Agreed. They're in a very weird place with hybridization

I'm willing to bet they tackle some of these issues with the chapter because they will be adding at least 1 skill to Fighters, Mages, Soul Magic, all 6 weapons, Assault, and Support lines.

The following year, I'm hoping they go for Undaunted, Vampire, Werewolf, and Psijic Order + 1 skill line from each class.

Think about it, if they're adding more skills to these lines, and the chapter is being sold based on this concept, they'll probably want the lines to behave a bit more synergistically to have better sales.

Some predictions:

• Mages guild passives will get a rework, empower only works on monsters and 2% mag/mag regen is only for magicka users, while Fighters guild is completely inclusive and eclipsing Mages right now.
• Mages guild's Scribed skill will be a summon where you can choose the element, which dictates if it's a Fire Atro, Storm Atro, etc.
• Fire Rune will get a bit more flavour, it's pretty underwhelming.
• Inner Light/Camo Hunter/Flare double bar treatment.
• Whenever they get around to Undaunted for Scribing, they'll add an ultimate and a few more passives that specifically buff the skills used in that line.
• Soul Magic sounds like its getting a potential spammable. With Soul Trap and the ultimate, the line is a bit more balanced. It would make sense to add/rework some of the passives in there that have been the same for 10 years. I can see a new passive being added for "when a Soul Magic skill is slotted get x" and/or "x% chance to fill a soul gem, when this happens deal aoe damage".

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Agreed. They're in a very weird place with hybridization

I'm willing to bet they tackle some of these issues with the chapter because they will be adding at least 1 skill to Fighters, Mages, Soul Magic, all 6 weapons, Assault, and Support lines.

The following year, I'm hoping they go for Undaunted, Vampire, Werewolf, and Psijic Order + 1 skill line from each class.

Think about it, if they're adding more skills to these lines, and the chapter is being sold based on this concept, they'll probably want the lines to behave a bit more synergistically to have better sales.

Some predictions:

• Mages guild passives will get a rework, empower only works on monsters and 2% mag/mag regen is only for magicka users, while Fighters guild is completely inclusive and eclipsing Mages right now.
• Mages guild's Scribed skill will be a summon where you can choose the element, which dictates if it's a Fire Atro, Storm Atro, etc.
• Fire Rune will get a bit more flavour, it's pretty underwhelming.
• Inner Light/Camo Hunter/Flare double bar treatment.
• Whenever they get around to Undaunted for Scribing, they'll add an ultimate and a few more passives that specifically buff the skills used in that line.
• Soul Magic sounds like its getting a potential spammable. With Soul Trap and the ultimate, the line is a bit more balanced. It would make sense to add/rework some of the passives in there that have been the same for 10 years. I can see a new passive being added for "when a Soul Magic skill is slotted get x" and/or "x% chance to fill a soul gem, when this happens deal aoe damage".

While this would make sense, I wouldn't be surprised if we see Mage's Guild left to rot compared to Fighter's as that has been the MO since even before hybridization. Aside from the skills getting updated more often, each skill in FG has a use and sees it in PVE at least. Inner Light is all but eclipsed by Camo Hunter, Degen is run just when people need Brut/Sorc, and while Rune and Equilibrium are alright skills, they are bland and underloaded compared to their FG counterparts in Trap and Ring respectively. It wouldn't surprise me as if the FG became BiS Guild even harder with scribing because of the association with Meridia built into it and the weird, subtle obsession this game has with her. That's a different conspiracy theory though.

Grim_Overlord wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Agreed. They're in a very weird place with hybridization

I'm willing to bet they tackle some of these issues with the chapter because they will be adding at least 1 skill to Fighters, Mages, Soul Magic, all 6 weapons, Assault, and Support lines.

The following year, I'm hoping they go for Undaunted, Vampire, Werewolf, and Psijic Order + 1 skill line from each class.

Think about it, if they're adding more skills to these lines, and the chapter is being sold based on this concept, they'll probably want the lines to behave a bit more synergistically to have better sales.

