With the recent talks about balance of regearing Mages and Fighters and stamina and mana regen nerfs, it got me thinking about the barrier of entry for each of the archetypes. I will admit that without the whole picture of what's going on behind the scenes I am only working with part of the information but I digress. There are 4 dedicated main archetypes in mortal online defined by the primary point system; Fighter, Archer, Mage, and Tamer. (I understand that there is mounted but I view mount more as a template that is added to one of the others rather than its own Archetype)
The Average Primary point requirements are as follows; (Mounted is included to cover all bases)
| Fighter 10 | Archer 11 | Mage 9 | Tamer 12 | Mounted 7 |
| Blocking | Defend stance | Vitalism | Defensive stance | Balance |
| Defend stance | Sprinting | Meditation | Sprinting | Controlled Riding |
| Offensive stance | Armor training | Mental training | Armor training | Mounted attacking |
| Sprinting | Combat maneuvering | Mental offense | Combat maneuvering | Animal care |
| Armor training | Endurance | Defensive stance | Endurance | Taming |
| Heavy armor training | Anatomy | Sprinting | Animal Care | Veterinary |
| Combat maneuvering | Archery | Magic schools | Taming | Creature control |
| Endurance | Aiming Technique | Chosen School(s) of Magic | Veterinary | |
| Anatomy | Controlled Aim | Combat maneuvering | Creature control | |
| Weapon School | Marksmanship | | Advanced Creature Control | |
| Weapon school | | Beast influence | |
| | | Beast mastery | |
These are the primaries that are required to get a specific archetype up to base effectiveness, The first thing I want to point out and my first suggestion is that primaries that are required by virtually every build should be changed to secondary skills or altered in a way to make them unique to the archetype, specifically sprinting and defensive stance. I am of the opinion that primaries should be definition build defining instead of a build tax I would go as far as to say the same thing for skills like endurance, blocking, balance and anatomy. That would open every single build up and allow development go into skills that people are excited to take instead of build taxes. Until the primary point system is first either equalized in balanced in a way that seems fair as a whole, all other balance changes are just going to compound the issues of balance players have. People hate when their characters are nerfed or in some cases like the paladin build effectively erased and it feels bad when changes were put into the game that seem to make the game worse adding a pearl to earthquake reagents that I'm not even sure is in the game without added its ability to knock people from their horses, but I truly believe that one of the best ways to implement balance changes is altering the primary point system to add to the game instead of take away from it.
Instead of having armor training being a primary make it a secondary skill then in addition to heavy armor training in that skill tree you could have an alternative primary that helps armor wearing paladins regen better. Instead of every foot build being taxed points on sprinting or combat maneuvering make them secondary skills and add primaries to further define builds like adding a primary or two under each of the weapon class trees that increase max damage with those weapons. The point I'm trying to make is change build tax skills and add build defining skills to balance the game in a more organic and less intrusive way.
