I wasn’t sure how to answer this question, first thinking that equal was the correct choice but that does not entirely fit as a blanket statement.

Classes have been in the game since the beginning so I don’t feel like subclassing should better than pure classes, but I undoubtedly have a bias towards them based on my experience with them. Builds have been about being able to work within the class up until the point subclassing was released, and I feel it should be rewarded if you stay within the class. Subclassing could be used to shore up the weaknesses of the class, but not exceed them. The more you deviate from a class build them the less effective it should be. I know previous Elder Scrolls games weren’t so tied to classes, but I don’t think that makes a valid argument for doing so here, especially after ten years of rigid classes. This is not a single player game either, so balancing is very important, more so than the previous games.

A lot of the arguments in favor of subclassing has been based mainly on the roleplaying aspect, which would be more aligned with solo activities, so having subclassing be equal or slightly weaker would not matter much because it seems to be almost universally agreed here that overland is too easy. Having pure classes be significantly weaker as they are now has affected the endgame activities of trials and PvP in a very detrimental way so it would seem that subclassing being more powerful than pure classes is not the way to go.

I hate to see the whole class system being radically changed over the next few updates because of subclassing, so that it will not possible to have three strong dps skills in a subclassed build as you can now with no drawbacks. I would have preferred that some small penalty was added to each subclassed line of skills to make them more comparable to pure classes, which inherently have a limit on the number of good dps skills. I guess there is no way to go back and it is the only option now, but had limits been put into place beforehand so that they both were more equal when subclassing was released we could have gotten more new content to experience and enjoy instead.

So, the best option from the list is having both equal, though subclassing would be only slightly less powerful based on the above reasoning, but not significantly so.