Subclassing needs more grinding which means it must be stronger overall. Otherwise what's the point?

Ideally, if the Class refresh is completed, every class should in theory have their own equal share of unique skills to pick from that are desirable putting pure classing and sub classing on an even level in the output they have and the value of the utility they provide.

At least I'd like to believe this could be the case.

I see it more as class/multiclass in D&D. Similar powerlevels but pure class giving you access to stronger skills of the class whlie multiclass more versatile yet with weaker skills.

I mean, isn’t there an obvious right answer in your poll?

Why would anyone want anything less than equal strength across the board? It should come down to playstyle, not one option being better than the other.

Unpopular Opinion Khajiit does not care about getting salt. And yes, Khajiit has shared this before.

The Elder Scrolls is NOT a class-based game world, and it NEVER has been - at most, classes were ALWAYS just suggestions, starting points to be exceeded as one grew in power and experience. One of the prime attractions of the Elder Scrolls IP for many folks is the lack of any focus on "Class Identity" in favor of "Player-crafted Identity". That is certainly the only reason khajiit has played ES games since 1994 when he got Arena new.

Classes in RPGs were always cop-outs, since the 70s when Gary Gygax couldn't get past the middle earth experience, and this is why, without fail, more advanced games from the same game designers, including Gygax, did away with classes in favor of more targeted advancement.

For the first time, with the subclassing publish, ESO has accomplished being a true Elder Scrolls experience in the actual player experience.Is this implementation balanced and fair? Of course it is not, but the solution is simple - provide penalties to performance of subclass skills - a flat -5% for all subclass skills and bonuses alone would be sufficient to nearly even out the play experience.

But as a dedicated player of every class in every role (except healer, khajiit is a terrible healer regardless of class), Khajiit would rather nothing change than the Elder Scrolls player experience enabled by subclassing be diminished in any way.

So many other games of every kind exist that are married to the class concept. ESO should not aspire to rejoin them.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Subclassing (Multiclassing) should follow the same logic as it does in other games like D&D: a pureclass build should have access to the most raw power aka highest tooltips, but then be fettered by its inherent weaknesses. A multiclassed build should be able to trade off some power to account for those weaknesses.

In the end, the 'power' level of both should be similar, but that requires 'power' to have a wider definition than just the number in the tooltip.

This is what I meant by same strength personally.

Ideally, we’d get to a point where it doesn’t matter who brings what skill line to a trial. Like how stagger can be done by a pure class tank, subclassed tank, subclassed dps, or pure class dps. That way, people could theoretically play how they want and as a group still have all the buffs & debuffs covered.

However, I have my doubts that it’ll ever be perfectly balanced. If balance is unobtainable, then pure class should start off as stronger for supports and dps. We’ve had the past 10 years to grow attached to our characters as pure class, making them HAVE to become a thematic nightmare to be effective is something I truly hate. And I’ve tried multi classing FOR the roleplay but one of the builds just doesn’t work great and, while I like the other one, its for overland so doesn’t really matter if it’s effective.

Caveat though that I understand some people have made multi class builds that aren’t a thematic nightmare. Since from what I recall, they’re mostly dps builds and not support builds, I think an easy fix is to buff relevant sets (like elemental succession for “elementalist” sorc/dk/warden) and/or create new sets or passives or something that recognize what skill lines you have (ex. “If you have Winter’s Embrace and Ardent Flame, you apply a stack of Frostburn whenever you apply Chilled or Burning”). Or even, once we get to the point of getting new classes, could have certain line combinations be recognized as its own class (ex. If you have Winter’s Embrace and Ardent Flame, you can choose to make your third line the Frozen Flame line, giving you access to new skills). I know it’d be a lot to balance though so just spitballing.

From a purely DPS standpoint subclassing should offer superior versatility where a pure class should offer superior damage. Currently subclass builds are superior in both by a wide margin.

Has to be balanced I guess so choice is more impactful, the smaller the gap the better.

Tyrobag wrote: »

Unfortunately this isn't the direction they're going anymore. They did a 180 at the last minute, and now DK is getting a pure class only buff (on a single skill, rendering any build not using that skill effectively weaker) instead of just balancing it correctly.

Every class is getting that treatment. DK is only the first in line to get it.

I think that there should be parity between builds once everything is complete. To me this means that each skill line should have the following.

