Update 46 is bringing subclassing to the game, which is an enormous change to how your character will play. Each class has 3 skill lines unique to that class – e.g. Dragonknights have Ardent Flame, Draconic Power, Earthen Heart. What subclassing will do is let you replace one skill line with another from a different class! Possibly up to two if they are from different classes – that is, you can’t subclass 2 skills lines from the same other class; your original class can’t be outnumbered by 2 from another class.
In some ways, this will be more like the single player games, where there weren’t really classes and you just trained up and used whatever mix of skills you wanted. It will let players make crazy builds.
But… I can’t help but feel this will be a mess of an update, due to balance issues.
1st, ESO does have classes, with skill lines theoretically “balanced” within that class. The PTS already has various nerfs to various skills and passives because said skills/passives might be too strong when mixed with others skills they weren’t originally designed to be with.
2nd, MMO players are notorious min-maxers. After a few weeks when a few of the serious content creators figure out the optimized mix of skills, the group content will converge to the optimized builds.
This is already happening to an extent. Look at any build on skinny cheeks and you’ll see the same skills over and over – almost half the skills are already shared between classes! A few updates ago, ZoS hybridized magicka and stamina builds (originally mag skills scaled off your magicka pool, stam skills scaled off stamina; now those skills scale off your highest resource), and as a result the min-max crowd figured out crit chance was the best way to increase damage, so dual-wield daggers and medium armor is the way to go for both melee and ranged dps. Divines trait on the armor, bloodthirsty on jewelry… so much is the same already.
3rd, those nerfs hurt “pure” characters. If you don’t intend to subclass, skills/passives from your class are getting nerfed in case other players subclass and use them.
I think there’s a fair chance that somebody will discover the optimum main tank, off tank, group healer, kite healer, and dps builds and trial groups will all be clones. Heck, one guild I’m in already want 6 arcanist dps for every trial, with the 2 others being supports. A few months into this update I can see it’ll be 8 arcanist/templar dps, where some players will take a 3rd skill line and that’ll be the new generic group composition.
We’ll see how it plays out. I don’t want to subclass but I’m also resigned to being forced to for doing trials.
MMO Juggler 