It really is fine. Actually regular weapons are still more powerful than tenebrium in many cases, especially because you can craft them, so they can be :-
- sharpened for lots of extra damage
- added tenebrium damage by adding a bar to them
- also have elemental damage
- add str and DX from tormented souls
- I probably forgot some other things.
I hardly used tenebrium. It doesn't require you to throw a hissy fit. You can still win, easily, every fight with regular weapons. That said, you get plenty of points, and there's so much levelling it's easy to get plenty of levels in tenebrium if you want to.
You don't buy the tenebrium weapons from the Sacred Stone trader, but just use whatever weapon you like, upgrade it and use Tenebrium on it and now they will use your tenebrium skill instead of your weapon skill:
For example: legendary lvl 16 bow with all upgrades 111-191 +33-57 fire +33-57 tenebrium:
displayed damage
Bow 0 Tenebrium 8: 299-517 dmg
Bow 1 Tenebrium 8: 299-517 dmg
Bow 0 Tenebrium 7: 288-496 dmg
LOL! So there you go! Sure, your weapon/bow skills become meaningless with T weapons, but look at how much more damage T weapons make! I am pretty damn sure that developers decided to make weapon handling effect meaningless to T weapons because they would become way too powerful and make it too easy for you.
That's just not true for high levels.
Let's take a level 20 2h weapon with the following stats:
250-300 normal damage
50-80 elemental damage
=300-380 overall damage (without 2h bonus)
With 5 points in 2h damage I get a 50% damage bonus on these overall damage.
=450-570 overall damage (2h bonus included)
Let's have a look how things change when I enhance the weapon with Tenebrium damage.
250-300 normal damage
50-80 elemental damage
50-80 Tenebrium damage
=350-460 overall damage (without any bonus)
With Tenebrium my 5 points in 2h are worthless. Let's compare it with my new starting points in Tenebrium: 1 point which is worth 10% of additional damage
=385-506 overall damage (with Tenebrium bonus)
As you can see a weapon enchanted with Tenebrium and a low skill in Tenebrium is far less worth than a normal weapon with a high skill in 2h.
You need at least 3 points in Tenebrium to get a more useful weapon, so you need to invest 5 ability points in Tenebrium to even come to the same damage level. But at the same point the 15 points you've invested in 2h become completely worthless. There is imo no justification for that. No skill should become worthless, especially not if it's not properly explained and transparent. The whole Tenebrium damage bonus is imo pretty unnecessary in general. It adds nothing to the game. A Tenebrium trait which just grants you the ability to use Tenebrium would imo make much more sense. The rest could be done by Tenebrium crafting and normal weapon skills like 2h.
