The issue
In the recent balancing patch, lost knowledge got a heavy nerf in the form of using twice the usual amount of energy on top of having much longer cooldown. Coupling with previous nerfs to the actual effect they have, lost knowledge has been greatly weakened since Full release. This was done primarily to punish people who completely layer their entire moveset in lost knowledge, receiving large stat buffs in exchange for completing a lost chart.
However, this opens up an entirely new problem. Lost knowledge has been made nearly worthless due to these changes, and relatively new players who haven’t had the chance to perfect their builds are far more likely to be turned away from using it after they realize how heavily their moves are being nerfed. They’ll likely feel unrewarded for the time and effort spent in reaching charting level 10, getting and actually completing a lost treasure chart.
Overall, the change likely did achieve its goal, at least somewhat, in making people use lost knowledge in their builds less, but it also took colateral victims in form of everyone who used few for their niche uses, or generally didn’t bother perfecting their build for PvP. This suggestion aims to change that in one of two ways.
Change 1
A very simple and very straightforward change: limit the maximum amount of lost knowledge the player can have on a means of combat via a stat point requirement.
- Magics and fighting styles would have a set upper limit as well as a stat point thresholds for each lost knowledge book to be applied.
For example, 1st magic would have an upper limit of 3 lost knowledge spells, one being unlocked every 100 points in magic. 2nd magics would have the requirement raised by 100 points or so, needing 200 points for the first lost knowledge book to be used. - Weapons and relics would have a set upper limit with stat point thresholds just like magics and fighting styles, but would have another limitation. Skill and rite notes that had lost knowledge applies to them cannot be put on weapons that don’t have a free spot, either due to the threshold being reached, or the user having insufficient stat points.
This would be a rather simple change that’d both prevent overusage of lost knowledge as well as hybrids and especially savants having far more lost knowledge moves than wanted.
Change 2
A more sophisticated and risky change that would in turn force the players to seek new strategies: drawback adds up with each new lost knowledge book and is shared universally across all moves with lost knowledge. This would call for a great reduction in current lost knowledge drawbacks, but would force the players to consider how much lost knowledge they actually need.
- Current cooldown extension is lowered to ~1 second[1] and energy consumption increase to ~1.25[2]. This drawback adds up for all lost knowledge move.
Basically, with just 1 lost knowledge move, the player would get 1 second longer cooldown and use up 1.25x more energy on that move. By adding another lost knowledge to a move of theirs, however, both of those moves would take 2 seconds longer to get off cooldown, and consume 1.5x more energy. Thus, if the player coats both their magics or fighting styles, for example, in lost knowledge, they’ll be facing 16 seconds longer cooldown and an 8x greater energy consumption across all their moves.
The result would be players actually having to think about what moves they want to put lost knowledge on and control how many they have, lest the lost knowledge they spent so long to get becomes more of a hinderance than a reward.
@Meta please consider.