Right now, most builds have a choice between like 2% more speed and damage from 5+ points in Weapon Master, or 8%+ more damage from more strength+power strike/~20% more HP from Ironflesh/Riding skill to ride the best horses/etc. Weapon master is too crappy of a skill compared to all other skills/stats (at least for dedicated builds).
I think the leading proposal is to remove "free" wpf from leveling, replace it with wpf from the agility stat, coupled with making Weapon Master more rewarding to spec. This simultaneously makes agility and weapon master more effective.
There are lvl 33+ guys running around with builds like 30/18, all their points in PS+athletics, with a +3 longsword/HBS or similar and loomed medium armor. They are top-tier in damage, speed, and survivability, with nearly no compromises. The balanced/agility builds with weapon master should be a viable option compared to these juggernaughts, and a wpf rework is the best way to make this happen.
Still don't see the point.
First off, right now you have people with high PS not just cuz they don't have WM but cuz everyone is running around in 55-70 loomed armor. I have 8 PS which is high for a shielder, not cuz I'm trying to min-max but because I need that PS to actually hurt these armoured people with a slash damage weapon (even a high one with 38c), let alone in strat battles where armor is usually over 70.
So what's going to be done about armor? Nerf PS-STR builds and high loomed armor just gets indirectly buffed.
Second, take a look at the most dangerous players around. They all know animation breaking tricks, all the best 2h can do this animation breaking double hilt slash thing, polearms can do this point blank animation breaking stab where they bring it up quick then down, and shielders have animation breaking turns also. None of this is dependent on WPF, they could have zero and still do this. Compared to this speed from broken animation tricks, even 200 wpf is a marginal improvement.
Third, WM is already balanced: It's a specialty skill for people either trying to get 180+ wpf for certain weapons where it actually is marginally effective (super slow ones like long maul or arbalast, or super fast ones for a marginal boost to ultimate spam) and for hybrids. If you have multiple melee, or melee + range, you need to sacrifice some points for WM. Seems fair to me. The mistake is people think you need WM otherwise, or need WPF past like 110-120.
So again, I don't see the point, or the point is based on faulty calculations and will lead to unintended consequences: PS is currently to counter high armor, nerf it and you buff armor. If I have to drop from 24-15 to 18-18 to get more WM, well goodbye to cut weapons I guess I will have to use a steel pick instead to open up 65 armor people in reasonable time. Also the fastest meleers don't use WPF anyway, they use turns and the engine's bad animations.
Now the devs are smart guys and I don't think they'd just patch in a mess of a rebalance, but taking this on seems like a more effort than it's worth and won't accomplish anything except to mollify some weirdoes here who have an obsession with having their gimmick 12-27 ninja builds perfectly "fairly balanced" with everyone else.
