For a class so sold on its freedom of choice, it’s awakening is quite restrictive. Not only that, but it also lacks anything from a hybrid, weapon, or vitality build. Do not excuse being bad early game for being better late game. All builds should be viable for every part of the game.
Proposal
First Awakening: Savant’s Autodidact
Copy the card of any first awakening.
Card choices
Mage’s Wisdom
Gain a 2nd magic. +80 skill req.
Warden’s Durability
10% dmg reduction. Vitality savant much wow.
Warrior’s Aura
Same as aura. They can’t use any high quality weapons.
Berserker’s Skill
2nd fighting style. +50 skill req
Warlock’s Focus
Imbue magic on your fighting style.
Conjurer’s Focus
Imbue magic onto your weapons.
Warlord’s Strength
Imbue fighting style onto weapon.
Second Awakening: Savant’s Mimicry
Copy two first awakening cards or one second awakening card. Or just another awakening card from 2nd or first awakenings.
No choices since all 2nd awakenings still undetermined and far away.
Reasoning
Opens up more savant variety. No longer weighted towards late game and 2nd awakening. Allows weapon and vitality savants to be useful early on.
Savant becomes good yay!
For balance, savants still can’t use advanced skills or high quality weapons.
Honestly not sure if this is classed as an illegal balance suggestion or not.
While this would be cool, I feel like this takes away from the specialty of imbuement for the imbuement hybrids when Savants invest less into their respective stats but have the ability to get the same benefits. Savant imbuements for second awakening would be cool, but it’s too early for that.
Additionally, Savants deal the same damage with everything as hybrids do with both their invested stats, so this could lead to interesting metas if implemented.
This actively restricts variety by forcing you to use the build of whatever awakening you copied. The first awakening this doesn’t really feel like “jack of all trades, master of none” as for whatever card you copy you are basically that class but with less stat points into a damage type. For the second awakening I feel like focusing all of your cards into one damage type (such as magic or weapons) will be the meta therefore detracting from the main idea of savant. I also feel like this doesn’t fit with the jack of all trades theme and instead makes Savant a mimic. If you want to keep the mimic theming you could keep the idea to taking someone elses card but let Savant change it at any time, with a cooldown of course. This would be done with a item in your inventory. It’s very strong, but Savant needs some big buffs rn so I think it’s fine.
I think a better Savant change is to swap the first and second awakenings, and slightly nerf the imbuements. So Savant at first awakening would be able to imbue anything into weapons and magic into fighting styles (and whatever imbuements happen for spirit weapons), but the stat changes are nerfed by some % (both the good and bad ones). So a Savant imbuing light would gain less of a speed boost but also less of a damage down. This also has the benefit of immediately telling the player that they should be using all of their kit because they are a Savant. It is a big buff but Savant sucks so I think it’s fine. I may add that skill points in different stats count towards every ability requirement. So a magic stat point counts as 1/4 of every other type, and this works for every skill point. It would help offset the fact that Savant has access to very little abilities.
Second awakening should be buffed to grant both a magic and fighting style and removes the penalty to imbuements, but second awakening is far away and I shouldn’t be discussing it.
Yeah, but then again vitality has nothing in first awakening and it isn’t even a completed class. At least when spirit weapons come out there might be infusions for them.