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The Elder Scrolls Online development team is focused on a major class rework project, aiming to rewrite classes to maintain balance and better reflect their established lore.

This information primarily stems from a new developer memo released by the combat team. They state that this is a long-term project, and updates will not be released all at once. Class reworks will be rolled out gradually throughout 2026, and may continue beyond.

Development Team Design Philosophy

To differentiate classes sufficiently and showcase unique gameplay and presentation, the developers plan to redesign them, focusing on their backgrounds, abilities, appearances, strengths, and weaknesses. This redesign incorporates two core concepts:

Source Of Power

Source of Power refers to the origin of these classes' power within the game. Why and how they became the class, whether their power originates from their bloodline or the deity they worship, all determine the foundation of their ability design. For example, Dragonknight's power originates from dragon fire and earth energy, while Arcanist's power comes from a pact with the demon god Hermaeus Mora.

Power Fantasy

Power Fantasy refers to the manifestation of abilities, such as the skills used by a class and their role in combat, allowing players to experience the unique feel of playing that class. For example, there's the assassin class, which excels at stealth, Nightblade, and Templar, which fights directly using divine energy.

Development Team's Goal

The development team hopes to make each class capable of fulfilling any role, including tank, healer, and DPS. This only means achieving the goal, not necessarily being the optimal one.

They want each class to match its power fantasy in terms of abilities, animations, and sound effects. Current older classes will also receive visual and auditory modernizations to bring them up to the level of classes like Arcanist.

The official plan is to use player feedback and game data to guide class updates, ensuring changes are satisfying in terms of mechanics and themes while maintaining their uniqueness.

Current Class Issues

While the development team has clearly stated that these ideas are positive, the current class identities in the game remain somewhat ambiguous.

Low Class Differentiation

Aside from distinct classes like Necromancer, many classes lack clear differentiation. Skill kits from different classes are functionally too similar. They perform similarly in direct healing, single-target DoTs, and AOE skills, with the main differences being only in buffs, debuffs, and visual effects.

For example, Nightblade should be more deeply integrated into the theme of shadows and trickery; they could emphasize the interaction between stealth and backstab damage. The description of Templar's Holy Power is not specific enough. The official description should clarify whether his focus should be on healing or tanking.

Subclassing System

The most serious imbalance currently facing classes lies in the subclassing system. Subclassing involves mixing and matching skill lines from different classes, which are far more powerful than using a single class. Even if a pure class player use Elder Scrolls Online gold to get the meta sets, it performance is still not as well-rounded as a subclass player.

The main reason for this problem is that subclasses were not considered in the initial class design of ESO. This has led to huge differences in the current skill lines of each class, while subclasses can create overly powerful configurations.

How To Solve The Problems?

The official solution is to reorganize class skill lines, distributing key abilities so that no single skill line can provide all the tools needed to achieve the goal.

Although the subclassing system essentially competes with the default class features, it gives players the initiative to build the experience, allowing for free combinations. The official team will not eliminate this gameplay.

For pure class players, there should be more powerful, satisfying, and achievable class features. For players using subclasses, they can freely customize their playstyles, but may need to sacrifice class-specific features. The strength gap between the two classes is narrowing.

Even without directly nerfing skills, a more balanced distribution of abilities will prevent players from focusing on the optimal skill tree as much as before, inevitably leading to a loss in DPS.

However, this helps improve the overall health of the game, especially addressing the current issues in PvE and PvP caused by an unfavorable difficulty curve and gameplay convergence.

Their ultimate goal is to give pure classes a powerful and satisfying class identity and strength, while simultaneously narrowing the strength gap between subclasses and pure classes, while allowing them to retain the freedom to shape their identity or pursue specialized power.

Update Order

The official update order for the upcoming classes has been announced. This order may be adjusted, and the entire process may take up to two years.

• 1. Dragonknight
• 2. Warden
• 3. Sorcerer
• 4. Templar
• 5. Nightblade
• 6. Necromancer
• 7. Arcanist

Dragonknight

Official They also announced their direction for Dragonknight's adjustments, intending to position it as an attire warrior.

Refinement

Dragonknight will be given a unique damage-over-time parameter. A new passive skill called Avalanche will be added to Earthen Heart skill line, allowing Dragonknight to accumulate damage by stacking damage bonuses during combat; interrupting the attack will lose this bonus.

Reconfiguring

Dragonknight rework will retain the core resource management principle of "fire requires fuel," but provide a more satisfactory internal solution. For example, the reworked skill Inhale has been moved to Ardent Flame skill line, and Dragonknight will be able to recover a certain percentage of lost resources over time before unleashing the classic explosion.

