Skill Line Rework? 2025

Radiate77 · November 27

After an incredible race, we have our 3 Classes to break apart!

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/685625/class-rework-2025/p1

Now that we know which classes need a rework most, let’s find out what part of each that we find most offensive.

Down below, feel free to vote on whichever Skill Line that you guys feel is either too strong, too weak, or once again… too weird.

This poll will continue to be anonymous, that said, I look forward to hearing your reasons why these classes made top 3! 😁

WuffyCerulei · November 27

Free Crystal Frags from Dark Magic

Drakath_24 · November 27

Dark magic doesnt add anything to any build (no passives or fun gameplay).
I wouldn't mind it as well if Daedric Summoning becomes a second Mages Guild-line. The summoning part is fun, but a waist of barspace for support-rolls.

Sorc needs 2 better skill lines.

Radiate77 · November 27

Drakath_24 wrote: »

I wouldn't mind it as well if Daedric Summoning becomes a second Mages Guild-line. The summoning part is fun, but a waist of barspace for support-rolls.

I like this idea! I have always been a fan of the idea of bringing back the Schools of Magic in ESO, the problem is that they missed their perfect opportunity with Spellcrafting.

BasP · November 27

Dark Magic got my vote, though most of those skill lines have certain skills or passives that I'd personally like to see reworked.

When it comes to Dark Magic, I just don't understand why Exploitation only grants Minor Prophecy, whereas its counterpart - Assassination's Hemorrhage - grants Minor Savagery and increases Critical Damage by 10%. It seems reasonable to add a second buff like that to Exploitation as well. I like the idea of either increasing Direct Damage or Critical Chance by X%, but something else would be great too.

I think Blood Magic is another passive that could be improved a little bit. I'm just not a fan of having to be at full Health to gain the 10% increased Max Stamina or Magicka, especially since that buff nor the skill line as a whole is particularly strong. Personally, I think it’d be fine if the bonus activated whenever you cast a Dark Magic ability, regardless of your Health.

Finally, I’d love to see more of this skill line become relevant for PvE damage dealers. Outside of Crystal Frags, very little is useful. I think it would be fun if one morph of Daedric Mines, for example, became a viable delayed burst option. It would also be nice if one morph of Negate Magic became more viable for PvE, in my opinion, as that could help round out the skill line.

Marto · November 27

Dark Magic is a relic of a game that hasn't existed since 2015.

It features such nonsense as:

Silence, a debuff that was only relevant in PVP, and only before class skills started to get stamina morphs around 2015-2016.
3 crowd control abilities. Which I'm sure was very strong before CC immunity was introduced to the game. But now it's just unnecessary.
An ability to help you exchange stamina, magicka and health. Something that has become very unnecessary with the high-recovery and low costs of the post Update 35 and post CP 2.0 game.
Reduce cost passive. Which, again, only made sense when ability costs were a much bigger deal. And before all the standardization.
A non-hybradized crit chance buff, despite 99.99% of crit sources being hybradized.

I don't think there's anything in that skill line worth keeping besides Crystal Shard and 1 of the CC skills. The rest is better off being replaced by something new.

Radiate77 · November 27

I was very unhappy when Daedric Minefield was turned into a skill that provides shields.

Radiate77 · November 27

As #1 on the previous poll, I’m quite surprised our Necromancer skill lines have not been getting votes.

Marto · November 27

Radiate77 wrote: »

As #1 on the previous poll, I’m quite surprised our Necromancer skill lines have not been getting votes.

Nearly all of the Necromancer skills are fine, function wise. They have problems with damage/healing numbers, duration, and some of the synergy and functions of passives.

Necromancer needs work. But nothing that would be considered a rework.

Sorcerer has many skills that have no clear use scenario or purpose. Specially in Dark Magic and to a lesser degree Daedric Summoning.

Radiate77 · November 27

Marto wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

As #1 on the previous poll, I’m quite surprised our Necromancer skill lines have not been getting votes.

Nearly all of the Necromancer skills are fine, function wise. They have problems with damage/healing numbers, duration, and some of the synergy and functions of passives.

Necromancer needs work. But nothing that would be considered a rework.

