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Building characters: the class refresh conundrum
screamingabdabs
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Hi,
I’ll start by saying I am not a fan of the Dragon Knight loosing poison skills. I know I am in the minority here, but I have fire DKs and the poison one was my main and a lot of fun.
With that out of the way: the reason for this post relates to what else might be going. We have been told that all the classes will be refreshed, but not exactly how. The deep dive included this graphic
https://esosslfiles-a.akamaihd.net/ape/uploads/2025/12/c7da63c24b82ef5f38ce26c495e70578.jpg
which outlines Zos’ vision for each class. There is no mention of poison in the DK, or indeed anywhere. Its not mentioned in the Necromancer or Warden either. The reason given for the DK loosing its poison skills was that it felt tacked on. Fair enough, but the DK had three skills and the Warden and Necro have one each. Does this mean that they are also going to loose their poison skills and poison will only be available via weapon abilities?
Equally there is no mention of storm or lightning in the Sorcerer class, just dark magic and Deadric pets. The Power Fantasy for Sorcs talks about spell synergy as well as combining abilities, which sounds like crystal weapon. Does this mean that they will loose lightning and storm skills in favour of more pre-buff like ones and more pet skills?
Warden has similar issues as there is no mention of ice and instead the source of power is described as the seasons. However there many seasons, not just winter and the Warden does not make use of any summer like skills currently or indeed, monsoon or drought. Equally there is no mention of animal companions, just that they are protectors of nature. So again does this mean wardens are loosing the animal companions in favour of more season like skills?
The Templar has one of the best healing skill kits in the game, a little behind the Warden, yet the refresh makes no mention of healing in that class, though it does talk about creating sanctuaries suggesting more ground based abilities. Actually there is no mention of healing in any of the classes.
The issue with all this is that players currently have no idea what skills will remain and what will be lost with each refresh.This means that we really have no idea if the character we are currently building is going to be viable after the refresh. My DK wears poison buff sets but now poison is mainly available via bow skills and no class has a decent poison toolkit. Those sets are far less use than they were but it is pointless building another character until we know how the other classes are going to be refreshed.
Will poison be added to another class, some other way or not at all? We just do not know. We could spend a lot of time in building a character only to have the skills - whatever they are, lightning, bleed etc - we have built it around disappear. The sub classing system is in effect dormant. Since we do not know what skills will be lost on the other classes and you cannot sub-class into something that is not there.
So Zos, could you please clarify what will be removed from each class and if that damage type or skill line will be removed completely from the game, or available some other way?
Thanks
Edited by screamingabdabs on January 20, 2026 6:54PM I’ll start by saying I am not a fan of the Dragon Knight loosing poison skills. I know I am in the minority here, but I have fire DKs and the poison one was my main and a lot of fun.
With that out of the way: the reason for this post relates to what else might be going. We have been told that all the classes will be refreshed, but not exactly how. The deep dive included this graphic
https://esosslfiles-a.akamaihd.net/ape/uploads/2025/12/c7da63c24b82ef5f38ce26c495e70578.jpg
which outlines Zos’ vision for each class. There is no mention of poison in the DK, or indeed anywhere. Its not mentioned in the Necromancer or Warden either. The reason given for the DK loosing its poison skills was that it felt tacked on. Fair enough, but the DK had three skills and the Warden and Necro have one each. Does this mean that they are also going to loose their poison skills and poison will only be available via weapon abilities?
Equally there is no mention of storm or lightning in the Sorcerer class, just dark magic and Deadric pets. The Power Fantasy for Sorcs talks about spell synergy as well as combining abilities, which sounds like crystal weapon. Does this mean that they will loose lightning and storm skills in favour of more pre-buff like ones and more pet skills?
Warden has similar issues as there is no mention of ice and instead the source of power is described as the seasons. However there many seasons, not just winter and the Warden does not make use of any summer like skills currently or indeed, monsoon or drought. Equally there is no mention of animal companions, just that they are protectors of nature. So again does this mean wardens are loosing the animal companions in favour of more season like skills?
