Weapon Mastery: Making mundane weapons viable through a potential new skill

[NearNihil]

This proposal has been marinating in dev circles for a little while, but there are so many numbers and things that we thought it better to have community input on it first.
Introducing new skills: Weapon Mastery (name not final, applicable to multiple classes).

Why

• Not a lot of non-innate weapons are currently useful at level 30.
• Innates overshadow them in power, efficiency, ease of use, lack of maintenance.
• Crafts have a bit of flexibility with enchantments, but require frequent upkeep (see below for number rambling).

Limitations

• This "One Weapon" should end up potentially more powerful than innate weapons for a given class, but it will require maintenance to balance that out. It should not, however, be so much more powerful that it's always the obvious choice for every build.

Proposal: Weapon Mastery
Skills for T2 (martial) and T3 (martial exit, turncoat) classes

• Allow designating any crafted weapon as their "favored"; it's the one you're most familiar with - "I don't fear the man who practised 10,000 kicks once, I fear the man who practised one kick 10,000 times" idea
• Favored weapon gains benefits depending on which of the skills were chosen
  • Bonuses only apply to the character it's bonded with, but can be handed over to others for repairs or enchanting.
  • Can only be bonded to one character at a time.
  • Can recall the weapon if it's not in inventory for 1AP, 5MP.
  • If the item is destroyed (damaged while at Destroyed quality), can pick a new weapon to favor.
  • Can also willingly un-bond a bonded item for 1 AP and 10 MP + confirmation popup. Bonded innate weapons (Holy Sword and Shadow Dirk) are similarly restored to default state.
• Power should be just around the Voltcaster mark (+5% to hit, 18 damage base) but with more variety or non-damage-number bonuses (such as to-hit chance, multiple damage types, aspect flavor, interacting with other skills or items), as you do still need to maintain the weapons.
  • Improvised weapons are fine too, you still need to take care of enchantments.
  • Must be craftable, no event- boss- superheavy-, laser- or superweapon types.
  • Grenades are also out for obvious reasons.
• Every alignment has their own way of doing things; Good focuses on allowing different damage types and potentially investing in the Holy Sword. Transcended synergize with other item mechanics (ES, NC) or their flavor (Rev). Evil is mostly about what's going on with the target (number of debuffs, amount of soak, whether they're aware of the attacker).

Proposed skills
All skills allow you to 'bond' with a weapon you have crafted for 1 AP and 10 MP. The bonuses listed below only count for that one weapon. It is then a quasi-innate weapon; it won't be deleted by the daily tick, and you can hand it over to someone else as usual (for enchanting, repairs, looking at it...). You can also recall it for 1 AP and 5 MP if it's not in your inventory but you want it to be. Unbonding is another 1 AP and 10 MP, at which point it returns to its mundane old form and you can bond with another weapon.

T2 (20CP, independent)

• Paladin: +1 damage, +5% accuracy when at 40 MO; Holy enchants break slower
  • 40 CP child skill allows Holy Sword to be chosen, adds another +2 damage and +10% accuracy with the same reqs, swaps main damage type to Holy and allows free swapping between that and Electric; if Holy Sword is chosen, add 2 damage and 10% accuracy
• Myrmidon: +2 damage, all enchantments break slower
• Pariah: +1 damage, +5% accuracy, doubled when below half HP; Unholy enchants break slower
• Penitent: +1 damage and +5% accuracy, doubled when at or above 40 MO; Holy enchants break slower
• Oathbreaker: +1 damage, +5% accuracy when you've committed at least 2 sins in the past 72 hours; Unholy enchants break slower
  • 40 CP child skill allows Shadow Dirk to be chosen, adds another +2 damage and +10% accuracy with the same reqs, swap main damage type to Unholy and allows free swapping between that and Acid; if Shadow Dirk is chosen, add 2 damage and 10% accuracy

T3 (30CP, independent)

