PureClass vs Subclassing Solution

AmishDefector · July 10

Recent changes to making create a crux on banner useless when paired with inspired scholarship got me thinking. What is a class mastery script? What is class mastery in subclass meta? How does a character who is 3 equal parts 3 different classes master anything, that is a jack of all trades master of none.

So what im proposing is changing class mastery script to require all 3 skill lines from your base class to recieve the full benefit. And then change all of the class mastery scripts entirely.

Here's what im thinking. Its the same buff across every class, 10% boost to the values of active class skills when all 3 skill lines are the same, 7% when you have two and 3% when you have 1.

Pros:
This should shorten the power gap between pureclass and subclassed characters. Allowing for players to chose to play pureclasses without feeling like they are nerfing themselves.

The scaling makes sense thematically. You are mastering your class.

Many of the class mastery scripts are weird and unused entirely. Arcanist's create a crux was the only one i ever saw used in pve in a meaningful way.

Greater build diversity. Since there are skill lines like shadow, dark magic, and animal companions that simply arent used nearly as often, making people grab two or more lines from a class could lead to those being used. Id recommend buffing the less used lines a bit to bring them up in power, but this is nice start that might be easier.

The Cons
If the values of the percent increase is too high subclassing could be dead.

Im sure there are people using the other class masteries i just havent seen or noticed them in pve or pvp.

There is potential that this would be more calculations that are needed on the server.

I could see if a person deleted toons to make more "meta" characters upset that their unused brittleden is now very viable.

All in all i think the pros outweigh the cons and i think people would at least understand the reason for the change.

Let me know what y'all think!

Grega · July 10

I mean everyone and their mother are having this idea over 4 months now.

You, me, that guy, this lady, everyone. We say it in different ways, but it all boils down to, is you’re pureclassing, there’s buff to make up for loss when not subclassing. I agree with it, but they just won’t change.

They aren’t listening, they aren’t changing and they are going to do what they want to.

Just eat the soup they cooked or ignore it is basically where we’re at.

FullMax · July 10

Grega wrote: »

I mean everyone and their mother are having this idea over 4 months now.

You, me, that guy, this lady, everyone. We say it in different ways, but it all boils down to, is you’re pureclassing, there’s buff to make up for loss when not subclassing. I agree with it, but they just won’t change.

They aren’t listening, they aren’t changing and they are going to do what they want to.

Just eat the soup they cooked or ignore it is basically where we’re at.

This means you need to be more persistent and increase the dose until you achieve a successful result.
If it doesn't work? Increase the dosage.

Erickson9610 · July 10

I really don't think this is a good direction to take the game balance.

tomofhyrule · July 11

This really doesn’t change much.

By making this the only benefit to pureclassing, this requires
- pureclass players to run a Scribed ability
- them to be unable to run a different Script

In short, this is essentially a zero benefit, and essentially means you still have no real choice in pureclassing since you’re forced to run something you likely don’t already.

What should be done is an adjustment to the passives. The easy answer is to buff damage/armor/healing/etc by X% per original Class line you have, or debuff the same by X% per Subclassed line. A bit more involved but likely better solution would be to specifically adjust passives that way. I like the idea of making every passive into 3 levels instead of two like they are, but players can only purchase the level of passives based on how many lines they have of their parent Class. That does still mean you can take a Subclass line for its passives, but you would then need to see if the benefit of getting that passive was worth losing access to higher levels of other passives as well.

AmishDefector · July 11

I like the idea of there being a multiplier for the number of skill lines from the base class seperate from class mastery.

I still think class mastery needs a heavy rework.

Urzigurumash · July 11

I like the idea too, I really do, but that should just be a new script. Warden's script is way OP in PvP, way OP, so it has its fans, and Arc's is extremely handy, I think particularly if you swap out Arc lines since you can emulate Runeblades/Runemend and drop the respective lines, etc. It alleviates the loss of Crux generation from dropping an Arc line.

mocap · July 11

Most classes have each skill tree that is primarily focused on DD, Tank, and Healer, with the exception of Templar and Sorc - they still have a mishmash of everything. So if I play NB DD, for example, I don't give a damn about his Shadow and Siphoning skill lines, not because they're bad, but because they're more suited for tank or healer.

Pureclass is dead by now simply by the current skill tree architecture.

TX12001rwb17_ESO · July 11

I got a better idea, make it so when you subclass you can only take the class skills, not the passives.

because as scribing would tell you, you cannot take the class mastery script for the classes which them skill lines belong to so you should not beable to "master" them.

TX12001rwb17_ESO · July 11

mocap wrote: »

Most classes have each skill tree that is primarily focused on DD, Tank, and Healer, with the exception of Templar and Sorc - they still have a mishmash of everything. So if I play NB DD, for example, I don't give a damn about his Shadow and Siphoning skill lines, not because they're bad, but because they're more suited for tank or healer.

Pureclass is dead by now simply by the current skill tree architecture.

How exactly is siphoning attacks or the ability to go invisible more suited for a tank or healer?

tomofhyrule · July 11

mocap wrote: »

Most classes have each skill tree that is primarily focused on DD, Tank, and Healer, with the exception of Templar and Sorc - they still have a mishmash of everything. So if I play NB DD, for example, I don't give a damn about his Shadow and Siphoning skill lines, not because they're bad, but because they're more suited for tank or healer.

