Should the role positioning of the Class skill line be decentralizing or consistent?

ZhuJiuyin · December 4

According to "Developer Deep Dive—ESO's Class Identity Refresh," ZOS intends to decentralize role-specific power so that a single skill line won't have every tool you need to achieve your goals.

Do you think the three class skill lines need clearly defined role roles (T/D/H)? For example, the latest DLC class, or should they be like the old class, with class characteristics distributed across the three skill lines?

tomofhyrule · December 4

Distributed across the three skill lines like the old class

I definitely think one of the things that allowed Subclassing to be obscenely overpowered was the strict delineation of lines based on role. Because of that, players can easily just dump their support lines to pick up more damage lines and get 3x as strong with no real tradeoff. And since damage is king in this game, that just empowers a single meta and everything else being left miles behind.

After all, look at the most meta lines: Herald of the Tome (Arcanist, strictly delineated DPS line). Assassination (Nightblade, strictly delineated DPS line).

I believe that, as an RPG, we should be making reasonable choices that aren't just "I want all the benefits and none of the weaknesses." A super damage build should come with the sturdiness of wet toilet paper, and no tank or healer would be able to keep your 1HP self alive if you trade everything for more damage.

I prefer the basegame lines which were thematic withing themselves and did not strictly adhere to a role. I really liked the skills which had role-based morphs like DK's Ash Cloud, which could become the ground DoT Eruption or the ground HoT Cinder Storm.

But really, I want to see choices. By all means, Subclassing should allow players to try to adopt new skills to cover their Class's inherent weakness... but there should be an actual cost for doing so.

Lord_Hev · December 4

Distributed across the three skill lines like the old class

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I definitely think one of the things that allowed Subclassing to be obscenely overpowered was the strict delineation of lines based on role. Because of that, players can easily just dump their support lines to pick up more damage lines and get 3x as strong with no real tradeoff. And since damage is king in this game, that just empowers a single meta and everything else being left miles behind.

After all, look at the most meta lines: Herald of the Tome (Arcanist, strictly delineated DPS line). Assassination (Nightblade, strictly delineated DPS line).

I believe that, as an RPG, we should be making reasonable choices that aren't just "I want all the benefits and none of the weaknesses." A super damage build should come with the sturdiness of wet toilet paper, and no tank or healer would be able to keep your 1HP self alive if you trade everything for more damage.

I prefer the basegame lines which were thematic withing themselves and did not strictly adhere to a role. I really liked the skills which had role-based morphs like DK's Ash Cloud, which could become the ground DoT Eruption or the ground HoT Cinder Storm.

But really, I want to see choices. By all means, Subclassing should allow players to try to adopt new skills to cover their Class's inherent weakness... but there should be an actual cost for doing so.

The funny thing is (primarily from a pvp perspective) if scribing was removed, or more specifically -healing- scribing skills were removed. All offense subclassing would have a glaring issue, your only possible on demand heal would be vigor.

But yea, the only way subclassing can be balanced without stepping on pure-classes in this regard; a lot of butchering will have to be done. Nightblade got the most of it, so now all the classes have to get that treatment. And well, ironically nightblade has to be re-butchered because it went under the scalpel to previously enforce the philosophy of centralizing roles.

LunaFlora · December 4

Distributed across the three skill lines like the old class

i like it when a class skill line has something for every role.

Personally, i hope zos will change existing skill morphs so the morphs are more distinctly different.
similar to the Polar Wind and Arctic Blast morphs from Warden's Winter's Embrace line, defense vs offense.

Muizer · December 4

Distributed across the three skill lines like the old class

With subclassing, I don't think there's much of a choice here. What worries me is that this inserts a new mechanism that needs balancing. Given the number of possible combinations and the dev's demonstrated cavalier attitude towards balance this could be yet another wildly seesawing saga.

Gabriel_H · December 4

Distributed across the three skill lines like the old class

Clear roles would make the end-game problem even worse. You'd have 3 optimal lines for tank, dd, and healer - 9 lines in total - and that's pretty much all you'd see in end-game.

I am actually pretty shocked they chose this direction. I was half expecting them to make clear lines on all classes, at which point I'd have been out of here.

Yudo · December 4

Distributed across the three skill lines like the old class

This is the type of exercises that should have gone into subclassing as a complete release, so yes for sure it needs to be done. Distribution helps with variety and balance. Will help with identity too.

SolarRune · December 4

Through the class reworks, there are ways they could make the seperate lines work for the older classes - things like passives being more like the armor passives with gains and losses rather than just gains, and then they could be focussed on the role - so you wouldn't want to stack too many DD lines together for the negative reasons - but i expect it to be dstributed across three skill lines, that is going to be just as hard to balance without just swinging the pendulum back the other way and making pureclass king. Its not like the game was in a balanced state for the last few patches before subclassing. And to make viable subclass builds the limit of only one line per subclass may need to be removed.

