically non-existent in the Sorc/Nightblade PvP meta we had the few patches prior.

Earthen Heart is the skill line I picked too, so we agree on that!

SneaK

Radiate77 wrote: »

SneaK wrote: »

It’s really not a question of too weak/strong, it’s only an issue cause of subclassing.

Pure DK before subclassing was fine.
But if they’re shooting to rebalance lines based on dmg/tank/heal then Earthen Heart would be the outlier as far as competitiveness goes compared to other healing skill lines like green balance.

Yet, before Subclassing, Dragonknights were ran over as Damage Dealers by Arcanist, and they were practically non-existent in the Sorc/Nightblade PvP meta we had the few patches prior.

Earthen Heart is the skill line I picked too, so we agree on that!

Well it sounds like they want every class to be as powerful as an Arcanist in PvE, I dunno. In PvP I’ve never felt handcuffed in a 1v1 on my magdk until subclassing. I’ve struggled to kill good Sorcs and good NBs on any class though, DK included. Stam DK was in a weird spot a long while ago though.

Either way, Earthen Heart was the first to go when I subclassed both DKs for a reason.


adding*
Sorcs/NBs have been the best pure classes in PvP you can run for a long long time. And it’s not because of “the trinity” it’s because of the utility (mobility/stealth) they have.

Vulkunne

Ardent Flame

Yeah, Earthen Heart could use some love but aside from pulls Ardent Flame to me seems rather boring. Earthen Heart is support but compared to other classes Ardent is kind of lackluster. I mean yeah it has some morphs that are pretty strong but maybe not as useful as other things.

Arcanist Flail should also get its execute damage back. DK Wings should work as intended, Jabs needs to get remodeled, so does DW Flurry. I'm glad to hear they're going to look things over again but there's so much opportunity for greatness which I would hope would bring people back to the game.

The nerf culture has to end though its fine to fix things and do what you need to do. But if they want my suggestion, by all means fix it, put it back right and leave it alone. Let people come back to the game by restoring the things they liked about it. Now is the season for meaningful change and I appreciate the news about these upcoming changes.

Radiate77

Earthen Heart

SneaK wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

SneaK wrote: »

It’s really not a question of too weak/strong, it’s only an issue cause of subclassing.

Pure DK before subclassing was fine.
But if they’re shooting to rebalance lines based on dmg/tank/heal then Earthen Heart would be the outlier as far as competitiveness goes compared to other healing skill lines like green balance.

Yet, before Subclassing, Dragonknights were ran over as Damage Dealers by Arcanist, and they were practically non-existent in the Sorc/Nightblade PvP meta we had the few patches prior.

Earthen Heart is the skill line I picked too, so we agree on that!

Well it sounds like they want every class to be as powerful as an Arcanist in PvE, I dunno…

This lends credence to some rumors I’ve been hearing about a Veteran difficulty for Overland.

Can’t wait to see how it shakes out.

SneaK wrote: »

adding*
Sorcs/NBs have been the best pure classes in PvP you can run for a long long time. And it’s not because of “the trinity” it’s because of the utility (mobility/stealth) they have.

Yeah. It was like a party trick whenever I pulled out my Necromancer and ran through all of the Nightblades and Sorcerers at Stonefalls.

DaveMoeDee

Ugh. I hate this as a DK main since the game launched. I don't want to learn completely revamped skills. I still don't understand the new Champion point constellations.

Radiate77

Earthen Heart

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

Ugh. I hate this as a DK main since the game launched. I don't want to learn completely revamped skills. I still don't understand the new Champion point constellations.

Change can be good though!

DaveMoeDee

Radiate77 wrote: »

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

Ugh. I hate this as a DK main since the game launched. I don't want to learn completely revamped skills. I still don't understand the new Champion point constellations.

Change can be good though!

For what?

I have no problem with change in life. But major rebalancing in ESO has never been a positive for my enjoyment.

I get that they have no choice but to do it because they broke the class system. But I personally am fine with it being broken and this is pure negative for me. I am also someone that never wanted them to add spellcrafting or cross-class skill access because I didn't want to end up this inevitability due to the impossibility of balancing that and the level of complaining that would happen leading to a revamp.

