ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

A simple thought here; Rather than making it Exotic Weapon Mastery, make it Advanced Weapon Mastery.

What this would do is count as a Mastery level for all standard weapon types. Normal weapons, knives, staves, mindstars, and exotics.

This wouldn't be more powerful than a normal mastery(and wouldn't stack with them, instead using the highest value), but would be good for specific niche builds-dualwielders that want to use Sword/Knife or Sword/Mindstar-or just people that want to swap their weapons more often based on what they find.

And it makes the Mastery feel less, well, hopelessly niche as a reward. It expands the niche to be more generalized.

Thoughts?

i like the idea but dislike that u get it from an escort/prodigy only

right now exotic weapons is pretty much limited to legacy of the nhaloren in usefulness, so i agree there should be done something.
either make more weapons or simplify like ur proposal. if u modify it its a pretty big advantage in flexibility and would feel like another escort that any melee "needs" like celestial/light or field control is for some builds now.

on the other hand it saves u quite some money if u want to go for staff/mindstars so maybe it should be linked as a quest reward or something else that needs to be worked for(money again?).

It would be nice to have exotic weapons be...actually useful, admittedly, and better support for mixed weapon dual-wield characters (sword/dagger and sword/mindstar are obvious, but short-staff/dagger comes up too.)

For this to work, though...yeah, it'd need to be more reliably available and not just as an escort/prodigy award. Otherwise we can end up with the same problem: people not going for the new option because they've already dedicated themselves to their current path. Honestly, I think exotic weapon proficiency is just a bad idea and I don't think there's a good way to make it work, not without exotic weapons being more common and available.

How about making unlocking it purchasable?

Say, for 100-200? That would be another interesting way to do things; It's harder to access/takes more time than the other Masteries so there's no major reason to prioritize it in general, but for the builds it is relevant on, it can be worth waiting a bit and paying the cash for.

If exotic weapons were good, they would be more common, so they wouldn't be exotic.

Unfortunately tridents are basically just a maul with less damage and more armour piercing. Its so similar to the other options its not worth the effort of getting exotic weapon mastery.