The Templar has one of the best healing skill kits in the game, a little behind the Warden, yet the refresh makes no mention of healing in that class, though it does talk about creating sanctuaries suggesting more ground based abilities. Actually there is no mention of healing in any of the classes.
The issue with all this is that players currently have no idea what skills will remain and what will be lost with each refresh.This means that we really have no idea if the character we are currently building is going to be viable after the refresh. My DK wears poison buff sets but now poison is mainly available via bow skills and no class has a decent poison toolkit. Those sets are far less use than they were but it is pointless building another character until we know how the other classes are going to be refreshed.
Will poison be added to another class, some other way or not at all? We just do not know. We could spend a lot of time in building a character only to have the skills - whatever they are, lightning, bleed etc - we have built it around disappear. The sub classing system is in effect dormant. Since we do not know what skills will be lost on the other classes and you cannot sub-class into something that is not there.
So Zos, could you please clarify what will be removed from each class and if that damage type or skill line will be removed completely from the game, or available some other way?
Thanks
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tomofhyrule✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭I doubt they're going to be changing the names of the skill lines; as such any build that is based around a feature of the skill lines is probably not going to change.
DK and poison is an interesting thing, because DK never had poison at the beginning. All of the skill lines have themes of fire and rock, and that's what's staying. The poison was added in U10 to give a stamina option (before all Class skills were strictly magicka).
As such, I doubt Wardens will lose frost, Sorcs will lose shock, or any of those cases where there's a line that directly names an element.
They already said poison would be moving to something else. It would make sense on Nightblades or maybe Wardens, but I'd really be interested to see if there's an idea to unify Classes into a single damage type - I'm interested to see if Wardens stick to exclusively Frost or if they still balance Frost/Bleed (or Poison).1 -
screamingabdabs✭✭✭Hmmm, Didn't know that poison was added in an update as I was not playing then. Either way it has been in game for a long time, almost 10 years.
I suspect I didn't explain the sub-classing issue very well. Its not that the skill line names could change and so prevent sub-classing into them, its that we do not know what skills will be in those skill lines. Venomous claw and Noxious breath were both morphs in the Ardent Flame skill line so to get them on another class you would have to subclass into Ardent Flame. Now those skills are missing from Ardent Flame so you cannot get them by sub-classing. They are just not there.
We do not currently know what skills will remain with what class, what will move within the classes and what will vanish completely. As a result there is little point in using the sub-classing system, or spending time and skill points to build a character with a particular sub classed skill line to obtain a set of skills.
Put simply you could spend considerable time building up a sub classed skill line only to have the skills you are interested in move or disappear completely.
We really need more information as to what Zos is planning for each class, so that we do not run the risk of spending considerable time building into a skill line that suddenly does not have the skills we were interested in.Edited by screamingabdabs on January 23, 2026 9:37AM0 -
ZhuJiuyin✭✭✭✭✭There is a thread on the PTS forum discussing the scheduled class refresh this year (Warden, Sorc). Although there are already 4 pages of discussion and speculation, and we have asked the official many times for information on the plans for each class, we still have not received any official information.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/687537/class-identity-refresh-for-sorc-and-warden/p1"是燭九陰，是燭龍。"──by "The Classic of Mountains and Seas "English is not my first language,If something is ambiguous, rude due to context and translation issues, etc., please remind me, thanks.1 -
screamingabdabs✭✭✭There is a thread on the PTS forum discussing the scheduled class refresh this year (Warden, Sorc). Although there are already 4 pages of discussion and speculation, and we have asked the official many times for information on the plans for each class, we still have not received any official information.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/687537/class-identity-refresh-for-sorc-and-warden/p1
Thanks for this. I don't normally bother with the PTS or its forums as I'd prefer not to encounter any spoilers for new content . It looks like you beat me to it on this issue.
One thing that is apparent is that folks who don't play DK with poison are happy it is loosing poison, but are don't you dare touch my frost Warden or lightning Sorc.
Right now on-one knows what is going to fall out of any of the refreshes and until we get something official everything is speculation, good and bad.0