About the change to Tenebrium...
THE CHANGE
I tested it out. What it does, for those who aren't sure yet is that now Tenebrium skill adds no damage to your weapon. It only allows you to equip higher quality Tenebrium items. Only the one-handed/two-handed/bow/crossbow abilities add damage.
Bonus damage formulas have also been changed: Now weapons with magic damage (except staves) do most of their damage as normal type, with 30% added on as elemental. Tenebrium is also added on as 30 percent.
THE PROBLEM
But the percentage of Tenebrium damage added stays at 30%, regardless of how much Tenebrium ability you need to equip the thing.
An argument could be made that you are getting the equivalent of an Rank 3 added-damage Tenebrium ability with only rank 1... but I'm not sure that's a great argument. I suspect that the percentage of Tenebrium damage will stay at 30% even for items requiring Ten. 4 or Ten. 5.
Because the percentage of Tenebrium damage you get does not scale with the ability points required to use the weapon, that means that no one has any incentive to put points into Tenebrium past Rank 3, because you're now getting 30% damage when you would ordinarily be getting 40% or 50%. Since the percentage of damage is 30% for all added damage, elemental or otherwise, and since only points in the base weapon type boosts damage, you are better off sticking with a non-Tenebrium magical weapon.
You are not "getting your money's worth" for those ability points.
Having to invest points into two different abilities has the feel of an ability tax, and it will discourage people from using Tenebrium weapons, especially the more powerful ones.
Having Tenebrium replace your weapon mastery was not great, but changing Tenebrium to no longer have an effect other than being able to wield stuff has the side effect of annoying players who had been used to the pre-v251 versions where only Tenebrium mattered. Now some of them have spent a bunch of ability points on something that is only a tax.
A WRONG DIRECTION
Larian, you've been going the wrong way with Tenebrium Handling from the beginning. In the alpha, people pointed out that the Tenebrium skill seemed to be a weapon-type skill, and asked what that would mean for people who put points into other weapon skills. Unfortunately, you (Larian) quietly removed the Tenebrium skill from the alpha because it was semi-spoilerish without mentioning how it was going to be used, so people were unable to give feedback on the way you were going to implement it.
I suspect that you've probably had Tenebrium (or Black Rock, or whatever other names it was earlier) as a weapon ability in your design docs for so long during development that changing it after the kickstarter never occurred to you. That's natural.
But the Kickstarter added new tools to your toolbox. Specifically, Talents.
SUGGESTION
I think that Tenebrium Handling should have been implemented as a TALENT, not an ability. After completing the certain quest or reading the certain book, you are automatically granted the free "Tenebrium Handling" Talent. Description: "Lets you safely handle Tenebrium without getting the Rot."
What I would do in a patch would be to add Tenebrium Handling as a Talent, granted by the quest and the book. Then remove it as an Ability (and remove the affix so it no longer appears on magical items), and refund players back the amount of ability points spent on Tenebrium (minus the first, free one) so they can spend those ability points elsewhere.
I'm pretty sure that isn't going to happen, though.
What are everyone else's thoughts on Tenebrium in v251?
Last edited by Stabbey; 01/02/15 08:35 PM. Reason: typo