• Seraph: +2 damage, allows switching to Impact type, +5% accuracy to the Holy Sword if bonded
• EH: +10% accuracy, allows switching to Fire type, attacking targets you're Judging adds +1 damage per 5 minutes remaining up to +4; +2 Holy Sword damage if bonded
• HC: +1 damage; When a cloak is active, convert the damage type to it and add +10% accuracy
• Redeemed: Allows switching to Holy type, may spend 5 HP for +3 damage
  -
• ES: Oils add 4 damage; +10% accuracy
• Rev: +2 damage and +5% accuracy; 33% lifesteal; allows Death type
• NC: +1 damage and +5% accuracy; +2 chont layers, enchantments do not decay as if you had Seal Magic
  -
• IB: Ignore 50% of non-fort soak; +2 damage and +10% accuracy
• VW: Light weapons get doubled bonus damage from being hidden, add lifesteal if target is unaware of you; normal and heavy weapons +2 damage
• DH: +1 damage and +5% accuracy for every debuff on the target (up to +4/+20%)
• Fallen: 10% lifesteal, Unholy enchantments don't break as if you had Seal Magic (keep in mind Bond of the Mechanical exists)

[NearNihil]

Numbers
I made a big ol spreadsheet with the numbers which can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... drive_link
The take-away for me, with these numbers, I think mundane weapons are competitive with innate weapons, but not to the point where they break the balance and no-one will want the convenience and other benefits from the various innate weapons.


Maintenance cost rambling
The below ramble was taken from Discord as a response to Liche, who was wondering how much maintenance there is for mundane weapons anyway.
Conclusion at the bottom.

I think we can split this up into "maintenance for every weapon", "guns" and "bows". Note that some innates, like the Voltcaster, also deal with this.

Guns, taking rifles as an example: It takes 1 Small bottle of Gunpowder and 5 AP to create 2 Rifle Magazines, which each contain 5 rounds of ammo, so it takes 12 AP to shoot all of them (2 AP to reload, 10 to shoot). Estimating the amount of AP spent for a SboG to be 16, doing some 100 searches on VW. Using alchemy to convert, say, a Piece of Wood to a SboG is not available for a solo player as these new skills are only for martials (and caster turncoats, but since they don't have access to the T2 skills to boost mundane weapons, having Alchemy is one of the few upsides for this playstyle). I also found 1 Rifle Magazine during the search trials. Turning the 6 SboG into 12 Rifle Magazines is 30 AP. 13 magazines * 5 shots = 65 shots for 130 AP conveniently comes to 1 shot having already cost 2 AP to manufacture. To then fire all of them is 13 * 6 (1 to reload, 5 to shoot) = 78 AP. A total of 208 AP to fire 65 shots, for 3.2 AP per shot.

Bows, taking Compound Bows as an example: It takes 1 Piece of Wood to make 2 Quivers of Arrows, each containing 10 shots, taking 22 AP to shoot. One PoW takes about 5 AP to find -- there's lots of wood in a forest, unsurprisingly -- and crafting them also takes 5 AP for a total of 10 AP for 2 quivers. Since PoW are bulkier (3 weight instead of SboG's 1), it's more practical to take 10 of them at a time as opposed to 20 from the 100 searches. 10 PoW turns into 20 Quivers at 50 AP plus the 50 AP needed to find them, making for 100 AP to shoot 200 times. Every arrow shot will have cost 0.5 AP to create. Firing all of them is 20 * 11 = 220 AP. Total is 320 AP to fire 200 times, or 1.6 AP per shot, conveniently half of that of the guns. You can also find or harvest Quivers in sports shops, but that's the same calculation at 5 AP to harvest 1 Quiver (so 10 AP for 20 shots).

General maintenance: More difficult to quantify, but let's split this one up into mundane maintenance and enchantments.

