Elder Scrolls Online prepares to offer players more flexibility than ever with Subclassing
If you love Elder Scrolls Online but wish you could really be all you can be, Subclassing is here to help. This is a new feature coming soon to ZeniMax Online Studio’s hit MMORPG, allowing players to branch out beyond their base class and do some truly remarkable things. It seldom shows up in MMOs and was a big reason I got so addicted to MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) when they were a relatively popular thing to do online.
Subclassing is a simple but complex system for Elder Scrolls Online. It’s simple in the sense that you’ll have a wide assortment of options once it’s unlocked, but making the best use of your skill points and limits on abilities is what will make it challenging. I absolutely cannot wait, so let’s talk about Subclassing!
Subclassing allows Elder Scrolls Online players to add from a wide variety of skill lines on one character
Subclassing will help Elder Scrolls Online players feel like a real Elder Scrolls character. One of the great things about the franchise for many people is that you can do whatever you want with your character. You aren’t bound to specific classes and the power fantasy that class wants (Arcanist, Necromancer, Warden, et cetera).
For years, players have wanted some kind of “class change” system or a way to get some more flexibility out of the powerful Elder Scrolls Online classes, and through Subclassing, we will be able to do just that. What you’ll be able to do is utilize Skill Lines from other classes without having to re-roll and start all over.
The developers understand that many players are attached to their main character and may not want to re-roll just to do something else, combat-wise. The Subclassing system is here to help alleviate that and let players be just about whatever they want — with over 3,000 possible combinations.
Unlocking Subclassing will be very simple, too: just hit level 50. When you do, you unlock the power to add and remove Skill Lines across your account. While typically, you will gain access to classes you’ve used before, there will be ways to unlock the Skill Lines of classes if you’re one of those players that has stuck to one character.
Of course, using Arcanist, Necromancer, and Warden will require you to own that expansion as well. For the sake of balance, some of those Skill Line talents will cost 2 Skill Points instead of 1, for example. This is to make sure there’s some kind of balance adhered to.
If you want to go wild with elemental magic, you can combine powers from Elementalist and Dragonknight. Maybe you want to have a crazy “animal friends” build and go with Warden and Necromancer or something to that effect. I’m looking to combine Arcanist and Necromancer into one horrifying, damage-dealing machine.
The best part is that all your skills and progression are account-wide for Subclassed abilities in Elder Scrolls Online. It sounds like those altaholics will be able to make one truly impressive character, and that’s such a cool prospect.
During my time in a press preview with the Elder Scrolls Online team, I had a chance to ask about Subclassing specifically. I asked if there would be any real limitations on what you could do with it and if you could have all the Skill Lines on one character. Rich Lambert had the answer:
“So, you can have all the [Skill] Lines learned, but you can’t have abilities from all the lines. The way it’s broken down is you have to keep one of your Class Lines, so class is still important and there’s some identity there. But then you can have two active Skill Lines from other classes. You can only choose abilities from those active Skill Lines, but you can progress all of the other ones. You can progress the Skill Lines and learn them. There’s also some costs associated with this. So Skill Points are doubled for some Class Lines, so you really have to invest into it. I don’t think that will be a problem for our super-invested players, because they’ve got more Skill Points than they know what to do with.”
He also said that the skills won’t be artificially nerfed or debuffed — whatever power level a skill had, that’s what it will continue to have. I, for one, am incredibly excited about Subclassing in Elder Scrolls Online and cannot wait to see it come to life.
Subclassing is also a part of the base game of Elder Scrolls Online and does not require any expansions or DLC to use it — unless you want to use classes locked behind previous chapters of the game. We’ll know more about this incredible system, hopefully, in the near future.