For these presets, im not sure if i would make these new talents locked or not, but lets say they are selected but changeable. The custom build would certainly be able to change everything.
I'm surprised that you considered suggesting some Talents locked on presets. For player-created characters, nothing should be locked on presets except for maybe the starting weapon. The real issue with presets is Companions, which at the moment, are locked to the defaults of the preset. That's the most important reason why presets need to be improved.
Picture of Health does not require Warfare, however the bonus is 3% HP * Warfare, so with 0 Warfare, it isn't giving a bonus. I am all for improving Talents and adding a bunch of new Talents, but you didn't mention changing Talents, and currently PoH is useless with 0 Warfare.
I agree that the Fighter preset as it is is somewhat crappy, but that's mostly because it has Contamination which is a stupid fit for several reasons. Fortify's description does not say it scales based on INT, so while I understand your position, I think it's okay for the fighter to have Fortify, as it fits their role as a tank. ...Now that I think about it, I wonder if Picture of Health might be better for the Fighter preset Talent than Opportunist (currently like 3 presets start with Opportunist)? Hmmm... well probably not, PoH is not very good without 4+ points into Warfare.
I actually am building all my Rogues with a point into Aerothurge at level 2-3 so they can use other non-INT needing spells like Netherswap, Teleport, and Favourable Wind. (As a bonus, it also boosts Chloroform a bit as well.) It adds quite a lot of flexibility for three memory slots.
Presets in basically every game since the beginning of time are almost all sub optimal. There are a lot of things that need attending to in the game and this particular "problem" is very near the bottom of what I hope they spend their time doing... Not that it's a waste of time, just that they have much bigger fish to fry, so to speak.
It sure matters for single-player, because Companions presets can't be configured, you're stuck with what they default to.
And yes, they do have lots of other more important stuff to do, which is why I'm not happy about the release date being so close.
You're right in that it wouldn't take much effort to make the builds better, but the system is subject to change going forward so even still it would be better to wait until near launch to swing through these reworks.
What? Launch is in three months. There will be only one more patch. It's
literally now or never for changes, because after launch, they can't touch saved games, and thus changes will be limited mostly to bugfixes and overly-unbalanced things. I can't see them changing presets later if they don't do it now.
