I had this idea when I was spitballing ideas for a Intelligence and/or focus build with bow. Adding a system to the game where bow and muskets could be crafted or obtained that scaled purely with intelligence or focus for abilities, light, and heavy attacks. instead of arrows or bullets, mana would be used as a “cost” for being able to scale your damage off of intelligence or focus. Cost of light and heavy attacks would have the same mana consumption as life staff, ice gauntlet, and void gauntlet consumption.
Another “cost” for being able to change the scaling of those weapons would be that gem sockets of the “damage changing” type cannot be socketed and must be obtained/crafted to have the elemental type desired. This means that players would need to obtain/craft weapons with the damage types Nature, Ice, Fire, Lightening, or Void in order to have that weapon deal that damage type and cannot have multiple damage types. Perks with chain damage type would still be applicable to the weapon.
For abilities because the weapon is changing the scaling and does not make the player a caster they would probably not need to have a “cost” in order to use those abilities but overall would need damage tweaks since they fall under the magic category.
For crafting the damage type you would need to spend the appropriate gem for the desired damage type in order to change to the element desired. Salvaging these weapons give the same chance of salvaging gems off of weapons with gems in the socket.
Reason why mana consumption for bow and musket are not an issue:
- It would have players play around the weapon and still need to switch weapons for poor mana management.
- Perks like mana siphoning would still return mana on successful light or heavy attacks as well as the perk for killing enemies in return for mana.
- Players currently have multiple tools for increasing mana regen or obtaining mana quickly. EX: Fire staff’s Perks Reheat / spell focus, Life staff’s spirits united, Ice gauntlet’s critical rejuvenation / gathering storm, and Void gauntlet’s harvesting / Draining orb.