Mundane: Weapons with a quality degrade at 2% chance per attack and 12% per death. Let's assume the average character lives for 3 days and attacks 50 times during that period. Let's further assume everyone wants to keep their weapons in Good or Pristine shape. The probability that the weapon is undamaged during this string of events is (0.98 ^ 50) * (0.88) = 0.364... * 0.88 = 0.32 or 32%. I'm not great at maths so I'm not confident beyond that, but assuming that's correct, you'll need to tend to weapons at least once a week. Taking the ⁠the-rng-gods-hate-us route, let's assume it degrades to Average quality twice in a week. To repair the weapon from Average to Pristine requires a trip to the smithing bench or what-have-you and then spend 5 AP to get back up to Good and 8 AP to get to Pristine, so 13 AP. Some factions will have this in the stronghold, so no trip is necessary. This adds up to 26 AP per week.
I think it's more the psychological "I don't want to spend AP on this when I could be shooting them" than anything, honestly - that's how it felt when my now-VW was a Gun Fallen.

Enchantments: These break at a rate of 15% chance per death. At two deaths per week, that's a 73% chance of nothing breaking, so 27% of at least one breaking and 2% of both going kaput. By definition, the classes that get these skills cannot enchant items. Enchanting is done at a rate of 6 AP and variable MP per layer - let's assume the character that gets to do maintenance also enchanted it in the first place and did so with 6 layers. At one breakage this means 5 AP and 5 + (5 * 10) = 55 MP. Ignoring the cost of getting that MP (Prayer, Slice, SM), it also costs a potion. That's another stack of AP and MP, but in my experience this averages to about 5 AP per potion.
So for one enchantment breaking that's 11 AP, two enchantments 22 AP. Then there's the reliance on teammates, waiting, and so on. The total sum of maintenance a week at dying twice and shooting 100 times is 48 AP, spread out over two characters.

To summarize:

Enchanted rifles take 100 * 3.2 = 320 AP to fire in the 100 shots a week example. They then also take another 48 AP to maintain, for a total of 368 AP to use it, out of a total of 672 AP generated in a given week (excluding sleeping outside bonus). They can expect to deal about (11+6) * 0.75 * 100 = 1275 damage before soak, for a grand total of 1275 / 368 = 3.46 damage per AP.

Enchanted compound bows take 100 * 1.6 = 160 AP to fire, also take the 48 AP to maintain for a total of 208 AP. They can expect to deal (9+6) * 0.75 * 100 = 1125 damage before soak, meaning 1125 / 208 = 5.41 damage per AP.

Melee: Only have to deal with the general maintenance; let's take the Sword as an example. 48 AP maintenance + 100 AP for attacking is 148 AP. They can expect to deal (7+6) * 0.75 * 100 = 975 damage before soak, totaling 975 / 148 = 6.59 damage per AP.

Thrown: Same as Melee, but different damage numbers. Take the Hatchet, 148 AP for attacking and maintenance, (6+6) * 0.75 * 100 = 900 damage, 900 / 148 = 6.08 damage per AP.
For comparison, the Voltcaster (before skill upgrades and special target requirements) deals 18 (12 Electric + 6 Holy supplemental at 40 MO) damage at 0.7 hit rate, but needs Quivers only. For 100 attacks, that means 10 Quivers, 110 AP to shoot/reload and 100 AP to make the arrows. 18 * 0.7 * 100 = 1260 damage / 210 AP = 6 damage per AP. I love the Voltcaster for how powerful it is and just have to go out every now and then for an AP cycle to shred trees into arrows - hardly a bother.

Conclusions

I think that given an enchanted rifle takes over half of a week's AP to use (not counting walking to/from shops to make ammo and to/from factions to raid, etc), it would be reasonable to have them be somewhat stronger than innate weapons. However, I also think it would be a shame to let innates fall off so hard that nobody uses them.

Perhaps separating bonuses for each type so they give more directed benefits is warranted. For example, Myrmidons could have ranged weapons get twice the clip size, and melee weapons break less often while adding an enchantment slot to all of them. Paladins could get a chance for two bullets/arrows/thrown weapons to come out of the ranged attack and have melee weapons get bonus accuracy and a point of damage when fighting Evils, and Pariahs could have a chance to create twice the ammo from gunpowder/wood as well as having melee weapons siphon a point of MP.

More advanced classes such as the Eternal Soldier could then get additional damage when oils are applied to the weapon, some added accuracy, and synergize with class skills such as Way of the Fast Hands to give guns an extra edge (something like free supplemental damage akin to the Voltcaster).