Ingel_Riday

Radiate77 wrote: »

Now that we know Dragonknight will be our first class on the chopping block, what Skill Line do you guys feel is too strong, too weak, or too weird?

I am curious to hear any reasons!
Ex. Corrosive Armor should be Corrosive Weapons because of XYZ… ect

N/A?

Truth be told, I find the premise of heavily re-working and re-designing decade-old classes in a decade-old game preposterous. At this point in the game's life cycle, I'd expect small changes here or there. Not sledgehammers and massive skill re-works. What are we doing here?

My personal read on the whole thing is that subclassing broke game balance COMPLETELY (like we all said it would). Instead of raising the skill floor, it rocketed the skill ceiling to the stratosphere. The min-maxers are building Arcanist / Templar / Assassin Frankensteins that do 200k+ dps when not trying, and how do you balance around that?

Do you build most content around casual players who are lucky to crack 30k dps? If so, the min-maxers are going to be bored out of their mind. Do you build content around pure class builds who often hit around 60k to 70k dps? Again... min-maxers are going to be bored out of their minds. Or do you build content around the min-maxers and find ways to force everyone to play Frakensteins builds with no thematic consistency? Most people won't like that, but you've gotta do something. Bring hybrid builds and pure class builds more in line. Bring that skill ceiling back down to Earth while propping the skill floor up a little bit.

Eh. I'm not a fan of my decade old main being vivisected and sewn back together into something else entirely. But... who knows at this point? I don't know how you balance 7 pure classes and hundreds of subclass combinations alongside 500+ armor sets, 75+ monster sets, 30+ mythics, and so on. It was hard enough to balance the 7 pure classes in the first place, let alone this.

Seems like an impossible task unless you're going to intentionally homogenize things, tweaking passives around such that hybrids barely eke out performance above pure classes (took 3 damage trees? We shifted half the damage passives to non-damage trees. Without those, you're... statistically about even. You're mainly playing a hybrid class for the sheer campiness of it now, hee hee hee) while pure classes themselves are adjusted to do barely anything different from each other outside of the animations / appearances of their otherwise similar move-sets.

Here's to hoping it's not Update 35 level of woe.

Radiate77

Earthen Heart

Listen, I get it.
I put out a poll on Class Reworks not too long ago and Dragonknight got one vote…

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/685625/class-rework-2025/p1

I don’t know why they chose this class to start with, being the one people feel needs the least amount of work, but here we are.

We need to make the most with what we’ve been given, so if there are any skills that you guys feel need help, say something.

Radiate77

Earthen Heart

Also want to remind people, that a Rework could be as simple as changing the animation for a skill.

IE: Dragon Blood & morphs no longer make your character translucent.

DoofusMax

At the moment, ZOS' design philosphy is that all classes must be capable of being minimally useful in all roles. A class may not be optimal in a particular role (noting that "optimal" is defined by whatever the current min-max meta happens to be), but it must capable of being useful in that role, so all classes must necessarily be jacks-of-all-trades under this approach. Considering that most players are running around solo, either exclusively or mostly, then all classes must at least be proficient as DPS and have enough self sustains to support that solo playstyle, also noting that any changes to overland difficulty must also be workable with the existing class abilities.

My personal take is that DKs do very well at tanking and are decent or a bit better than decent at DPS, but are weakest as healers. That would make Earthen Heart the class skill line which is most in need of some work to stay within the jack-of-all-trades concept.

Ingel_Riday

Radiate77 wrote: »

Also want to remind people, that a Rework could be as simple as changing the animation for a skill.

IE: Dragon Blood & morphs no longer make your character translucent.

If the rework was only going to be animation tweaks, I don't think they would have pushed it so hard in the news feeds.

But if I was going to re-work Dragonknight skill lines to bring sub-classing and pure-classing more in line (an admittedly bizarre premise, since I don't see any meta Frankenstein builds using Ardent Flame)... I'd spread the Ardent Flame passives into Earthen Heart and Draconic Fire. So if you take ONLY Ardent Flame, you don't get your 5% flame / poison damage buff and your dots don't last longer.

