Make weapon mastery apply to bows&slings

[Strongpoint]

While deciding what weird build to play I considered an archer berserker but... lack of mastery for bows means that it is too "self-imposed challenge" for my tastes

Why not make weapons mastery affect bows\slings but without the reload bonus? It will be inferior to specialized trees that ranged classes get but will make some new builds viable.

[Radon26]

yeah, maybe you just as well might merge in the daggers, the staves, and lets go even a step futher, MINDSTARS!

no. these are completely different weapons, they do not mix.

edit, i forgot exotic, yeah how about that too.

[Frumple]

Pretty sure we tried that, once, except taken to the next level -- all masteries gave their passive regardless of weapon used, for a bit, iirc. And they stacked. It was silly. Folding what amounts to two class talents into one already existing generic would... also be silly. And leave out dagger users, which might actually get notable benefit from the change (slings being one-handed and all).

If you were going to try this (and honestly, I don't think it's terribly needed), you'd need to specify the game takes the class talent over the generic one instead of stacking, at the least. Possibly give it lower numbers, too. I don't think taking away the reload would make... any difference at all. Doubt people actually notice or care about that. It's mostly just a post-battle aid thing, in my experience.

Better idea might be to have something like exotic weapon mastery -- pay the weapon trainer X gold (250? Would be about the midpoint compared to staff or mindstar trees), get a "ranged weapon proficiency" added to the generic tree that applies to slings and bows, but at lower numbers compared to the class-based specializations. It's probably been proposed before, heh.

[Effigy]

I honestly don't think all the different masteries are necessary. Also, the game currently uses your highest mastery for a given weapon instead of stacking them.

[astralInferno]

Nulltweaks has a generic weapon mastery that works for everything at slightly less than full power. Ranged weapons are included.

[Atarlost]

Moving bows and slings to a generic mastery would free up talents in the bow and sling trees, which might be interesting. The TW may rely on the assumption that bow mastery isn't available and need a nerf, but for everyone else it's just a weird quirk of ranged weapons that they use class skills instead of generic skills. Putting them with all the other generic combat skills (and combining them because there'd be no point in keeping bows and slings separate at that point) would make non-default builds like ranged rogues work better, which is a plus in my book.

Even merging all masteries into one skill wouldn't be bad except for buffing the TW. It's an annoying tax on dual wielders now, but it was only that they stacked before that was a problem. If there'd been only one mastery it would have had nothing to stack with.