Again, all of these suggestions would be much better than the current beta system, but as Gyson implied, the only difference between level 1 and level 5 Repair under this Stabbey system would be the former would need to buy X more hammers than the latter in order to maintain all equipment in mint condition. That is a noticeable difference (albeit depending heavily on the availability of both gold and repair hammers in the final game build), but it just doesn't seem to give much of an incentive (or gameplay interest) to increasing the ability beyond level 1.
That's why I would again suggest (either instead of, or in addition to, Stabbey's suggestion) something like higher levels of Repair allowing you to repair higher value/more "complicated" (e.g. magic/legendary/etc.) equipment, and even slightly improve the equipment (in a way that wouldn't obviate the need/incentive for Crafting) at the highest level(s). I'm intentionally avoiding charts/stats here; I just want to throw the general concept out there.
I'm not objecting to additional benefits to Repair, certainly Loremaster has those. I'm not married to consumable hammers.
I can understand the logic behind "you need higher level repair to repair magic/rare/legendary/superawesome class items", that does make sense. I don't even know if I would object to that implementation, it depends on how Larian tweaks repair and repair costs, and how they tweak other abilities. My worry is that it doesn't take too long to accumulate a lot of magic and even rare items, so if you have to spend a lot of early ability points into Repair, it could limit the benefit you get from taking it. It depends on a bunch of things.
Right now, weapon specializations are dump abilities because they do basically nothing useful, so that is a place where I don't have to bother putting points, so they could go into Repair. But if (or hopefully WHEN) they become useful again, then that's another place competing for ability points.