Have you had a chance to read through the results and comments from the previous poll, tagged in the OP? You might find it enlightening.

moderatelyfatman · November 27

It's a real pity the devs never thought about this before they launched into subclassing.

Gabriel_H · November 27

BasP wrote: »

When it comes to Dark Magic, I just don't understand why Exploitation only grants Minor Prophecy, whereas its counterpart - Assassination's Hemorrhage - grants Minor Savagery and increases Critical Damage by 10%.

One is on demand, the other relies on a proc. Also the other passives as a whole need to be considered.

Radiate77 · November 27

So far, from the data we’ve gathered, while Necromancer and Nightblade need attention in 2-3 skill lines… Sorcerer appears to be an easy fix.

Interesting.

Turtle_Bot · 1:51AM

Radiate77 wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

As #1 on the previous poll, I’m quite surprised our Necromancer skill lines have not been getting votes.

Nearly all of the Necromancer skills are fine, function wise. They have problems with damage/healing numbers, duration, and some of the synergy and functions of passives.

Necromancer needs work. But nothing that would be considered a rework.

Have you had a chance to read through the results and comments from the previous poll, tagged in the OP? You might find it enlightening.

As surprising as this sounds, I'm not surprised specific Necro lines aren't getting as many votes as a line like Dark Magic. As a Sorc main who has been playing a lot more Necro recently, the current skills (for what they actually are as skills, less so as a class fantasy) seem fine outside of numbers and clunky corpse interactions.

Archer/mage only need a slight duration/damage increase - (numbers tweak)
Blastbones (blighted morph) is good
Mender is good
Boneyard is good
Skulls just needs faster projectiles/cast animations
Armor buff is good
Colossus is good
Goliath is good
Burst heal needs a slight increase in base healing done to account for the self debuff it inflicts
Resurrect just needs bugs fixed
etc.

What (imo) Necro needs as a rework is more to do with the whole class rather than any specific line.
- Corpse mechanic itself (I would allow Necro summons to also be treated as corpses for the other abilities)
- Class fantasy (more summon armies of undead theme instead of death mage theme)
- Baseline numbers (not need corpses just to reach baseline values, instead corpses provide additional benefits)

- Allowing Necro Summons to be treated as corpses removes the clunkiness that is double casting corpse generators to have a corpse to get going, but also removes the clunkiness of things like tether that become worse and worse the more mobile ESO encounters become.
- Class fantasy could be filled with more appropriate visuals. Less soul/magic like glowing effects, more bones/flesh/rot effects, e.g. the tethers could be the same ability they currently are but with zombie limbs sprouting out of the AoE instead of the flashing lightning beams they currently have, that really should belong to Sorcerer abilities, (think visuals like the NPC necro abilities and the NPC zombie abilities have). Mender is (imo) a perfect example of getting this right, the main visual is the floating spirit, then it does a small faint ghostly beam every time it heals that still gives visual cues of the ability doing its thing, while not detracting from its main ghostly theme.
- Baseline numbers is literally as simple as it sounds. Corpses should be the payoff mechanic, not the mechanic to bring things up to the baseline.

Compare this to something like Dark Magic where every ability feels not only clunky, but also outdated and with no real payoff/reason to use them (minimal/no/useless secondary effects, awkward cast times that unlike channels force you to wait to see/have/feel anything happen when using them, etc.).
Then there's the other big issue of the Sorc lines being so intermixed it makes it nearly impossible to lean into a certain aspect/theme of the class while being able to interact with systems like sub-classing. e.g. the class spammable (frags) is in Dark Magic and the best class DoTs (familiar/tormentor) are in Daedric Summoning, but the Sorc "DPS" line with all the DPS passives is Storm Calling. This issue just makes every sorc line feel bad to take/incomplete as their own lines, in an ESO that has the current form of sub-classing.

Sorc as a whole class needs a rework/update to fit into modern ESO, but Dark Magic is also such a bad line in its own right, that it doesn't surprise me it's getting so many votes when voters are limited to picking a single line.

P.s. I'll do a more in-depth comment later for each of the lines individually, since there are really good (and differing) cases/reasons for all of them to get different kinds of reworks/adjustments.

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