If by “powerful” you mean “raw numbers,” then yes. Absolutely.

Subclassing should be a game of give and take. Everyone is hyping the RPG aspect of this, but that will come from making choices. A reasonable choice requires both benefits and drawbacks.

Consider character X doing 100k DPS. They are a pure class, so they have limited access to alternate buffs and skills. Now consider character Y who is subclassed. Since Y is subclassed, they have many more options for versatility in terms of their skills and passives. If Y also did 100k DPS, then why would anyone choose X with its limitations over Y which can do the same thing and more? But if Y can only do like 85k, then players will need to decide between the raw power but low versatility of X and the versatility at the expense of power of Y. That is balance.

Consider other multiclass systems in games like D&D. If I have a Level 12 Paladin, then I have access to my strong high-level Paladin spells and abilities. But if I only take 4 levels in Paladin and then 4 in Barbarian and 4 in Monk, well then I have a lot more options, but I am not able to access abilities from any of those classes above level 4. I had to choose to give them up in exchange for the versatility.

True balance is not going to be possible with so much going on. But at least making it so players can’t just take all the benefits and not lose out on anything means that there’s no real choice involved - you’re “choosing” to either play the top way, or nerf yourself.

I would happily settle for at least maintaining parity with all the subclass builds.

I am not optimistic about the chances of that happening.

It would only make sense for a class who has pure skill lines have more power vs subclasses. Make a passive where you get x% damage, sustain, healing, and tankiness per pure skill line. Much like the passives in the armor skill one that have pros and cons. Subclassing comes with cons, pure has pros..

At a minimum pure classes should be equal so it's a genuine choice between using sub classing or not.

If a character chooses to specialise in their class, I think it makes sense that they get the best results with their skills vs someone who only uses one of their skill lines.

Only if they let me switch to a pure class. I just want the arcanist stuff on my main I hate Dragon Knight!

I think a solution would be to introduce passives that scale with the number of skill trees you have from your own class. So if youre a sorcerer and you have two sorc trees then the new passives offer bonuses accounting for the fact you have two of your own class type

tomofhyrule wrote: »

If by “powerful” you mean “raw numbers,” then yes. Absolutely.

Subclassing should be a game of give and take. Everyone is hyping the RPG aspect of this, but that will come from making choices. A reasonable choice requires both benefits and drawbacks.

But it already has drawbacks? The drawback of loosing the innate tankiness of your class.

Of course equipping 3 DPS line will outperform the damage of a more balanced layout.
It's called a glass cannon.

Now, whether they are fragile enough, or whether the drawback of loosing self-heals, recovery, armour, etc is a good enough trade-off are good questions.

But you can't just compare the damage numbers achieved during static, safe damage parsing, as that ignores the basic need of not getting one shot.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

If I have a Level 12 Paladin, then I have access to my strong high-level Paladin spells and abilities. But if I only take 4 levels in Paladin and then 4 in Barbarian and 4 in Monk, well then I have a lot more options, but I am not able to access abilities from any of those classes above level 4. I had to choose to give them up in exchange for the versatility.

Not sure if that comparison really holds up as classes are already little more than reskins.

The only truly unique tool is invisibility and maybe streak, most other things are just flavour.

Then why even have subclassing?

AlterBlika wrote: »

Then why even have subclassing?

well mostly because its fun and lets you play the way you want, but like any system there should be some limitations to it.

giving up a skill line or two is one of those limitations. I think the only other needed limitation is the scaling back of passives slightly for hybrid classes which makes sense since they can access skills and combinations (aka flexability and potential) that existing classes cannot achieve.

There should be some kinda perk to not subclassing, a perk for being a pure class, as it stands now, judging by the testers on pts, a subclassed minmaxed build will far, faaar exceed the performance of a pureclass build.

Yes.

There's nothing "pure" about opting out of Subclassing. You're just choosing to use a less effective build. It's nothing new in this game to choose a less effective build for whatever reason This question can be rephrased as "Should my choice of a less effective setup be made better than more effective setups?"

The way I see it is like this

Your primary class is the class you are a master in.

Your subclass is the class you are an apprentice in.

Being the master of 3 skill lines should be stronger than being the master of 1 or 2 skill lines.

I think they should try to balance things for people that don't want to partake in subclassing, so that base classes arent obsolete. But I don't think their missions should be to ENSURE that default classes are stronger. Otherwise their would be no point in experimenting and using the sublcass system.

They should not implement an across the board buff to standard classes as some are asking for.