The new Arcanist ESO class borrows flexibility from World of Warcraft

The Arcanist can be anything for everyone

Zenimax Online Studios delved deep into the upcoming Necrom chapter and highlighted the new Arcanist ESO class and its impressive promise of flexibility in the MMO game. The Arcanist comes with the usual skill branches and specializations, along with a new buff, but what stands out the most is how you can mix and match its abilities.

The Arcanist has separate skill lines for damage, support, and tank abilities, and they can generate a Crux item to save or spend on buffs. You’re not forced into any one skill branch, though. Zenimax said you can choose abilities from any of the Arcanist’s three skill lines once they’re unlocked – and probably should, to maximize your Crux-generating prowess – making it one of the most flexible classes in the game.

Flexibility in MMO classes is usually confined to letting you choose dozens of skills tied to a specific class, with a few exceptions. Final Fantasy XIV, for example, shares a handful of skills among every class in a specific role. However, World of Warcraft’s Dragonflight update started changing that in 2022 by adding more inter-class flexibility. 

The expansion tweaked classes by blending their skill trees, giving you more options to customize the class without being forced down a specific path, which is pretty much what ESO is doing with the Arcanist.

Elsewhere in the livestream, Zenimax introduced Chroma Incognito, a new biome inside Apocrypha that reflects all the things that might have been, and Basion Nymic. That one is a new cooperative challenge exclusive to the Necrom chapter, where you and a team of other players team up to take back one of Hermaeus Mora’s strongholds from nefarious invaders.

ESO’s Necrom expansion launches for PS4, PS5, PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S on June 20, 2023, but the Necrom prologue quest is live in the game now.