Because everyone else is throwing suggestions out there, I figured I'd post my own opinion on what needs to be done with class abilities. I do not believe in constant nerfs, and at this point I think the game is fairly well balanced, but there are a few issues with each class and a lot of abilities that need reworking to be more useful.



The Nightblade:

This comes first as it's my main class, and the one I play most often. Overall, I really like where the nightblade is at. My main concern is that there are so many abilities in this class' trees that people completely skip over because they're just... poorly inspired.



Blur
Currently this ability gives you a slight chance to be missed by all attacks (though really we know it only effects melee attacks), with one morph having a chance to set attackers offbalance and the other giving a 3.5 second burst of additional miss chance when activated.

This ability suffers the same problems that evasion does for the medium armor line. Miss chance/dodge chance just dont work all that well - they only function against melee attacks, and nearly every enemy in the game will use a combination of spells, melee, and other unavoidable attacks. It seems like a lot of enemies also ignore the effects entirely (just as with sparks/heated blades/ember explosion from the dual wield line).

With a more interesting (and useful) effect, this ability may be taken a little more often by nightblade players.

The new ability: Distraction
Disorients the enemy for 4 seconds on use. While slotted, reduces your chance to be hit by melee attacks by 10%.

Morph 1: Slight of Hand
Stuns instead of disorienting the target. While slotted, reduces your chance to be hit by melee attacks by 15%.

Morph 2: Diversion
Throw a smoke bomb at your feet, disorienting all nearby enemies for 4 seconds and reducing their chance to hit with melee attacks by 50% for 4 seconds after the effect ends.

This makes the skill far more active for the player - it can be used as a psuedo-stun to knock down enemies (disorient -> heavy attack), or to take some pressure off of you when fighting groups with the diversion morph.



Summon Shade
Shades were, at one point, useful for soloing nightblades as psuedo-tanks - you could stealth, summon one (or two, with morph) shades to attack a group of enemies, and then as long as you didnt hit any of those enemies the shades were engaged with they wouldnt attack you. That was changed recently, and with the shades now no longer able to tank and having extremely poor damage, the ability has taken a wayside to just about anything else a nightblade can put on his ability bars.

The only real use for shades now is shadow image, which allows you to teleport to the shade by activating the ability again. However, poor AI on the supposedly 'ranged' shade makes this a little wonky to use effectively.

The new ability: Summon Shade
Summons a shadowy ally to fight alongside you. The shade takes reduced damage from physical attacks, but increased damage from magical attacks. Persists until unsummoned or killed. Reduces your maximum magicka by 10% while active.

Essentially we're taking a queue from sorceror pets here. A permanent pet, despite the fact that it consumes a skill slot on your weapon bar, is infinitely better than a pet which cannot tank, does poor damage, and only lasts for a short duration. In addition to the mechanics change, I think it would be nice if the new summoned shade looked like a shadowy version of the player himself - an avatar of sorts - rather than a generic ghostman.

Morph 1: Mirror Image
Your shade will now use weaker versions of nightblade abilities you have slotted on your active ability bar.

The shade would be capable of using the following abilities:
-Assassin's blade (execute)
-Teleport strike (gap closer)
-Shadow Cloak (invisibility)
-Veiled Strike (burst damage)
-Strife (life drain/self heal)
-Cripple (damage over time)

This morph of the ability would be intended for more damage-oriented nightblades. You slot any of these 6 abilities and your shade will now have more firepower or utility at it's disposal during combat.

Morph 2: Doppleganger
The shade will mimic the appearance of any enemy it is currently attacking. The shade will take less damage from it's target, and will reflect negative single-target spells back at the target. The shade deals reduced damage.

This is meant as more of the tank-oriented shade morph. It takes less damage from anything it's fighting (one target at a time, only) and reflects spells. It would also change appearance to look like a shadowy version of the enemy.