I just hope supports (Tanks and Healers) are not forgotten in how skill lines are put together, and it isn't solely focused on managing DPS output. There has been some real viable build variability for the first time in many years for supports because of subclassing, and it would be a shame to lose that.

Danikat · December 4

Distributed across the three skill lines like the old class

I don't see how clear roles could work for Templar. Obviously Restoring Light is the healing line, but what do you do with Aedric Spear and Dawn's Wrath? Making either one a pure tanking line (or even pure damage) would mean completely redesigning it.

I don't know, maybe that's the kind of change they're planning, not just adjustments but removing some skills entirely to replace them with brand new and entirely different ones to fit their new vision of how classes should play?

Personally I like it when all the skill lines offer a bit of everything, I think it gives more choice overall without it being so simple to stack up a very strong build. Especially since class skills aren't the only ones we have available and they need to mix and match with everything else as well.

ssewallb14_ESO · December 4

Clear role roles like the DLC class

I would've preferred the solution of clearly defined role-based skill lines, and then either some kind of debuff for selecting multiple in the same role, or a limit on 1 skill line per role. This would've been more intuitive to new/casual players and easier to balance.

TBH I'm ok with how they're planning to do it though. It's harder to pull of, but at the end of the day it will come down to execution.

SolarRune · December 4

I think thats where we need to wait and see more of what the changes look like for the first class. The talk of new passives, and fundamental changes to skills and resource management - it would seem to be a very fundamental revisit of all skills and passives and not just shoving the current skills around.

The changes discuss in the press release talks about changes to DOTs, damage per tick, ramping damage buffs being mentioned. No mention of HOTs or Healing buffs, debuffs, taunts or health/resistance boosts etc etc.

Others are right, its the sort of balancing that should have been done before subclassing was released, but it should not just focus on DD roles - if you are going to mix things up and wanting to create a balance between pureclass and subclass - this needs to extend to all roles, not just be limited to DDs.

SneaK · December 4

Who even knows what they’re thinking?

They are going to push out a DoT/Sustain DK in the middle of a burst/crit meta. Makes no sense.

SolarRune · December 4

Well if the rumours are true - then it does feel like healers and tanks are effectively being ignored in this process.

Toanis · December 4

Clear role roles like the DLC class

Clearly defined skill line roles could be the limiting factor for subclassing. When you can only switch a tank line for another tank line, there is no doubling down on dps lines.

Shuffling skills and passives so you basically need all skill lines to be effective would make subclassing useless. Just removing subclassing would have the same effect with less effort.

Morvan · December 4

Distributed across the three skill lines like the old class

To me skill lines should always be more focused on theme rather than function, distributing power among skill lines can be the way to both balance lines and to get pure builds closer to subclassing builds, if done right.

alpha_synuclein · December 4

Distributed across the three skill lines like the old class

Before subclassing I was a big fan of lines specific for each role (dlc style). But since we need to live with this mix and match mess, let's have them more shuffled.

I would especially welcome some adjustments to Herald. Separating offensive means of crux generation from fatecarver would be great.

heaven13 · December 4

Distributed across the three skill lines like the old class

Toanis wrote: »

Clearly defined skill line roles could be the limiting factor for subclassing. When you can only switch a tank line for another tank line, there is no doubling down on dps lines.

Shuffling skills and passives so you basically need all skill lines to be effective would make subclassing useless. Just removing subclassing would have the same effect with less effort.

This also limits subclassing to power output only, instead of power fantasy. How many people are out there rocking an Elementalist? if Ardent Flame was DKs damage line, and Storm Calling was Sorcs damage line, and someone could only have 1 damage line for each class, an entire themed build goes poof. Your idea to lock it to role specific lines and then trade out role for role only really limits what the goal of subclassing should be.

CalamityCat · December 4

Distributed across the three skill lines like the old class

I definitely prefer the old style class lines, and I think they're better for balance. It means players can actually build the character they resonate with and not worry it'll be massively underpowered against the next player who just picked the specialised DD lines with the biggest damage output. It's also boring to just be only doing damage or healing all the time and having to kinda commit because those were the skill lines you chose.

There are so many situations where I want to quickly tweak my build to the situation/group I'm in and need mixed skill lines. If my skills are super specific for one role, I have far less flexibility. There are times when I'm in a group and either the healer has to log off, or we need to adjust composition for what's happening. That doesn't work with super specialised skill lines. I love that my chars can hit a key and an add-on will give them a different build. If a join a random group and they're struggling, one key gives me a really good healer build. If they're all strong and capable, I can run as mostly DD with the option to switch into a stronger healer for a particularly hard boss. If I want to heal during a trial then go do BGs PvP as a DD afterwards, no hassle.

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Should the role positioning of the Class skill line be decentralizing or consistent?

Should the role positioning of the Class skill line be decentralizing or consistent? 51 votes