ESO Subclassing Explained: Do You Lose Your Class Skills? (Update 46+)
✓ Current as of Update 50 (2026)🎮 Works on console (no add-ons)
Subclassing (added in Update 46, 2025) is the biggest change to ESO character building in years — and it's surrounded by confusion. Can you lose your class identity? Do you have to re-level everything? Here's how it actually works, what it costs, and the gotchas, current to Update 50 (June 2026). Where a detail is community-reported rather than confirmed by the official guide, we say so.
What subclassing does
Every class has three skill lines. Subclassing lets you replace up to two of them with skill lines borrowed from other classes — but you must keep at least one of your original class's lines. So a Templar could keep one Templar line and slot two lines from, say, Nightblade and Sorcerer.
One hard rule: you can't take two lines from the same other class. It's one borrowed line per class, maximum.
Do you lose your own skills? No — you swap a line
You don't permanently lose anything. Subclassing is a loadout you can change back. What's true is that while a borrowed line occupies a slot, you don't have the original line's skills/passives/ultimate active — you've traded them for the borrowed line's. Swap back any time and your class line returns exactly as it was.
Gotcha: class-specific gear sets and your class's Mastery/scripts stay tied to your true class — those don't transfer to a borrowed line.
How to unlock it
Subclassing unlocks at the account level once, then is enabled per character:
- Account: one character must reach Level 50 and earn the ‘Level 50 Hero’ achievement.
- Per character: complete the quest ‘A Study in Discipline.’
- Change loadouts at a Shrine of Stendarr (or with a Scroll of Respecification).
What it costs to useCommunity-reported
Unlocking abilities in a borrowed line uses skill points like any skill, and the line levels up as you use it. The exact skill-point cost per ability and whether borrowed lines start partly leveled vary between community guides, and we couldn't confirm the precise numbers against the official guide — so treat the fine print as community-reported and verify in-game. There's no gold cost reported for the system itself.
Which line should you drop?
Keep the line that defines your role (your best class line for damage, healing, or tanking) and borrow lines that fill gaps — a strong spammable, a class ultimate you want, or sustain/utility you lack. Popular combinations exist for every role, but the honest advice is to build around what your current setup is missing, not to copy a video wholesale. Our build generator assembles cited setups you can use as a starting point.