I'd also take the lazy approach of spreading damage tree passives on almost all classes. Okay, you can take the Arcanist DPS tree... but I've put Fated Fortune and Harnessed Quintessence in other skill trees and replaced them with Circumvented Fate and Hideous Clarity. So you can have the Arcanist damage tree sub-classed in, but you'll be missing the crit damage bonuses and the weapon / spell damage bonus.

If you have two other damage trees, you'll have six damage passives instead of four... so you'll come out ahead overall. But considering that you used to have TWELVE damage passives, I've taken a lot of wind out of your sails and brought your damage ceiling lower without negatively impacting pure classes, who are still exactly where they were. Also, I've made you have six tanking / healing passives, so you have enough survivability bonuses that I can make content without having to assume that you're made out of tissue paper and prayers.

Otherwise, no... I can't think of any reworks that I want for the class. Ardent Flame is fine (even though the best spammable morph uses stamina and magicka for no reason other than misery), Draconic Power is great for tanking, and Earthen Heart is fine. Dragonknight healers are about damage shields and using restoration stave abilities to make up for class deficiencies. It was fine. Not optimal, but fine.

Edit addition: just in case my laziness isn't clear...

Damage tree: 2 damage passives, 1 tanking passive, 1 healing passive
Tank tree: 2 tanking passives, 1 damage passive, 1 healing passive
Healing tree: 2 healing passives, 1 damage passive, 1 tanking passive

I wouldn't even make new passives. Why bother? Just wriggle them around. A pure class has 4 / 4 /4 (damage / tanking / healing). A hybrid class focused on damage trees would have 6 / 3 / 3 instead of the current amount of 12 / 0 / 0. There. Assassination without the crit chance bonus or the crit damage boost. Aedric Spear without the crit damage or Spear Wall. You get the idea.

With the right combo, you'd still have six damage passives instead of the pure class four. You could still milk out extra performance, but kiss that 200k dps good-bye. Bring everyone more in line, lessen the sub-class power creep, and there. Good enough for the moment, though I'm ignoring the fact that not all classes are cleanly broken up into DPS, tanking, and healing / buffs like the Dragonknight. Could get weird for classes like Sorcerer.

frogthroat

Ardent Flame

ZOS says their aim is not to nerf subclassing. Therefore I predict Ardent Flame, as one of the very few meta subclassing DD skill lines, will be nerfed. The same will happen to Assassination and Herald of the Tome. Probably Aedric Spear and Grave Lord, too.

AvalonRanger

SneaK wrote: »

It’s really not a question of too weak/strong, it’s only an issue cause of subclassing.

Pure DK before subclassing was fine.
But if they’re shooting to rebalance lines based on dmg/tank/heal then Earthen Heart would be the outlier as far as competitiveness goes compared to other healing skill lines like green balance.

As a tank main player, DK is perfect class. My tank is pure DK, and I don't need changing any more.

Ingel_Riday

frogthroat wrote: »

ZOS says their aim is not to nerf subclassing. Therefore I predict Ardent Flame, as one of the very few meta subclassing DD skill lines, will be nerfed. The same will happen to Assassination and Herald of the Tome. Probably Aedric Spear and Grave Lord, too.

All that would do is force players to sub-class. If my Ardent Flame tree is ground into the dirt, I'll have to replace it or be left even further in the dust by the sub-class meta. If Aedric Spear is nerfed into the ground because too many sub-classers are taking it, they'll just move on to another skill tree. Meanwhile, my pure-class Templar will be gutted by the whack-a-mole attempts at "balancing."

I... I wonder why I play this game, sometimes. Ever since Update 35, every update just leaves me frowning and anticipating awfulness. I keep waiting for the update that ruins half my characters in the pursuit of smacking down popular sub-class metas, and I'm getting the feeling that I won't have to wait much longer.

I'm going to go play something else for a while. Something that isn't a live service. :-/

James-Wayne

Earthen Heart

So longs they make abilities stronger by ensuring the more class lines you have the stronger you are. And make sure class sets fit that would as well.

