Change the skill selection for paladin escorts

[Winddbourne]

(Current version 1.5.3)

The recent updates have significantly altered the paladin's iconic chants tree. Unfortunately the paladin escort is still offering a 1 point buff to chant of fortitude or chant of fortress. This was very confusing to me.

When I take a point of either skill do I get a buff only when I'm using that setting on the new chant acolyte skill? If so that is a significant nerf since the light damage portion of the skill was separated out into it's own passive. On the other hand when I'm playing a sun paladin getting access to the OLD skill could be a bit of an exploit as I could double dip light damage and run two chants at once. . . Or it might be a huge bug if I couldn't have it active AND still use the new version of the skill.

Needless to say I chose not to risk it and just took two points of strength.

To improve the escort for sun paladins I'd like to suggest changing things so you are given a choice between "Weapon of Light" and "Chant Acolyte". Basically these two skills separate out the light damage, and defensive buff portions of the old choices. They also aren't confusing to players and on the surface they LOOK to be fairly well balanced.

Weapon of light gives you significantly more offensive light damage plus a minor buff to damage shields. Meanwhile Chant Acolyte gives you access to stripped down versions of all three old chants but without access to the new chants tree so they can't be buffed far beyond what the old skill(s) could do.

Of course what I like best is that it seems to give really clear and interesting build choices . . . offensive versus defense, utility skills versus a single passive buff, etc . . . I think that could really be a fun decision to make from one game to the next depending on the character I'm playing with.

[Mordy]

Escorts only give generic talents, never class talents.

[Micbran]

Loremaster doesn't exist, don't talk about him.

[HousePet]

I have never before seen anyone concerned about the retaliatory light damage. I'm also not sure if it can be counted as a nerf since the effects of the individual Chants were changed.

Also, there is no exploit or bug involved as there is no difference between the new and old Chants. They are the same talents. (nor would the system allow the use of more than one Chant if they weren't.)
As a Sun Paladin, you can use the escort rewards to get a specific Chant above a 5 talent points invested level, but I think that is a fair trade off.

[Winddbourne]

One should be worried about this re-balance in general. Previously each chant was a separate skill. That means they each were balanced individually. Now they are subsets of a single skill and you need to pay a balance cost for both that utility and the ten point discount to getting all talents to level five. They also now have to be balanced around a talent tree that has three passive talents that each buff the skill significantly. Those changes are HUGE.

Obviously if you take the entire tree things are still completely balanced . . . but if you take just one point in a single chant you are losing all of those benefits. It MAY be buff for the paladin since he can get part of his skill above five . . . but for everyone else you are simply trading one escort skill point for 1/3rd of a skill. That is, of course, assuming the chants were properly re-balanced to be merged together in the beginning.

Upping what you get to the actual skill makes it one point cost for one point of benefit. That seems like an obvious solution. Not having done so already looks rather like an oversight.

Of course it also means that we suddenly have an empty slot to fill. Weapon of light seemed like an obvious choice because it resonates with the light damage which used to be part of both old skills. It also would be a second escort giving a class talent along side the Lore Master offering mind sear. I like that too.

[HousePet]

As I said, the new Chants are not the same as the old ones.

[bpat]

I don't see anything wrong with just giving the first two talents of the actual Chants tree. It's not like there's ever been any qualms in offering useless talents (hello non-betrayed Temporal Explorer). They're not even that good since you usually don't want to swap them without the third talent anyway.

[Fela]

(Current version 1.5.3)
When I take a point of either skill do I get a buff only when I'm using that setting on the new chant acolyte skill?

Exactly, that specific chant is listed as one level higher in your hotkeys. I'm not sure the bonuses are calculated as if you took one more level of the new talent or differently, though.

I'm with bpat there, the escort should offer the new talents.

[Atarlost]

I know that as a Sun Paladin or Anorthil in this version I'd rather save a generic than get one chant above 5. They're not that good.

[Chronosplit]

When 1.5 first landed I actually thought the chant selection outside of the trees was a text bug or something.