Morphing Skill Lines

Corellon Thromorin · December 2015

Yes, we should be able to Morph skill lines. It can make balancing harder, but the benefits are greater anyway. That way you could increase the amount of builds (stamina and magicka) and make the game even more varied. There's nothing more boring than a game where there's a "build of the month". Also when you morph a skill line you should obviously get the skill points back.

Disclaimer: A slight animation update would be needed for this, as the characters would need now to actually use their weapon when casting skills, not sheathing their weapons and using their hands. That needs to be changed because it's dumb and boring.

My Suggestions:

Templar
i]Aedric Spear[/i can morph into i]Aedra's Judgment[/i, a skill line focused on dealing damage, or i]Aedra's Aegis[/i, a more defensive skill line for tank characters, with improved variations of Sun Shield; defensive buffs and passives. Both of these with a fair share of Stamina morphs or even originally Stamina skills with Magicka morphs.

i]Dawn's Wrath[/i can morph into i]Dawn's Vengeance[/i, with better damaging skills for your Magicka Templar DPS, or i]Dawn's Retribution[/i, a skill line where you have damage amplifying debuffs and support skills (Like Backlash and Blinding Light) to help your friends in battle. No Stamina Morphs in Vengeance, and two or three stamina morphs in Retribution.

i]Restoring Light[/i can morph into i]Hallowed Light[/i, a skill line focused on healing and support for Magicka characters or i]Invigorating Light[/i, a skill line focused on self heals for Stamina/Health based characters.

Dragon Knight
i]Ardent Flame[/i can morph into i]Scorching Flame[/i, it would have ranged fire damage skills for your Magicka DK, or i]Blistering Flame[/i, a skill line for Stamina characters, focused on close range damage skills and utility ones like Fiery Grip and Searing Strike.

i]Draconic Power[/i can morph into i]Draconic Bastion[/i a defensive skill dealing with shields, damage reduction and self healing, or i]Draconic Claw[/i, a long ranged support skill, with a whole set of support and damage skills based on Talons.

i]Earthen Heart[/i can morph into i]Earthen Soul[/i, becoming even more defensive, or i]Earthen Will[/i, a skill focused on long ranged support and damage, based on the skills Stonefist, Ash Cloud and Petrify.

Sorcerer
i]Storm Calling[/i can morph into a magicka skill line called i]Elemental Calling[/i, with damage skills that change the element according to your weapon (Fire/Frost/Shock for fire/frost/shock staves, and "magic" damage for all other weapons) or i]Storm Embodiment[/i, a Stamina skill line based on those npcs that fight close ranged with their weapon imbued in shock magic.

i]Dark Magic[/i can morph into i]Blood Magic[/i, a skill about offensive and utility skills that may or may not heal or damage you, based on skills like crystal fragments and dark conversion, or i]Negation Magic[/i, with skills to cancel spellcasting and some crowd control, based on Negate Magic and Encase, for a controller type of character.

i]Daedric Summmoning[/i can morph into i]Daedric Subjection[/i, with pet skills (also fix pets) and i]Daedric Defilement[/i, with the ward and damage skills.

And I didn't played NB so I can't really suggest things.

Reverb · December 2015

Zeni is strategically opposed to any changes that might enhance gameplay for DK or Templar classes. Nice thought though.

Tryxus · December 2015

NB
Assassination -> Ganking
Shadow -> Cloak FTW
Siphoning -> You guys suck more

Tryxus · December 2015

On a serious note tho: I would prefer ZOS to add class morphs based on...

Stamina:
- Dragonlord
- Assassin
- Paladin
- Spellsword

and Magicka:
- Dragonfire
- Illusionist
- Priest
- Battlemage

Which would add an extra skill line based on the class morph taken. Each of the Morph Skill Lines would have a bunch of "active passives", which are skills that could be slotted on its own Morph Slots (2 Morph Slots, 5 Skills and 1 Ulti then) and provide certain boosts to your character

UltimaJoe777 · December 2015

If they do make Skill Lines morphable it will require every skill in the entire line have both morphs at Rank IV. Only fair lol

In reality though, you cannot morph a Skill Line. Too many conflicting factors. Neat idea, but would never work.

TX12001rwb17_ESO · December 2015

You know the siphoning skill tree of the NB is blood magic right?

Artjuh90 · December 2015

UltimaJoe777 wrote: »

If they do make Skill Lines morphable it will require every skill in the entire line have both morphs at Rank IV. Only fair lol

In reality though, you cannot morph a Skill Line. Too many conflicting factors. Neat idea, but would never work.

+ you would get morph on morph or you get some strange progress with class skills aswell

TheShadowScout · December 2015

Personally I would much rather morph the whole -class- instead, adding a choice of a fourth skill line and maybe doing some cosmetic alterations to the existing skills, but I have menioned those ideas before, a mere dozend times or so

Like...