Some predictions:

• Mages guild passives will get a rework, empower only works on monsters and 2% mag/mag regen is only for magicka users, while Fighters guild is completely inclusive and eclipsing Mages right now.
• Mages guild's Scribed skill will be a summon where you can choose the element, which dictates if it's a Fire Atro, Storm Atro, etc.
• Fire Rune will get a bit more flavour, it's pretty underwhelming.
• Inner Light/Camo Hunter/Flare double bar treatment.
• Whenever they get around to Undaunted for Scribing, they'll add an ultimate and a few more passives that specifically buff the skills used in that line.
• Soul Magic sounds like its getting a potential spammable. With Soul Trap and the ultimate, the line is a bit more balanced. It would make sense to add/rework some of the passives in there that have been the same for 10 years. I can see a new passive being added for "when a Soul Magic skill is slotted get x" and/or "x% chance to fill a soul gem, when this happens deal aoe damage".

While this would make sense, I wouldn't be surprised if we see Mage's Guild left to rot compared to Fighter's as that has been the MO since even before hybridization. Aside from the skills getting updated more often, each skill in FG has a use and sees it in PVE at least. Inner Light is all but eclipsed by Camo Hunter, Degen is run just when people need Brut/Sorc, and while Rune and Equilibrium are alright skills, they are bland and underloaded compared to their FG counterparts in Trap and Ring respectively. It wouldn't surprise me as if the FG became BiS Guild even harder with scribing because of the association with Meridia built into it and the weird, subtle obsession this game has with her. That's a different conspiracy theory though.

Nothing from ZOS surprises me anymore, however, ZOS tends to focus on fixing things when it has something to do with a new mechanic/chapter coming. See this patch for example. Status effects were completely reworked to make them all scale in a way that is viable for DPS instead of having Burning/Poisoned reign supreme 99% of the time. This was intentionally changed as stated in the notes in preparation for Scribing. This isn't a new issue, it's been present for 9 years, but now they decided to fix it because it effects their future release.

Why would they aim to make all of them viable unless they wanted to make Scribing more open ended for skill crafting? If a skill isn't worth farming for, if it's not worth slotting or using, why buy the chapter? I see how it would be beneficial for them to update the skill line passives where new skills will be obtained and used from.

What I think they'll do is use weapon passives as a template, you can see there is a clear theme among them:

1. Utility = Bows major expedition, 2H's 30% stam regen on kill, Destro's mag return on kill, Psijic Orders' mitigation when channeling.
2. Flat stat boost = FG's 3% w/s damage per slotted, MG's 2% mag/reg per slotted, 2H/DW crit chance/damage/etc, Destro's status effect chance and 12% direct/dot dmg.
3. When using a skill = FG's 10% dmg + 10% to vamp/ww pvp, MG's Empower, DW's Execute/CC damage, 2H's follow up, Bows +25% damage, Destro's 3k pen, Psijic Order's 5 cast damage orbs.

Soul Magic is 10 years old, MG is outdated, Assault is 100% pvp focused, Support has 10% mag reg for slotted which is not hybrid friendly.

Option 2 is really only there because you need to hold the weapon to benefit from it, so it wouldn't really find it's way on skill lines that don't require a set slot. Option 1 and 3 need to be added so Scribed skills can exceed skill budgets, giving you a reason to use them in the first place.

Example, you could look at a skill like Snipe in a vacuum, copy/paste the cast time, skill damage, and auxiliary effect of giving a status effect.. but what makes Snipe go above and beyond is the fact that it gets +25% damage done or that it's attached to a bow that gives major expedition on roll dodge. Look at Dark Flare, no one uses that skill despite the skill budget on paper being pretty decent and scaling identical to Snipe.

Another example, Inner Beast from Undaunted. It has the same tooltip as Skulls, Crushing Weapon, Silver Shards, Force Pulse, etc... The skill on its own giving taunt and 2 minor debuffs is decent skill budget wise, but no one is going to use it because it doesn't do anything extra from the line itself. Silver Shards is aoe, 3% damage per slotted, +3 ult gen on kill, and has +10% damage.