I think that could make the mundane weapons more fun without overshadowing the innates. Needs testing though, numbers are all well and good but it's pretty easy to swing it too hard one way or the other.

[Klapaucius]

My two cents - I like the idea, but I think it would be good to settle what I see as a long-standing issue with enchanted weapons before trying to balance the power of these skills.

The redundancy of supplemental damage makes it difficult to use enchanted weapons and also makes them feel bad. I think it's worth considering looking into that first.

[SkullFace]

I'm liking the intent of this a lot. I'm not liking the execution as much. I think the complexity facing the player is perhaps a little too much.

Perhaps a simplified approach that builds on top of all pre-existing skills? Start with a tree of three skills:

• 30 CP - Weapon Mastery - Type (where type is one of Firearms, Archery, Melee, HTH, Thrown) - +5% to hit and +2 damage with non-innate weapons only
• 60 CP - Weapon Expertise - Type - additional +5% to hit and +2 damage
• 60 CP - Effect Strike (Fire Strike, Electric Strike, Holy Strike etc) - 1 AP and 8 MP cost, 20 ticks duration, base weapon damage changes to the new damage type

These abilities do not affect innates.

Multiple skills can be purchased to obtain mastery in more than one combat tree. Beneficial numbers, duration etc may be finessed to balance e.g. Weapon Expertise / Mastery - Thrown can be given higher damage bonuses to offset the lower base damage, Weapon Expertise / Mastery - Firearms can be given higher bonuses to offset maintenance. Numbers can also be adjusted to ensure that innates remain viable for those who prefer them. Skills per weapon type are made available only to those classes that are intended by design to be weapons users.

• Seraph - Weapon Mastery / Expertise / Thunder (Electric) Strike are individually available for Firearms and Melee weapons
• Void Walker - Weapon Mastery / Expertise / Void (Cold) Strike are individually available for Archery and Firearms weapons
• Eternal Soldier - Weapon Mastery / Expertise / Killing (Death) Strike / Thunder (Electric) Strike are individually available for Melee, Archery, Firearms and Thrown weapons.

Players would have the option of building with zero-maintenance innates, higher-maintenance weapons or a combination thereof.

[erikune]

Is the goal here to allow multiple characters to work together are build a crafted "superweapon" for a single character to carry around, or is the goal to give feral/small faction characters a viable weapon they could use that's similar to what they could get with innate skills?

People are always going to be aiming for an optimal build, so the big question is what's the tradeoff? 20CP on T2 and 30CP on T3 seems like a low investment, especially considering that most innate weapons seem to have more of a T3 CP investment. Is that part of the point, with the Weapon Mastery characters spending more time with AP and weapon management in exchange for the tree being more CP light?

It's also kind of strange how the numbers are all over the place. I get that it's a workshop idea, but it feels more like suggesting a dozen ideas at once with a similar concept. Wouldn't it be better to, say, focus on one class (Myrmidon Weapon Mastery) and get an idea of how well that could work, then adapt it to other classes? It's also kind of strange that Holy Sword and Shadow Dirk are weapons that can be "crafted and favored" but your fist and kicks can't. I get why with Eternal Soldier kicks and Elementalist touch skills, but still. It's also also kind of strange that ES's skill requires the use of oils, an item no other martial class would have access to.

[NearNihil]

My two cents - I like the idea, but I think it would be good to settle what I see as a long-standing issue with enchanted weapons before trying to balance the power of these skills.

The redundancy of supplemental damage makes it difficult to use enchanted weapons and also makes them feel bad. I think it's worth considering looking into that first.

As I understand it, previous breaths had enchantments add to the base damage, which in part was why they were abundant and apparently why they overshadowed innate weapons. I wasn't around then, but it was part of discussions in dev circles when talking about enchantments before. Additionally, things like accuracy enchantments should also be considered particularly for the 'heavy' weapons as they significantly improve the damage per AP.

That said though, a rework of weapon enchantments can be on the table if we all feel like it should be, but that's out of the scope of this discussion since that would significantly change the course of these skills.