Reworking classes is one of the most fundamental changes to the game. If done poorly or hastily, it could be a disaster for ESO simplification, but the information revealed so far is generally positive. This move may also bring back some players who left after the subclass system was introduced.

After a month-long build-up to Battle For The Writhing Wall event, Elder Scrolls Online finally released Seasons of the Worm Cult Part 2 and Update 48 on November 12th, continuing from Part 1 five months ago while further optimizing the game.

However, to experience all the updated content, you not only need ESO 2025 Content Pass and 2025 Premium Edition, but you must also ensure that Battle For The Writhing Wall event on your server has been completed.

We've already provided a detailed introduction to this event. Whether you participated or not, you can now check your current server's progress and follow the guide below to experience the new content.

Seasons Of The Worm Cult Part 2

As Elder Scrolls Online's core update for 2025, this season expands and continues the game's original main storyline through two parts of gameplay and story.

Part 1, Western Solstice, launched in June, introducing the new zone Solstice and new content including dungeons, trials, and bosses. After a five-month wait, Part 2, Eastern Solstice, is finally here!

From a narrative perspective, Battle For The Writhing Wall event serves as a transition between Part 1 and Part 2. This wall divides the island in two, and only by winning the battle and destroying the wall can one venture deeper into the eastern part of Solstice.

New Playable Content

If your server has already completed Battle For The Writhing Wall event, you can start playing Part 2. This update brings new main story content, but it can only be experienced after completing Part 1 main story quests and Crossing the Wall story quest.

Please note that the latter story quest needs to be claimed manually. If you haven't completed it yet, you can find Prince Azah at Sunport Rampart Camp to claim it - provided you have completed Part 1 main quests.

The conflict between the forces of good and the evil Worm Cult is expected to escalate to its peak in Part 2's main storyline. If a new themed season series is subsequently released, Part 2 could very well be the graveyard for Worm Cult.

Part 2 also expands Coldharbour map, allowing you to explore new delves and dungeons, fight new bosses, and potentially encounter Stone-Nest Argonians, the native inhabitants of Eastern Solstice. Specific details include:

• Four full-length objectives
• Three delves, each with a skyshard and a unique boss
• New public dungeon Calindvale Gardens
• Three world bosses
• Two new crafting set locations
• Hidden side quests

Exploration Rewards

As you progress through Part 2 main storyline and complete enough battles, you can unlock generous rewards! These include Elder Scrolls Online gold, new item sets and collectibles, and more. The collectibles are extensive, including:

• Outfit Style: Scythe Knight outfit style
• Emote: For My Alliance emote
• Memento: Meridian-Blessed Bread memento
• Mount: Coldharbour Death Hound
• Pet: Slothcerer pet
• Adornments: Azure Plasmstone Earrings, Solstice Pinned Bloom
• Markings: Stone-Nest Xanmeer body tattoos, To Know the Void quest matching face tattoos
• Skill Style: Soul Trap, Wormwrithe skill style

Of course, obtaining all of this requires owning a version of the game that includes Seasons of the Worm Cult Part 2 and completing the corresponding quests or achievements.

Update 48

This update is part of ESO's regular game schedule, so as long as you own the base game, you can load the update package for free and experience it.

Update 48, as usual, brings optimizations and changes to various aspects of the in-game systems, introduces new events, and previews more events to be released during Christmas and New Year's.

Mechanics And System Optimizations

Update 48 first introduces changes aimed at reducing the size of combat animations, avoiding excessive memory usage that could impact the game and the smoothness of your device's performance. These changes will not significantly degrade the game's graphics.

Furthermore, Elder Scrolls Online has made all in-game leaderboards except Cyrodiil account-wide in this update and removed class-specific leaderboards. This makes the entire leaderboard system more streamlined and efficient.

More detailed optimizations can be experienced in-game or checked through official announcements, such as optimizations to skill effects for each class. The two points we've introduced above are particularly noteworthy.

Hearts Week Event

Although this event is part of Update 48, it has not yet officially started in the game and is currently just a pre-event announcement. ESO is expected to hold Hearts Week in February 2026, at which time the event will also begin.

During the event, Belkarth festival grounds will be transformed into a home to the priest of Mara, Kuzam-jo. You can find this NPC, interact with him to receive and complete event quests, earning more Companion XP and affinity.

In addition, you may receive various reward boxes, including Heart's Day reward boxes, which may contain gold-quality Companion jewelry! Good luck!

Starting in December 2025, Elder Scrolls Online will host a New Year's celebration. During this time, you can explore the entire game map to complete daily quests and earn new styles or houses as rewards.

Compared to last year, Elder Scrolls Online in 2025 has undoubtedly achieved new success through its transformation. Hopefully, it will continue this success and improve in 2026, bringing you an even better gaming experience.