Pureclass is dead by now simply by the current skill tree architecture.

The problem is that most classes don't.

The DLC ones do. The Systems Designers thing they all do. But all of the basegame classes are pretty well in the mishmash state.

After all, is the "tanking" line from DK the one with the ult that gives massive damage mitigation, or the one that gives the armor? Or the one that has the chains? Is the "healing" line the one that has a heal that's self-heal only, or one of the two lines that has a damaging ability that can morph to a heal? What about the NB "tanking" line? Is that the one that lets you go invisible and heals others and makes them speedy?

That's a major problem is people assume all of the Classes have well-defined lines when the basegame ones don't.

Morvan · July 11

TX12001rwb17_ESO wrote: »

How exactly is siphoning attacks or the ability to go invisible more suited for a tank or healer?

Both Siphoning and Shadow lines have some DPS skills mixed in, but they're definitely Healer and Tank focused lines, but yes, they're not really black and white in that regard, thing is, for DPS, none of them compares to Assassination, so from a DPS standpoint it doesn't make sense keeping those.

This is based on most picked lines from ESOLogs, Shadow is so bad for both DD and Tank that got to the bottom of the list.

mocap · July 11

tomofhyrule wrote: »

What about the NB "tanking" line? Is that the one that lets you go invisible and heals others and makes them speedy?

Shadow tree:
Blur - for tanks
Dark Cloak - strong self heal scales off max hp (not Invisible morph)
Shade - Minor Maim
Shadow Barrier passive - only for tanks cuz heavy armor
Dark Vigor passive - more hp %

Now you know why ZOS moved Veiled Strike in Assassin tree.

tomofhyrule · July 11

mocap wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

What about the NB "tanking" line? Is that the one that lets you go invisible and heals others and makes them speedy?

Shadow tree:
Blur - for tanks
Dark Cloak - strong self heal scales off max hp (not Invisible morph)
Shade - Minor Maim
Shadow Barrier passive - only for tanks cuz heavy armor
Dark Vigor passive - more hp %

Now you know why ZOS moved Veiled Strike in Assassin tree.

Yes, because one of the most important things about tanking is to create a path that does damage to enemies and also gives you Expedition as you block.

Look, We can all say that some of the basegame class lines are better for some roles than others, even if it doesn't make the most sense (like how the DK "healing" line is actually the one that tanks will prefer to use since the DK "tanking" like is outclassed by the Warden tanking line in every way). But the point is that the 4 basegame classes are not strictly defined by role in the way that the DLC classes are.

Consider an Arcanist DPS. Were they really using any of the skills in the other lines? Maybe Cruxweaver, but dropping that doesn't really change the gameplay much. Consider a Warden healer. I guess you could have thrown on Fetcherflies specifically for the debuff if the tank wasn't already doing that. But once Subclassing came about, there was really no reason to keep a whole skill line for one single use that could easily have come from somewhere else in the first place.
Now consider a DK DPS. Talons - despite being a "tanking" skill, was actually pretty central to a DK DPS rotation. Eruption was also a really nice ground dot. It's a lot more building around missing those decent skills that makes it harder to play, since DK was never set up as "all DPS stuff is in Ardent Flame"
(now of course this is not as visible since the Herald/Assassination/Fatecarver combo just blew everything out of the water, but that also means our example DK isn't really being a DK DPS at that point, they're more of an Arcanist DPS then)

mocap · July 11

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Yes, because one of the most important things about tanking is to create a path that does damage to enemies and also gives you Expedition as you block.

I didn’t say anything about the Path skill. You’re taking too many words out of context, presenting wishful thinking as reality — citing one DD skill from a tree where many other skills and passives are suited not for DD.

tomofhyrule · July 11

mocap wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Yes, because one of the most important things about tanking is to create a path that does damage to enemies and also gives you Expedition as you block.

I didn’t say anything about the Path skill. You’re taking too many words out of context, presenting wishful thinking as reality — citing one DD skill from a tree where many other skills and passives are suited not for DD.

But this is exactly the point I'm making.

Path is not a tanking skill, yet it's in the "tanking" line. And every one of the basegame Classes has multiple examples of one skill that is in the "wrong" line. The basegame classes are not clear cut like the DLC classes are.

Whereas there is really no DPS skill in a support line for the DLC Classes. Every passive in the DLC lines associates with the role that matches what the skills are for. The only exception is from the number of people who are desperately trying to turn the Warden Tanking line into a Frost DPS.

Renato90085 · July 11

As a tank line Shadow good skill part is 2 dd dot 1 dd dmg buff and healer hot…

Urzigurumash · July 12

@tomofhyrule Seems the basegame classes were made at a time when PvP was still the endgame rather than PvE trinity trifectas. Was the trinity even a thought in the early days of design?

Urzigurumash · July 12

And for the Warden line, what do you mean people desperately trying, weren't Piercing Cold and Glacial Presence always damage oriented? Hasn't Northern Storms Damage always scaled off Spell Damage, not HP, just like Leap? Cuz theyre for PvP

Urzigurumash · July 12

I'd say hands off DK, PvErs, once upon a time you didnt let us play your game without Ebon and Alkosh, now we dont work in your chaotic meta, oh well too bad we never really belonged anyway, what with being a Damage Dealing Tank class.