I'm liking the intent of this a lot. I'm not liking the execution as much. I think the complexity facing the player is perhaps a little too much.

Perhaps a simplified approach that builds on top of all pre-existing skills? Start with a tree of three skills:

• 30 CP - Weapon Mastery - Type (where type is one of Firearms, Archery, Melee, HTH, Thrown) - +5% to hit and +2 damage with non-innate weapons only
• 60 CP - Weapon Expertise - Type - additional +5% to hit and +2 damage
• 60 CP - Effect Strike (Fire Strike, Electric Strike, Holy Strike etc) - 1 AP and 8 MP cost, 20 ticks duration, base weapon damage changes to the new damage type

These abilities do not affect innates.

Multiple skills can be purchased to obtain mastery in more than one combat tree. Beneficial numbers, duration etc may be finessed to balance e.g. Weapon Expertise / Mastery - Thrown can be given higher damage bonuses to offset the lower base damage, Weapon Expertise / Mastery - Firearms can be given higher bonuses to offset maintenance. Numbers can also be adjusted to ensure that innates remain viable for those who prefer them. Skills per weapon type are made available only to those classes that are intended by design to be weapons users.

• Seraph - Weapon Mastery / Expertise / Thunder (Electric) Strike are individually available for Firearms and Melee weapons
• Void Walker - Weapon Mastery / Expertise / Void (Cold) Strike are individually available for Archery and Firearms weapons
• Eternal Soldier - Weapon Mastery / Expertise / Killing (Death) Strike / Thunder (Electric) Strike are individually available for Melee, Archery, Firearms and Thrown weapons.

Players would have the option of building with zero-maintenance innates, higher-maintenance weapons or a combination thereof.

Starting off simpler is an option, though part of the idea was to be weapon-agnostic in the approach. If you want to be a chainsaw Seraph, go nuts! Shortbow Eternal Soldier, you can do that! Dagger Void Walker, yep! Restricting weapon types to what we feel a class should use is then running into some of the same problems innates have, which is "I'd like to use x weapon tree for my martial character, but I can't because there's no (good) innate for it". Adding the skills just to the T3 classes is something I like though as it streamlines the process somewhat, though stacking T2 and T3 class skills on top of each other has been something I want to do for a while now. Perhaps that can wait for some other time.

Is the goal here to allow multiple characters to work together are build a crafted "superweapon" for a single character to carry around, or is the goal to give feral/small faction characters a viable weapon they could use that's similar to what they could get with innate skills?

People are always going to be aiming for an optimal build, so the big question is what's the tradeoff? 20CP on T2 and 30CP on T3 seems like a low investment, especially considering that most innate weapons seem to have more of a T3 CP investment. Is that part of the point, with the Weapon Mastery characters spending more time with AP and weapon management in exchange for the tree being more CP light?

It's also kind of strange how the numbers are all over the place. I get that it's a workshop idea, but it feels more like suggesting a dozen ideas at once with a similar concept. Wouldn't it be better to, say, focus on one class (Myrmidon Weapon Mastery) and get an idea of how well that could work, then adapt it to other classes? It's also kind of strange that Holy Sword and Shadow Dirk are weapons that can be "crafted and favored" but your fist and kicks can't. I get why with Eternal Soldier kicks and Elementalist touch skills, but still. It's also also kind of strange that ES's skill requires the use of oils, an item no other martial class would have access to.

1. The goal is for people to have fun with mostly balanced weapons they've built and can maintain with the help of factionmates or shop factions. Anything is easier if you have a large support network, and taking away the ability to hand the bonded weapon over effectively eliminates enchantments from the equation, which are part of the appeal for mundane weapons.

2. Correct, though nudging them upwards to 30 and 60 is entirely on the table.

3a. Yes, it's a big set of changes and I did start with Myrmidon only, but if set up properly it should not be hard to tweak/add/remove numbers, effects and types afterwards or even during testing.
3b. The Sword and Dirk are technically not crafted, true, and they may be a bit out of scope, but I feel they're underused in the same way mundane weapons are. Just a little fun thing to add really.
3c. Using oils seems to fit thematically, in a Witcher sort of way. They're also really used now and I'm sure you can find an alchemist nice enough to make a couple batches. In the same way martials don't have access to enchanting their own weapons, they also don't have access to alchemy, so this does not seem like a stretch to ask from a prepared player.

