Maybe no one is reading in this thread anymore, but I said I would make a go of an overview with respect to changes, and I think I should do that before I go and log into Shard of the Dead. Because once I get started on that, a post here is not likely to happen today.
Previously in this thread a lot of cases have been put forth for rethinking the convenience, or lack of, for obtaining a high level focus, which is The central augmentation factor for all spellweaving spells, regardless of level of skill mastery. I spoke against, not the thought process, but the assertion that anything so difficult was broken, that the game in general with regard to using ones creative intelligence to address a a difficult task was just expecting too much from a player to be able to regularly accomplish, and because that was true, it was broken, and a remedy was required.
Okay, if that is the premise, then lets take a few seconds to address those things that are easy with Spellweaving as a skill... seconds is all it will take, because the answer is...nothing.
1)Spellweaving is one of less than five skills that you can not start a character with.
2)Of all those skills, spellweaving is the only skill you have to run a quest chain to acquire. Not a quest, a series of quests. You can buy a full spellbook, but you can't make any use of it until you have completed this series of tasks, and you have a choice of facets and chain titles you can make use of to gain access. So, clearly that is not accidental.
3)Weaving is the only class of spell casting in which scribes play no active part in providing books or spells, books must be earned, and scrolls must be looted. Some spells and scrolls have their own quest you must complete to obtain the ability to cast the spell. You can buy the scrolls, or a spellbook with the spells in place, but unless you have completed those quests, you can not make use of them.
On the flip side, the spell set is an extremely useful one. Even if your template allows only twenty free points on your character, you can perform actions that are anywhere from moderately useful, which means if you are lucky it can save your life, to amazingly useful, which might mean that even if you are engaged in the field on the wrong side of a two on one, and you have any knowledge of your template at all, you can be, for a limited time, almost impossible to kill.
You can duplicate the powers of two virtues with some of the spells, one of which it itself is a duplication of 220 points in hiding and stealth. Virtues take a long time to work up to useful level, they decay and must be maintained, and yet with hours of preparation of your spellbook and the skill, you can attain, or better them, by standing with a few other players.
If you are dedicated to the proposition that your character casts spells, and you use that character for pvm, then the uppermost levels of spellweaving bring you unprecedented power to end a long engagement quickly, in fact there is no other ability on any template in the game that can do as much damage as Word of Death, and it works on almost, almost, everything to deliver thousands of points of damage in less than a minute, stripping throwers, archers and even the vaunted sampire of their potential titles of leading dps potential in a group.
There is no active template for which the skill is not useful. Tamers, dexxers, mages, mystics, archers, bards and throwers, whether built for pvm ,or pvp. All of them can find something useful.
It is the only skill outside of crafting that is completely useful in itself without requiring a skill in partnership or a partner character in game, the only partner you have to find, at least once every ten hours or so, is one or more able bodies, heck even dead bodies work, to stand in a circle and cast a spell. And then it is only to maximize the usefulness of the spells, their ability to receive damage, resist dispell, duration, or damage output. All are still usable without that commitment, just at lower levels of effectiveness.
Some folks just refuse to have their templates ability so affected by being dependent on the participation of others, and have never even tried this spellset, and they still play the game. They just use other creative methods to do what they want to do.
Maybe I'm jaded. Maybe I have just played this game for long enough that I no longer feel disconcerted doing some basic things before I go into the field, like check the condition of my armor and weapons, or, for my characters that use reagents, that they will have enough to be in the field for as long as I plan, or that I have enough powder to any bags of sending I might be wanting to use, or, catching a focus.
Maybe I live on a heavily populated shard and I have no understanding of wishing I could be in the field, but having to wait for this small thing to get done. Except, I play on both Origin and Legends two of the smallest population shards. Maybe its just my habit, and because some things have changed in game there is, in fact a need to re-evaluate. That is very possible.
So lets look at other improvements, for the sake of accessibility, that have been made since the introduction of spellweaving.:bard masteries, imbuing, dungeon loot. You don't find many people complaining about the accessibility of upper level bard skills much anymore, but then again, even with this extraordinary boon to training and party play, not many people have bards. Imbuing and dungeon loot, both seem to receive regular complaints on time commitment to obtain upper end loot.
The game currently is not doing much marketing towards new players, and one of the key elements towards making established players disgruntled is a negation of their efforts to date on equipment and templates. Remaking things that had been settled is work not many are keen to engage in, especially when the time spent making changes is supposed to be recreation.
Is there room for a "pay to enhance" option for weavers, sure I can think of several things. But remember, the time of our Design Team is precious.
For the least amount of effort for designers there could be a store item, with limited charges, much like the enhancement tools. Maybe such an item could end up on the "clean up Brit" rewards for points. More intensive would be the creation of a quest or system that might allow a character to "buy up" a focus in game by including npc weavers. But I would advocate this system be implemented in a place where a focus maximum of fifth level would be obtainable. Very convenient, and only slightly less powerful, while maintaining the validity of the extra effort on the part of those who are willing to do that.
As you can tell I am partial to the skill. Maybe it might be worthwhile to make it available on a test shard going forward, a gate for access quest completion, and some device to facilitate testing at high levels of focus. If more people had the ability to try it out, I bet it would become easier to find folks to focus with on production shards