I'm glad DK is first because it's not my main 😂

Radiate77

Earthen Heart

James-Wayne wrote: »

So longs they make abilities stronger by ensuring the more class lines you have the stronger you are. And make sure class sets fit that would as well.

I'm glad DK is first because it's not my main 😂

Here’s to hoping they don’t just tack on a lazy, “for each Dragonknight ability slotted” or “when dealing damage with a Dragonknight ability” and instead design our reworks around encouraging unique playstyles.

From the sound of it, this Avalanche passive they mentioned seems to encourage an Attrition-playstyle, can’t wait to see what it says.

ZhuJiuyin

"like reworked Inhale—which has moved to Ardent Flame and now briefly restores a percent of your missing resources over time before unleashing its classic explosion."
It feels like a complete overhaul of all DK skill lines. It's hard to tell whether it's good or bad at the moment, but at least the announcement gives me the feeling that ZOS really wants to do something.

NoSoup

Personally I'd keep most the skills and the skill lines the same. Then add a passive to increase DOT damage by 15 or 20%, reduce stamina, magic recovery by 20% to draconic power.

Then on earthern heart add a passive to increase stamina/magic recovery by 20%.

If you want the full power of the DOT buff without being nerfed and having access to a skill line of DOTs then you'll have to go pure DK. If you want to subclass into Stoneheart just for the dot buff, then you're going to have to fucus on resources elsewhere. And if you subclass into Earthern heart just for the resource gain you're not really getting many other usful skills.

Radiate77

Earthen Heart

Ardent Flame is neck and neck with Draconic Power.

I wonder why?

frogthroat

Ardent Flame

Ingel_Riday wrote: »

All that would do is force players to sub-class. If my Ardent Flame tree is ground into the dirt, I'll have to replace it or be left even further in the dust by the sub-class meta. If Aedric Spear is nerfed into the ground because too many sub-classers are taking it, they'll just move on to another skill tree. Meanwhile, my pure-class Templar will be gutted by the whack-a-mole attempts at "balancing."

I hope for the best but the previous "we don't aim to nerf" claims have meant massive nerfs. At least Assassination and Herald of the Tome will see this.

But what I would hope is that subclassing remains relatively same (maybe slight nerfs to those op skill lines, because we need to be realistic -- they will nerf something), but the rework makes pure classing worthwhile like they say. As in, pure class builds could be something like ~90% of subclassing. So the gap would be that a skilled player could parse more with a pure class build than a moderately skilled player like me with a meta subclass build -- but so that if the same player plays pure class or subclass builds, subclass would come ~10% ahead. That would be optimal from my perspective.

And yeah, as a templar main I am also wondering about the rework to dd, tank and healer skill lines. Some classes have clear dd/t/h skill lines, but templar... what would be the tanking skill line? I mean, probably Dawn's Wrath and they can move the shield from Aedric to Dawn, but still, currently the only worthwhile skill in that skill line for a tank is the catheter bag. (The skill formerly known as Living Dark -- but nowadays more like a collection bag.) The rest in Dawn are dd skills.

Zodiarkslayer

SneaK wrote: »

But if they’re shooting to rebalance lines based on dmg/tank/heal then Earthen Heart would be the outlier as far as competitiveness goes compared to other healing skill lines like green balance.

They are not shooting for Tank/Heal/DPS!
It's one of their goals to not have that split anymore.
They specifically stated, that they want every skill line to be able to contribute something to every build, so that there aren't any skill lines that are left out for good, because they focus too strongly on one type of playstyle.

Gabriel_H

Depends entirely on the nature of the rework. The biggest problem sub-classing has is that it is inherantly imbalanced in favour of DLC classes - as they have distinct tank/damage/heal lines, whereas base classes have mixed lines.

The way ZOS has worded it makes it sound like rather than re-working the base classes to be the same as the DLC and have distinct lines, it sounds like they plan to re-work the DLC classes to have mixed lines.