1) a spammable heal, dps, or taunt skill
2) active skills with benefits to healing, dps, or tanking.
3) a passive benefit to having either a certian # of skills from that line slotted or just a single one
4) at least one passive that benefits the skill line it's attached to.
5) at least 1 skill passive that benefits the players character directly.
6) at least 1 skill that benefits other class lines
6) at least one skill that is unique to that skill line that no one else has access to (e.g. cloak, streak)

Those are kinda my requirements for a balanced system.

I just wish that for accuracy it had originally been called multiclassing since that is what it really is.And while I LIKE the idea that pure classes should be a bit more powerful and specialized but have an inherent weakness that could be made up by subclassing at the cost of some power, for the purposes of balancing and game play I agree that pure classes and sub classes should have the same strength so that no one would be forced to use a specific sub class combination or be excluded from activities.

I have seen a lot of comparing subclassing in ESO to D&D's multiclassing and I don't think they're as comparable as people think and that's not how me or a lot of other people see them. Since the ttrpg can of worms is open, I agree with an earlier comment of D&D is not a great system to compare here and often hinges on archaic habits that most people don't enjoy. As a longtime ttrpg enjoyer it's one of my least favorite systems to play in. D&D's class system (barring homebrew) is very rigid and "you get what you get and if it doesn't fit your vision you have to take heaping power penalties to get what you want. Ironically, it suffers from a similar issue to eso subclassing currently where there are a handful of busted min maxy multiclassing combos that are op and from an rp/flavor standpoint are often blatantly obvious the players is a powergamer who will frankenstein their build for every little ounce of power.

I recently played daggerheart and I see the subclassing system or what it should be/I want it to be more like that. In daggerheart, each class has domains for their identity. While they have multiclassing too, they express their class system more in a classes can overlap a little in domains but it can still manifest in different ways. For example an assassin has midnight and blade, while a rogue has midnight and grace. Midnight as a domain offers shadow magic and stealth similar to the nightblade shadow line, while grace offers more charm/illusion type stuff and blade features combat/martial stuff. I translate subclassing in eso very similarly with how someone could take the shadow line to be a shadow mage or a more martial thief/rogue/assassin type and flavor is built onto by other lines chosen for a class. Multiclassing in daggerheart (and eso) for me would be if you were able to take more than 3 skill lines but for every one you take there are penalties to your power, because in more open class systems that is how multiclassing works. Also, daggerheart has both subclassing and multiclassing as concepts in their system.

A little bit of an tangent but I feel the can of worms was opened by so many people bringing up multiclassing but it really is not the same thing. You can debate how subclassing and multiclassing are defined because some systems and games and ttrpgs view them as similar but they are largely different game concepts that happen to be similar and sometimes have overlap.

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Tyrobag wrote: »

Unfortunately this isn't the direction they're going anymore. They did a 180 at the last minute, and now DK is getting a pure class only buff (on a single skill, rendering any build not using that skill effectively weaker) instead of just balancing it correctly.

Every class is getting that treatment. DK is only the first in line to get it.

Yes, that's the problem. Every pure class is getting an inherent advantage over other combinations of skill lines, even ones that are currently inferior already. Rather than balancing the skill lines correctly so that any combination is as close as reasonably possible. They doubled down on this with their added plan to have pure class only passives. This changed from wanting to balance the skill lines to a soft rollback of subclassing real quick.

Tyrobag wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Tyrobag wrote: »

Unfortunately this isn't the direction they're going anymore. They did a 180 at the last minute, and now DK is getting a pure class only buff (on a single skill, rendering any build not using that skill effectively weaker) instead of just balancing it correctly.

Every class is getting that treatment. DK is only the first in line to get it.

Yes, that's the problem. Every pure class is getting an inherent advantage over other combinations of skill lines, even ones that are currently inferior already. Rather than balancing the skill lines correctly so that any combination is as close as reasonably possible. They doubled down on this with their added plan to have pure class only passives. This changed from wanting to balance the skill lines to a soft rollback of subclassing real quick.

This is what I like though. The immediate problem is a power gap between pure and subclassing.
Pure classes getting unique passives elevates the identity and helps bridge this gap.

We'll see how it evolves but this satisfies both votes here where pure classes are stronger within their own class, while trying to shrink the power gap between pure and subclassing. End result is pure classes lean into more power via their class mastery, subclasses lean into more power via versatility and picking the ideal skill lines, but the power balance is ideally equal.

So depends on the perspective you had when voting too.