ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

legacy of the naloren seems to suck because its hard to get your hands on
the problem with it is that people want the prodigy, but they can't get it till they reach the far east, which usually involves being at a pretty high level
so, people have four options to do this:

#1: have 0 points into weapon mastery, and float 3 points into weapon mastery until you get naloren, then take the point out of weapon mastery for good; this is the best and hardest option in the long-term
#2: get a warrior escort before the east, preferably in the t1s and take exotic mastery, allowing you to ditch weapon mastery entirely... but then you need to find tridents that are better than river's fury(which might not even drop), and those are rather difficult to find
#3: put 2 points into weapon mastery, then float 3 points into weapon mastery until you get naloren; this results in a long-term loss of 2 generic points
#4: put 5 points into weapon mastery, then get naloren; this results in a long-term loss of 5 generic points, but is the easiest option in the medium term

however, what if naloren just refunded your points into weapon mastery when you picked up the prodigy?
that way, people wouldn't have to worry about saving up their points for later, and they could just take the prodigy at 42 without worrying about either wasting generic points on weapon mastery or finding a decent trident from a naga in dreadfell or the lake of nur

It sucks cause it's not really worth a prodigy since it's likely you can get a randart that's similar or superior just by using the merchant or the font(including the mastery bonus and the weapon mastery 5additional points), at which point literally anything else would be better since all you're getting otherwise is water breathing(pointless once you've finished the quest) and spit poison. I get the point about weapon mastery and stuff but floating 3points, while tedious, is perfectly doable and more than sufficient to get there. Those last 2 points are only a marginal damage increase. While it could certainly use buffs I don't think refunding weapon mastery points would make a big difference, and if anything it's more of an issue of exotic weapon mastery accessability early game being entirely reliant on RNG, when it really shouldn't be imo. But even if you do get it as you mentionned you're not guaranteed weapons.

Really the main way to buff it should simply to buff the weapon further. Add phys crit maybe even some crit mult, make the silence use your highest power, give spit poison an additional property(might need to tweak sunwall start with all the nagas though), make it increase psy fighting instead of psychic assault(why is it buffing a solip tree instead of a mindslayer tree?) and give it nature res pen(for spit poison dmg). Make the weapon actually the best weapon in the game in most situations and it'd be interesting to take, because if it isn't, you can just use a randart(or dethblyd/champion's will which are 2 already good fixedarts for their respective classes that compete with naloren) and get master of disasters or eth form or arcane might or even icctw or something(or flex if you didn't take it first for whatever reason) and it's just gonna be a lot better which defeats the purpose.

That said it's just the usual issue with prodigy balance, a lot of them are way too weak even if they're somewhat cool. Alternatively some are way too strong which limits choice unless you don't care about efficiency.

are you aware that taking the prodigy, with or without a warrior escort, lets you get base level 10 exotic mastery by level 50?
with 1.3 base mastery and the trident, thats 1.6 mastery, which means level 16 exotic mastery at level 50
and thats really good
the main draw of the prodigy isn't the weapon's 140% str scaling, good accuracy bonus, or .3 to combat training, but its the extra 5 points into exotic mastery that it lets you get, which is probably quite a bit bigger than icctw

Legacy's high mastery was stronger back when you got scaling physical power from mastery talents. It's less attractive now that the power bonus doesn't scale. I think it's still a decent option though.

Either way, I think the suggestion to refund points from Weapons Mastery after taking the prodigy makes sense.

