My only problem is that makes the Tenebrium skill mostly pointless beyond 1 point. Why would you ever sink points into a skill that gives maybe +5 tenebrium damage per rank.
The elemental skills give bonus to weapon elemental damage? Cool, but they also allow you to cast a lot of powerful spells. Tenebrium doesn't, so if it did nothing but boost the tenebrium damage of weapons, they'd have to significantly increase the % at which it does. And at that point you're in a world of pain balance-wise because someone with total 10 points in weapon and tenebrium will do insane amounts of damage.
There's really no good way of doing it. I think they should make Tenebrium Handling a talent that can only be learned from whatever options there are now of unlocking the skill. If you want, add a second talent to boost tenebrium damage by +50% or something.
That way you're not dealing with the issue of one skill making others obsolete, you don't have to deal with balance issues regarding how much benefit you can get per skill rank, and just generally it's not something people need to be worrying about. You've learned how to handle Tenebrium, good for you, now continue on like nothing changed, because really, nothing has (other than unlocking a new material of weapons) (You would need to make it a talent that can't be unlearned via respec, I guess)
Well Tenebrium (skill) is actually a requirement for some Tenebrium weapons, so you need to increase your Tenebrium skill if you want to use higher level Tenebrium weapons, but I get what you are saying.
I like the Talent idea, it's probably the easiest solution in regards of maintaining game balance, but it would require modifying items, e.g. Take out the Tenebrium + modifiers that can spawn on items, remove Tenebrium skill level requirements from Tenebrium equipment. I'm not sure how easy it is to implement.
Would a different scaling for the Tenebrium damage bonus be workable?
E.g. -33% at 1, the skill just allows you to handle Tenebrium weapon, but there is actually a damage.
0% at 2, damage penalty removed, +33% at 3, +67% at 4, etc.
You get a lot more Tenebrium with this model but then again you are devoting a lot more points into weapon mastery, maybe you should benefit more from it?
