ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I really dislike the current weapon mastery system, it creates no-brainers, it almosts forces to use one type of weapon ( Yes, some builds can benefit from investing in heavy+light weapon but that's all) Before the nerf it was a way to increase physical power, but now almost every character gets 100% useless generics. Of cause the new merged generic should be based either on strength or on dexterity

Some effects of merging :
1) exotic weapons will receive a buff (BTW, I am sure that most new players don't expect that those tridents or whips require a separate generic that is not available by default)
2) Bashing with staff will become more viable playstyle (currently you need the whole new tree ( and you get 0.8, comparing to at least 1.0 other two-handers have) Furthermore, channel staff from the same tree makes bashing inferior) Of cause staff mastery should get replaced by something (I'd make it further (small) +% to staff bonus to damage)
3) Heavy+light will become a new default for many dual wielding classes, but 2 daggers should stay preferred for rogues due to lethality and strength requirement
4) Mindstars have another kind of generic to buff itself so may be not affected by that. But IMO Mindstars could get a little melee buff and have both ways to improve it's melee damage. Mindstar user will still need to spend generics for that as any other class, and having it unaffected by the merged skill, will reduce clarity

While Whips are sorta bad, Tridents are designed with the idea of Exotic Weapons being separate in mind and are fairly decent, and I would mostly like to see Whips and Tridents be decent for those that lack Exotic/really good for those that do, to encourage differing builds. I feel like Tridents, at least, are doing a good job of that. Whips just need buffs, is all.

Changing that would really make it necessary to retool at least one Prodigy skill and a couple of artifacts, at the very least. Nothing major, of course-it's not that hard of a change, I just like their theoretical role.

I wouldn't mind seeing Weapon, Staff and Dagger Mastery merge-the difference is largely obsolete at this point. Slings and Bows mostly are similar-having a Weapon Mastery skill that covered Staff/Daggers and a Ranged Mastery skill that covered Slings and Bows would be fine, though you'd need some replacements(Dagger Mastery doesn't need to be replaced, Staff does though, and so does whichever of Bow/Sling you'd remove. Personally I'd like to see both yanked and the resulting combo skill put into Combat Training.).

Mindstars...currently their unique mastery skill grants strong bonuses that would be non-thematic for Weapon Mastery to have. Psiblades would need to grant some secondary bonus to compensate for the required double investment of Weapon Mastery and Psiblades in order to get the same effect, or end up nerfed from the lack of multipliers bonus, or have an entirely unthematic Psiblade producing ability tacked onto Weapon Mastery that makes no sense. Regardless, seems too much work, there.

Maybe you could just have it take the higher bonus of Weapon Mastery or Psiblades for Mindstars?

Also, Unarmed Mastery would make no sense as being part of Weapon Mastery and would steal a lot of Brawler's uniqueness/totally bust Flexible Combat, so no go there, not without a lot of retooling for little payoff.

So, in summary: Exotic Weapon Mastery I like being separate for weird replay value for some classes and/or sidegrade builds. Wouldn't mind seeing everything else but Psiblades/Unarmed Mastery combined into either a Ranged Mastery or a Melee Mastery skill, and they could easily be made part of Combat Training to universalize them.

I also wouldn't mind having the *Masteries updated, the current system seems a little bit counter-intuitive for me. My own suggestion derives from the way the game handles melee attack skills that use some kind of accuracy check. As I understand it, there are two kinds of skills in that matter: 1) skills that work with any kind of melee weapon (including the fist) 2) skills that need a certain type of wielded weapon setup (or lack of wielded weapons). I think it would be logical that the different masteries follow the same sceme that 2) does: 1h, 2h, unarmed, psiblades. I really like SageAcrins suggestion that mindstars use the higher mastery from 1h/psiblades, and would even suggest the same mechanic for exotic weaponry.

I'd also suggest that all Masteries skills to be moved to the generics side, that way every character would have a way of becoming somewhat proficient with every kind of weaponry - which would lead to some interesting out-of-the-box character builds. (I know this has been discussed before, but this thread seemed like an appropriate place to bring it up again..)

Slings and Bows mostly are similar-having a Weapon Mastery skill that covered Staff/Daggers and a Ranged Mastery skill

I should have been more precise. I meant melee weapons only, ranged and unarmed are different just because those are class skills and available for few classes.

Maybe you could just have it take the higher bonus of Weapon Mastery or Psiblades for Mindstars?

That would be good. Or just make the sustain remove the bonus for weapon mastery. Sometimes there are should be a real choice between an offhand dagger and offhand mindstar even for non mindpower classes that invested few points in weapon mastery