[Rendar]

I'll make a few points here to what you've said Daisuke. Mages are Versatile casters, that's true. They kind of have to be due to lolloadsofresistances.

But... that doesn't really make -much- sense that you have to have tons of will < Which isn't even magical prowess or intellect >. It's a random stat describing your 'spirit' to a degree. MG's scale .horribly. with WILL, and, let me remind you, they will almost never, ever, have enough WILL to hold their shells properly. They aren't even the "NUKE" promo of archer. Arbalests technically are, and Arbalests suck ass because guns > bows in pretty much every manner right now.

Monk scales 2 skills off of WIL. Know what most of its other skills scale on? STR or CEL. They have no WIL growth to be spoken of, so its best to use that 'branch' if you can call 2 skills a branch, of monk, as a magic user maining monk for MOAR movement+MOAR RESIST.

Verglas has piddly will growth, its 3 skills that scale off of WIL are a 9 momentum skill < set up included >, spikes of doom, and expanding lag. Unless you have about 50 will, these won't be useful, and you won't be able to equip enough skills to properly chain verglas together on its own.

BK has 2 things that scale off of WIL, their Prophylaxis and Sudden Death. Both skills that are .key. to a BK's defense and offense.

Ghost has... two or three skills now that scale off of WIL, but most of them just outright suck. Ghost in general is ech unless you're a sword user.

People take the offensive skills in Kensei? I've taken only the support ones and like absolute fear and been A-okay.

VA will try to take the winds and run behind you. I'm really not sure what you were trying to get with this section.

BK's don't want to be able to 'hit elemental weakness' or 'scale with every stat'. They want to be able to use their skills properly and actually have survivability in a fight against a dodger whenever they use a god damn axe. Ghosts want better skills, and the ability to hold all of these skills. Kensei are good. VA's are ew. They don't .want. to scale off of WIL, yet the game forces skills of theirs to scale off of WIL, which is a stat they don't grow in.

Why not use SKILL/20 or WIL/10 for your skill slots. It literally doesnt harm mages and gives < most > melee people 2-3 extra slots. Those 2-3 extra slots fix this entire problem.

[Daisuke]

Will still improves their damage and it gives them defense on top of more slots to hold their shells which they do just fine. I'd actually say they have more problems with SP than they do with shells.

And you're generally missing the point of what I was saying because of most of what you said just goes into what I said.
Whether or not they need 1 or 2 different skill slots, I don't really care about that. What I was addressing is Grandpa's constant point about how mages "get everything" and other classes don't. Other classes don't need "everything" because that's not what their concept is about. The classes that have variety promote will scaling and make it so the stat isn't wasted on them. The ones that don't have variety or scale with will don't need it.
(Also, Prophylaxis and Sudden death are FAAAR from key to a BK's offense and defense. Let's not even pretend they're that useful. They also indirectly scale with defense more than anything, will just raises the threshold)

As it stands right now, every single melee class can function just fine with the amount of skill slots they have right now and there's no real issue with it. Like you guys are seriously acting like you can't equip all of the skills you need. I've got a level 42 Arb BK with 10 skill slots and I'll be getting more as I level. Considering the class combo, that's about as low as you'll get with skill slots. With those 10 I get all of the main arb skills that I'll actually use, steel mind, stalemate, and prophylaxis because I've got nothing better to get. Everything after that is just a bonus and pushes sub class further down the road of not actually being a subclass and just being a 2nd main class.

[Rendar]

Proph and Sudden Death are a good key in their offense against dodgers for the extra hit/damage but aight.

As for what you said. I can see your point now.

I'm not gonna say that I wouldn't .kill. for like. One extra skill slot, but I do have enough of my repertoire that I'm pretty good.

[Suspicious]

I suggest to reduce overall skill slot availability to mages in particular. As a melee, I never have enough slots to get everything that I want, such as Steel Blood and a few other BK moves... and that's alright. I don't think I should have every single option available to me right before a fight, and without building specifically for it, will never have that many options.

Mages should have to make the same choices melees have to make when they decide to go into a fight, and if they choose poorly, they should be punished (but of course, not entirely, since smaller resource allotment = take into account multiple scenarios and be at least able to contribute to each; the player base will figure that out).

That being said, this will also encourage people to fill their weaknesses through other means, such as tending toward more 'hybrid' builds that are more generalized (defense and offense both), foregoing passives for more active combat options, or fighting and hunting in groups to have someone else who can cover the weakness they create by making themselves strong in another category. This helps balance and encourages teamwork and innovation, and I think will improve the SL2 experience as a whole.

[Daisuke]

Mages generally make that choice with their allocation of skillpoints.
After you finish grabbing most of the useful evoker passives, you're can only pick like 3 maxed out spells a 4th spell with a few points in it. If you intended on clearing dungeons, I can guarantee two of those spells will be Sear and Magaisendo with the 3rd spell most likely being Overload for PVP situations. That's usually how it is if you aren't following a specific character theme.
And evoker can grab a bunch of skill to have some elemental diversity but then they sacrifice someone of their damage potential because they didn't max out some passives.
LBs has more freedom but they don't have charge mind like Evoker and their abilities have status effects tied into them so it's important for an LB to actually be able to use their most of their abilities. It's kinda lame to have supportish mage class not be able to use most of their abilities and just walk around with phoenix, altera, and typhur cuz meta.
Summoners don't even care about skill slots so this won't mess with them.

It won't really encourage anything since hybrid building means sacrificing a lot in your main stat to get "okay" growths in other stats on top of using classes you wouldn't normally be touching just for the growths. No one is going to go through that trouble for what's basically a dice roll that has a good chance of going bad just because they lost some skillslots. If you want to encourage teamwork and innovation, this isn't the place to start.