[Klapaucius]

My two cents - I like the idea, but I think it would be good to settle what I see as a long-standing issue with enchanted weapons before trying to balance the power of these skills.

The redundancy of supplemental damage makes it difficult to use enchanted weapons and also makes them feel bad. I think it's worth considering looking into that first.

As I understand it, previous breaths had enchantments add to the base damage, which in part was why they were abundant and apparently why they overshadowed innate weapons. I wasn't around then, but it was part of discussions in dev circles when talking about enchantments before. Additionally, things like accuracy enchantments should also be considered particularly for the 'heavy' weapons as they significantly improve the damage per AP.

That said though, a rework of weapon enchantments can be on the table if we all feel like it should be, but that's out of the scope of this discussion since that would significantly change the course of these skills.

The question to me is, how much power budget are you allocating to these skills vs enchanting.

Are you assuming that a sword gets +6 damage and comparing that with the innates? Or +0 because enchanted weapons are sketchy and not likely to be used by many in their current form? +3 because enchanting is useful for about half the classes? I feel like at least that much of the enchanting balance situation is relevant to this discussion.


Aside from this more theoretical discussion, some of the things I think are annoying and anti-synergistic about enchants generally are appearing in the skills here also.

For instance, Nexus champion gets seal magic so they can keep their weapon enchanted, but dragon rage is the tree which goes best with innates and it doesn't stack at all well with damage-enchanted weapons. Fallen similarly get an ability that promotes unholy-enchanted weapons, which basically do the same thing as grim mien but don't stack with it (6 supplemental unholy vs 5 supplemental unholy for 1 mp/attack). All paladin exits get more durable holy enchants, but also have a skill which gives themselves supplemental holy damage which is in direct competition.

I will post my long-ass suggestions about enchantments and supplemental damage elsewhere, later.

[SkullFace]

I'm liking the intent of this a lot. I'm not liking the execution as much. I think the complexity facing the player is perhaps a little too much.

Perhaps a simplified approach that builds on top of all pre-existing skills? Start with a tree of three skills:

• 30 CP - Weapon Mastery - Type (where type is one of Firearms, Archery, Melee, HTH, Thrown) - +5% to hit and +2 damage with non-innate weapons only
• 60 CP - Weapon Expertise - Type - additional +5% to hit and +2 damage
• 60 CP - Effect Strike (Fire Strike, Electric Strike, Holy Strike etc) - 1 AP and 8 MP cost, 20 ticks duration, base weapon damage changes to the new damage type

These abilities do not affect innates.

Multiple skills can be purchased to obtain mastery in more than one combat tree. Beneficial numbers, duration etc may be finessed to balance e.g. Weapon Expertise / Mastery - Thrown can be given higher damage bonuses to offset the lower base damage, Weapon Expertise / Mastery - Firearms can be given higher bonuses to offset maintenance. Numbers can also be adjusted to ensure that innates remain viable for those who prefer them. Skills per weapon type are made available only to those classes that are intended by design to be weapons users.

• Seraph - Weapon Mastery / Expertise / Thunder (Electric) Strike are individually available for Firearms and Melee weapons
• Void Walker - Weapon Mastery / Expertise / Void (Cold) Strike are individually available for Archery and Firearms weapons
• Eternal Soldier - Weapon Mastery / Expertise / Killing (Death) Strike / Thunder (Electric) Strike are individually available for Melee, Archery, Firearms and Thrown weapons.

Players would have the option of building with zero-maintenance innates, higher-maintenance weapons or a combination thereof.

