Changing the mechanic to require Loremaster and an item is fine. Not giving the player any idea why they can't identify items with Loremaster is not. That's not "letting the player discover for themself", that's just needlessly confusing them. By all means, make them have to find an Identifying Glass for themselves, but the player should at least know that they need one, and that the skill is not broken.
I completely agree with that. If you don't want to put it on the unidentified item's tooltip, then one of those tip dialogue boxes the game uses should pop up the first time the player loots an unidentified item.
"You've found an unidentified item! To discover the full potential of this item you need to bring it to an NPC and pay for identification, OR have the required rank of Loremaster and a magnifying glass (which you can pick up from certain merchants)."Or something along those lines. And before someone goes off on how players need hand holding these days, I'll remind you that in the past when games like this were frequently being made they came with manuals - nice thick manuals where topics like "identifying items" would get their own detailed chapter/page, with pictures to boot.