Then the more lines you have of a class the more synergised the skills and the more power they then give, which puts them on par with the sub-classed role specialisation. If that is the case then they won't be re-working individual lines for DK (and other base classes) they will be re-working all three and giving better synergy and power between the skills.

So, for example, if Earthern is the weakest line it doesn't mean Earthen will get the re-work, and it could be something in the other two lines that boosts the power.

Edit: Typos

frogthroat

Ardent Flame

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

They specifically stated, that they want every skill line to be able to contribute something to every build, so that there aren't any skill lines that are left out for good, because they focus too strongly on one type of playstyle.

Thanks for pointing that out! I was too hasty in my reading and understood it that they wanted to make more clear distinctions between the skill lines, not blur the lines. Ok, now I get it and yeah, might even work.

flizomica

Draconic Power

I voted draconic power as the visuals could really use an overhaul and the passives are boring, and in some cases useless (e.g. health recovery). I think it's one of the few skill lines I use on exactly none of my 14 characters.

I feel like there are so many cool things you could do with a dragon-inspired skill line in the modern state of the game - like what if spiked armor looked less like tumors, and one morph remained defensive and the other swapped to offensive, enhancing you instead with dragon claws and buffing melee attacks? They could even have it buff unarmed attacks more just for some RP funsies.

Also, bring back DK wings actually reflecting projectiles!

tomofhyrule

I’m sure the reason they chose to start with DK is that it’d be the easiest and good for a proof-of-concept. DK’s not in a terrible state comparatively.

I would hope that the reworks do give us that power fantasy, and that said power fantasy doesn’t solely involve DPS though.

Like if I think of DK in each role, I picture:
- DPS: DoTs and pressure, but really not good with burst or execute
- Tank: Stonewalls that laugh off attacks
- Heal: [error 404: Healer not found]
(Obviously one of those has really never been defined)

What we currently see with DK playstyle is that it’s designed to have low sustain punctuated by ults. DK is really the only class that got an un-reverted nerf (or at least a buff that didn’t get replaced by a different buff) since U46 in that their sustain got worse.

Of the three lines, Draconic Power definitely needs some reason to be slotted. I’d love to see the sustain nerfs reverted, particularly for ulting. And Magma definitely needs something - corrosive was clearly OP to give ridiculous mitigation and penetration, and I think that morph should lose the mit, but the other morph needs a reason to be slotted now that both stop ult gen and the radius on the ally shields from magma are miniscule.

I just need to see more of this before I get excited. ZOS has made too many promises for me to believe on words alone, so right now all I see is “we’re not intending on adding any new classes for two years at least,” which is something I really want.

olsborg

Earthen Heart

As strong as corrosive armor is offencively, it doesnt need to give you anything defencively, the fact that you basicly become unkillable while you also penetrate 100% is overpowered.

Ezhh

This is just about PvE damage dealing:

Pre-arc, DK, felt like the power-standard they should have balanced other classes around. Then arc happened, then subclasses, and from what I recall DK has taken a few hits along the way as well.

The thing that I liked about DK was that it had strong cleave but you had to be in melee to push it and even adjust a couple of skills, so there was a trade off. Then arc had strong(er?) cleave with none of the sustain issues and it was fully at range so none of the risk either, while having great single target damage with the same build.

I just don't see how anything can be balanced against current arcanist unless we're adding strong ranged cleave attacks to everything along with better access to various buffs/penetration and so on. Doing something with arc first would make way more sense. Then pull up the classess that are objectively struggling in all roles (who runs a sorc line for any serious PvE content now unless it's for atro or sometimes streak?).

I'd love to see pure DK worth using again, but my fear is they just nerf the sustain even more and nerf the damage so Ardent is less useful in subclassing.

BardokRedSnow

Poll too vague lol but the only thing I felt needed tweaking was combustion tbh and letting us gain ult again with Corrosive armor. Subclassing is powerful enough that its no longer the issue it used to be. Wardens have godly sustain, and with healing being as ridiculously stacked as it is, Corrosive giving me a window just to cut through armor is balanced rather than overpowered.

We don't have streak and DK wings suck, they can give us those things at least.