Points spent in the tree might increase mastery

[IvenGray]

Maybe talent points spent in a tree should make small increases of the mastery of the tree. It makes sense that one's knowledge or experience about a particular skill can help with his mastery of the whole field. When an Archmage knows better about the fireball spell, he also knows better about fire, therefore he should be able to make other fire spells a little bit more powerful. Maybe an archmage who dedicated wholly to air and storm magic can do some 10% or 20% damage with lightning?
I suggest every talent point spent in a tree increase the mastery by 0.01. Maybe the increase can be smaller, like 0.005 or what. I just hope that this modification would matter a little, to the extent that it merits some consideration but people can still go without if they don't want to care.

[bricks]

Regarding Archmages - for every 'elemental' tree there is a corresponding master-level tree, like the new Aether category. The final talent in these categories always provides increased damage and resistance penetration with that element. Also, a feature I never found on my own - you can spend category points on a category to increase the mastery.

As far as skill synergies go, I think it is better if investing in a talent provides a bonus specific to other talents, kind of like Diablo 2's synergies. Of course, that would be a lot of work for even a single class. Small category mastery bonuses might not be very noticeable, and in some cases wouldn't have any effect. You'd also have weird situations where investing in one talent suddenly changes the behavior of another talent, which would be hard to show in the UI.

[IvenGray]

I think maybe the mechanism can coexist with the catpoint-upgrade-tree feature. I calculated that if every talent point changes the mastery by 0.01, then the mechanism would make talent points 1% to 20% more effective, depending on how many points you've spent in the field. I guess that is something between too trival and too emphasizing. And does this request heavy work? I have no idea. I only had limited experience with lua files and it didn't compelled the conclusion. But if it really does, then I'd say I'm sorry. I'm not a donator, and I feel guilty to suggest some heavy work to do.
My original thought was that it would be interesting for me, so it might be interesting for many people. It makes me feel my characters somehow more unique. I feel that they would be more distinct from others. It makes small differences in various skills, refines detail and thereby characterize my characters one step further.

[lukep]

And does this request heavy work? I have no idea. I only had limited experience with lua files and it didn't compelled the conclusion. But if it really does, then I'd say I'm sorry. I'm not a donator, and I feel guilty to suggest some heavy work to do.

It would be quite easy to code, if a bit time consuming. All that needs to be added is gaining 0.01 mastery to the talent category in on_learn, and losing it in on_unlearn. It should take about 4 lines of code. Of course, someone better at coding than me could just make a more general solution elsewhere as well.

This change would emphasize much more specialised builds, as taking one skill from each of four trees would be less powerful than all four skills from one tree (and none in the other three). I wouldn't want that, but others may like the increased synergies.

[Planetus]

This would give added bonus to maxing out all the skills in a tree, as that would add 0.2 mastery to the tree, which would add one solid talent level to every talent in the tree. It would also help classes that get trees that aren't at 1.2 (say, 1, or 0. mastery build up the tree a little more.

[SageAcrin]

Overly focused builds are already heavily exploited when they're viable.

Look at all the pure fire Archmages walking around out there.

There's enough simple classes so that making the objective best builds for a lot of the more complex ones a lot simpler and easier is basically a waste, to my mind-just play a simpler class instead. Category levels have highly differing impact, and the clear winners/losers with this idea would be too linear. The game has pretty good skill balance; This'd just kinda skew it without a lot of work on it.

[IvenGray]

Overly focused builds are already heavily exploited when they're viable.

I see you have a point, and I think you know better.