Zeyphor wrote:are you aware that taking the prodigy, with or without a warrior escort, lets you get base level 10 exotic mastery by level 50?
with 1.3 base mastery and the trident, thats 1.6 mastery, which means level 16 exotic mastery at level 50
and thats really good
the main draw of the prodigy isn't the weapon's 140% str scaling, good accuracy bonus, or .3 to combat training, but its the extra 5 points into exotic mastery that it lets you get, which is probably quite a bit bigger than icctw

Well yeah obviously I know, but as every skill, the scaling gets worse and worse so 10points isn't like, double of 5points, it's not even close. So you go from 176% weapon dmg(5pt weapon mastery, base is 100%, bonus is 76% with 1.3 mastery) to 219%weapon dmg with Naloren which is only a ~24% increase overall in weapon damage. There is also the str bonus but it isn't that impactful anymore after the weapon changes, it's still something but I'm not sure what's the current formula to calculate the impact it actually has. Finally there's the stunning blow proc, that accounts for about 12.5% more dmg.

Meanwhile a randart with massacre will have roughly the same base dmg, and with ruin will have ~45%crit multi, which assuming you already have Dakthun(so 200%crit multi) means a ~22.5% dmg increase, if you have 100% crit. It becomes a 30% increase if you don't have dakthun/other crit multi at full crit. And that still leaves one random ego(although these tend to be more utility based and can't be chosen) and one more ego like crippling or deep wounds or blazebringer for 12-15%global speed and such(2 more ego if merchant but less likely to hit the right stuff). Ultimately, even accounting for mastery bonus, you're still looking at getting a weapon that is similar in power levels, with more customization(especially when using font), for example to max crit if your class doesn't have too much of it, or get penetration(either armor or resist), or speed or even accuracy.

But the really big downside in the comparison is that you pay a prodigy for that. So yeah maybe ICCTW isn't enough damage to compensate for the naloren slight advantage, but ICCTW isn't very good to begin with damage wise. So I did use some hyperbole here, not "literally anything else" would be better, but a lot of things would be, I hadn't done the full math so I didn't exactly figure out how much Naloren added in power over a randart, but it's still not enough for a prodigy slot I'd say. Arcane Might, Master of Disaster, Flex(if for some reason that's not your first prodigy) will beat it easily. ICCTW might still be better but not sure would need to do the full math on that and again not sure what's the current dmg formula for stat weight, same for Adept, it might turn out similar/better but that's an annoying one to calculate. You can also at that point just take a utility/defensive prodigy too instead, since damage wise you wouldn't be losing out on much with a good weapon.

Arguably, while prodigy balance might be part of the problem, the font and the ease of getting a perfect randart weapon might also be another.

Mind you I'm not against the suggestion at all as I said in first post, that'd be a fine buff although I'd rather tackle exotic mastery being tied to an escort instead of being freely available to everyone(via a quest or whatever doesn't have to be right away, my original suggestion was letting the Master of the Blood Arena teach it to you, seeing as how slavers use whips and evil yeeks use spears). Maybe it'd even be enough if prodigy power is reviewed to be lower than the top tier currently are at, just in the current situation the only reason I'd pick Naloren is just to change and use something else than the usual flex/arcane might or flex/MoD. Flex being the big issue with prodigy balance for melees, since it's better than everything else by such a large margin.

Maybe the weapon needs some activation like those Nagas seem to have, some kind of Rush/Leap/Speedup?

The weapon has some pretty darn strong procs... That being said, i do agree that the + exotic mastery portion of it and the associated damage boost are wonky at best and should be merged into the weapon, rather than basically being related to exploiting the mechanic in non-fun way. I recall a convo, where we talked about how exotic weapons could be a 1 point talent, allowing you to use your weapon mastery for exotic weapons as well. While i'd rather suggest to use the higher of weapon and dagger mastery instead of just weapon mastery, i'd quite like that, since it would remove a lot of tedium from exotic weapons and naloren.
That being said, this would leave the weapon and prodigy even weaker and in need of some sort of buff. If both were done together, this prodigy would be basically fixed, though.

The other parts of the prodigy (water breathing and spit poison) are pretty useless.

Would it be possible to have exotic weapon proficiency, and just that proficiency, retain the old scaling? That might make that 16 effective skill more valuable.

Still better than Secrets of Telos, though.