The Templar

As my second most played class, I'm a firm supporter of the fact that templars need better resource management, and that's really the only thing they need. Overall, the class trees are well designed and there are a lot of good synergies. Healing and DPS roles suffer from a lack of magicka return, however, and it can even affect tanks. That said, one simple change, IMO, would solve the issue entirely and benefit all templar builds:

Restoring Aura / Radiant Aura / Repentance
Currently the way these abilities function grants increased health and stamina regeneration to yourself and nearby allies passively while the ability is slotted. Restoring aura and the radiant aura morph grant additional regeneration for a short time when activated. Repentance drains energy from corpses to restore a fair amount of health and stamina per corpse to yourself and allies, with no cost association.

The major issue here is that the regeneration these abilities give on activation always puts you and your allies into the overcharge limit (most players are at that limit with their resource regeneration already). Most templars that use the ability take repentance instead, because it doesnt interfere with regeneration caps.

That said, this ability is in the healing tree, and that same tree already has half a dozen ways to restore health to you and allies. I dont really think restoring aura and it's morphs need to do the same thing, especially when there's such a need for magicka by the templar (and possibly by allies as well).

The new ability: Restoring Aura
While slotted, passively increases magicka and stamina regeneration for you and nearby allies by 15%. When activated, this value is increased to 80% additional magicka and stamina regeneration for 6 seconds.

Morph 1: Radiant Aura
While slotted, passively increases magicka, health, and stamina regeneration for you and nearby allies by 10%. When activated, increases magicka, health, and stamina regeneration by an additional 50% for 9 seconds.

The change to restoring aura removes health regeneration in favor of magicka regeneration, and the change to radiant aura re-applies the health regeneration in addition to the two other stats. This still allows radiant aura to be used as a healing boost, but at the cost of lower overall bonus.

Morph 2: Repentance
While slotted, passively increases magicka and stamina regeneration for you and nearby allies by 15%. When activated, drain energy from nearby corpses to restore stamina and magicka per corpse to yourself and nearby allies.

Repentance now restores magicka and stamina instead of health and stamina. This change will probably still cause templars to take repentance over radiant aura in most situations, but melee/stamina builds will have access to burst stamina restoration, caster builds will have access to burst magicka restoration, and tanks will have both (because they usually need both resources equally).




The Dragonknight

Dragonknights have probably been on the receiving end of more balance and ability changes than any other class at this point. Overall I think they're pretty much fine, however they have one overbearing weakness compared to every other class: They lack any 28 meter ranged abilities. This makes playing a dragonknight archer or caster a little more difficult and frustrating than it should be (I know, a lot of DK casters rely more on weapon abilities with the destruction staff and their synergies with dk passives, but that's already been getting rebalanced with recent changes).

My DK is an archer, so the changes I'm suggesting will be coming from that point of view primarily, but really range is the only thing I think the class needs more of right now.

Two simple changes here:

Stonefist and Petrify
Probably the two abilities that would be most useful to an archer dragonknight, these both need more range. The base range on stonefist is 10 meters, with the obsidian shard morph bumping that up to 15 meters (18 maxxed, if I recall correctly).
I'd like to see obsidian shard increase the range up to 28 meters.

For petrify, the base range for all morphs should be increased to 28 meters.




The Sorceror

I play this class the least, so suggesting any kind of major balance changes is going to be a little unrealistic. There are a few changes I'd like to see to the class that would definitely make me play my sorc more often, though.

Bound Armor
Only a visual change here - the daedric skin that this gives you is horrid, and the fact that it covers up most of your character and your equipped gear (which we work so hard on customizing, and will be working even harder on with the dye system upcoming) is disappointing.

My suggestion here would be to make bound armor provide a sort of 'ethereal' overlay on your character. The best reference would be tech armor from mass effect, here's a picture:


Of course orange is a bad color choice, i'd go with a blue/purple hue, and make it a little more sinister and fantasy looking (flowy lines and spikes) rather than like armor plates, but you get the idea. It would be a few "holographic" pieces of transparent armor that float over your character model instead of replacing your armor skin.


Volatile Familiar
Another visual/graphic change - I always liked summoning dremora in previous elder scrolls games. We get scamps, twilights, and clannfears with sorceror summons, but no dremora.

Currently, volatile familiar (a morph of unstable familiar) uses the same scamp model that the base ability does. Why not change the model of the summoned creature to a dremora instead?





And that's all I've got, otherwise i think class abilities and balance are in fairly good shape right now.