Starting off simpler is an option, though part of the idea was to be weapon-agnostic in the approach. If you want to be a chainsaw Seraph, go nuts! Shortbow Eternal Soldier, you can do that! Dagger Void Walker, yep! Restricting weapon types to what we feel a class should use is then running into some of the same problems innates have, which is "I'd like to use x weapon tree for my martial character, but I can't because there's no (good) innate for it". Adding the skills just to the T3 classes is something I like though as it streamlines the process somewhat, though stacking T2 and T3 class skills on top of each other has been something I want to do for a while now. Perhaps that can wait for some other time.

Fair enough. In which case give all martial classes all each individual Weapons Mastery type and allow them to choose whether to specialise in one, two or more weapons.

[Mousus6]

Having just spent all together too long diving into the looking at how extra skills and non-innates would stack up for a bow NC at increasing levels of CP spend having levelled with a lovely enchanted bow last breath and picked up origami bow last I think I mostly come away with the following thoughts.

The skills tying you to a single decay capable weapon will be a very good way of making sure that people feel like the RNG hates them. The best way of dealing with weapon decay is carrying a backup weapon (possibly one of the different types in your weapon category to take advantage of different exact circumstances soak vs evasion etc.). If your weapon decays early in a raid/group of targets it just feels bad, and that was using a bow which I could repair anywhere.

I never wanted to be stuck using only my enchanted weapon which this would funnel you into as I always wanted mp leftover after a fight for teleporting/portals/spells. With a pocket full of weapons I could happily swap between my enchanted bow and a backup unenchanted one however that will feel really bad in the context where you are missing out on ~ +3 damage +5% accuracy vs using your enchanted one with no mp left. Would probably want to add a character passive toggle status for whether they wanted to spend mp activating enchanted weapons (like passive gem charging, no cost to toggle on, probably leave on by default but able to toggle off if you're low on mp and need to save some for the wormhole home etc.). Similar concerns come about with using the favoured enchanted weapon for ward bashing that you might want to save some of the mp for the hard targets inside rather than spending it all on the ward.

The power of these skills are very highly tied to the power and availability of enchantments. Most classes don't have the ability to give supplemental damage to crafted weapons without enchantments (fallen, holy champion, nexus champion, wizard were the exceptions I spotted). I am definitely wondering how much the balance adjustments of these skills could potentially just be folded into enchantments rather than sitting as separate skills if the current state of things is that enchanted weapons don't feel worth it over innates (which I do largely agree with). This probably wouldn't have much risk of making weapon based spellcasters using enchanted weapons too strong and could allow people to have special occasions crafted weapons whilst using innates for general backup.

The T2 versions of the skills are very strong T2 skills that everyone (non-h2h) will want to buy for T2 levelling and then potentially buy back if they go over to an innate which may not be the intended path but would definitely pay for itself multiple times over xp wise.

For bow NC there is the hilarious perverse incentive whilst cracking tough targets to get a fully accuracy enchanted crafted weapon and also pick up the origami bow tree to get fire supplemental damage, possibly that also sits around for fallen but picking up grim mien on its own is less absurd. Was using the soak figures of a tough DO in their domain with 50% evasion and 10 soak for that so possibly that doesn't come up at less extreme conditions. Prior to that level of soak I was surprised at how good fully accuracy enchanted longbows looked next to damage enchanted other weapons for quite a range of targets.

Hopefully my rambling is at least useful to someone given the amount of time I just spent thinking about this/fiddling with a spreadsheet.

[Klapaucius]

Really good points mousus.

Just to add, lots of classes have access to supplemental damage that can apply to non innate weapons.

- All demon classes get supplemental from desecrates.
- All goods can get it from advocate prayer results (though this is a bit more of a crapshoot)
- Good martial: Seraph, EH, HC, all have sources of supplemental (though I guess seraph is from the voltcaster so no actual overlap with enchanted weapons)
- all paladin exits can also get bolster attack
- Good casters: archon has some from word
- Neutral martial: NC has some
- Neutral casters: gun wizard has some (I think)
- evil martial and casters: VW with strangulation though that barely counts. It would apply to h2h based weapons I believe. Fallen has some in grim mien. Not many sources other than desecrate, though that isn't a trivial source since you usually have enough boons for high soak targets

I've probably missed some.