Personally I would think the best way to add more "classes" is to give each class, say, three different "class morphs", each with its own new skill/passives line. Perhaps becoming available after completing cadwells silver/gold... to reward people who do play through that – which incidentally would also give people the whole of cadwells gold to focus on making this new skill line… (a "reward" for finishing cadwells gold might be some alliance change quest, but that is another topic, to be discussed elsewhere…)
Some possibilities:

Dragonknight
• Gladiator (offensive self buffs & warcries; color: red/orange)
• Pyromancer (flame resist and even more fire; color: yellow/blue - gas flame!)
• Warlord (defensive group buffs, AoE standards, color: purple/gold)

Nightblade
• Illusionist (illusion summoning, mind magic; color: red/black - NPC illusionist)
• Monk (melee support & assorted “matrial arts” magic; color: blue/purple)
• Ranger (animal summoning and nature magic; color: brown/green)

Sorceror
• Cryomancer (ice magic, color: white/clear - NPC cryomancer)
• Necromancer (death magic and undead summoning; color: cyan - NPC coldfire)
• Spellsword (melee support & buff magic; color: yellow/orange – golden lightning!)

Templar
• Shaman (nature magic, totems, summons; color: green/brown)
• Crusader (melee support and aura-style buff magic; color: white/gold – holy light)
• Witch-hunter (counterspells, spell resistance/shields, silencing; color: purple/red)

Another possible idea was to not only have an added skill line with its own flavor of visual effects, but maybe even morph the existing effects to match.
So for example if a sorceror goes necromancer, their spells might be color-shifted to necromancer "coldfire" cyan, and if they turn cryomancer, their dark magic crystals will turn ice-ish in effects, spells will get color-shifted to white-blue or white-purple, or a nightblade going ranger would have their reddish effects recolored to something nature-ish green & brown... that sort of stuff. For more visual goodieness and varietee between classes.
Perhaps even morph the spell effects to some degree... like, for summoned armor might look daedric on normal sorc, worm cult / lich on necromancer, and ice armor on cryomancer, etc.
That idea might perhaps take a bit too much coding to be viable though... I'd be happy with pure color shifts.

...of course, all those quick ideas are just very rough concepts, without much consideration but character fluff. I merely tried to give some options, and went for three instead of just two "magica-specialization / stamina specialization" - It's supposed to be more for added character diversity then anything else after all.

Thus for example with nightblades, there might be one magica-caster based with "illusionist", one stamina melee based with "monk" (Yes, a nod at the old D&D class of the name, the first “martial arts” powered class I remember in fantasy gaming) and one pet based as "ranger" since nightblades mesh very well with bow, and giving them woodland creatures for the "hunter" playstyle would seem applicable.

Similar thoughts for the sorceror - spellsword for stamina sorcerors, cryomancer since ice staves have no matching skill line yet (while fire and lightning staves sort of have), and necromancer because all too many people really, really want that...

Templar... the druid/shaman is a very natural idea, between breton wyressess, argonian treeminders and bosmer spinners, nature magic meshes very well with Templar healing and sunlight-powered spells; crusader is for stamina templars as the class name has been appearing in TES games before, despite tamrielic religions having less a focus on "cross" then where the name originated, and my "witch-hunter" idea is kinda inspired by the spanish inquisition (Yes, I know noone expected that ), its "warhammer" imperial counterpart and also "Dragon Age", I admit it... seems logical to set up the aedric-flavored templars as natural enemies of the more deadric-flavored sorcerors...

Dragonknight I had the fewest ideas, since I kinda dislike that class. More fire magic for dragonknight magica-casters with pyromancer is a natural first thought... so then I went with "leader-style group play support" and "berserker-style single combatant" flavors, though there may be better ideas then those...

The skills itself are also just rough concepts - some I am quite happy with, others I feel might benefit from more thought and ideas… but it's a start I suppose, a proof of concept kind of notion, something like that… with ample room for refinement and reworking.
(also note that many of those I "borrowed" from existing mobs without knowing the actual in-game name of the abilities, just by remembering what I could from the time some mob used them unsuccessfully against one of my characters, so please, don't get too hung up on the names I used here, all right? )

In any case, since more diversity is always something I would love to see... much more fun having more choices in realizing your "perfect" character, especially since the limited number of skills one can actually use at any one time (5+U) makes people having to think and choose anyhow, so adding more active skills only increases a characters choices, not exactly their power...

And yes, spellcrafting might be able to cover some of those... but spellcrafting won't give you passives, which these skill lines should.

It would also be less of an hassle since just adding a new skill line would require a lot less coding then messing with the existing ones. And likely less balancing too then redoing every existing skill to a new flavor...

But hey, that's just my dreamings... thrown into here for spice.

Corellon Thromorin · December 2015

TX12001rwb17_ESO wrote: »

You know the siphoning skill tree of the NB is blood magic right?

Not really.

Helgi_Skotina · December 2015

Give me an alcoholic skill line with the stinky breath ultimate which can be morfed into buuu-e--e-e-e.