Hi guys, hi Wolcen team,

So, I started the game with a distance build in mind. The Mark was already ultra cool and enjoyable to play on the beta and I immediately started to build my character around it. The second day we were playing with a few friends, I was saying "ho ! it would be cool to have an item that procs the mark automatically"... and like, half an hour later, a friend drops "the trial".

So, the item in general is really cool, no balance issue whatsoever when it comes to damage, especially when you're playing distance / rogue.

But seeing everyone willing to find the belt, and putting it on any build seems not balanced at all. Why ?

The Mark is limited to daggers, bows and pistols. It forces you to have at least one of these to use it. It means for any other kind of build where you want to use it, you have to be an hybrid build if you're not playing bow. Which means you will have to make choices between skills and gear to deal enough damage. If the design is good in the first place for The Mark it means that the skill you could use are more or less balanced to work with it.

But since the mark can be proced on hit, it means any kind of build can also benefit from the mark which is an additionnal damage multiplier on top of everything else. It goes directly against the main logic you put in place by limiting the skills to your equipped weapons.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that because my main character is a distance build. I also have a melee and spell build. I'm saying that because when building the other characters I started to think that I should find the trial for them. And I think that is not really good to get to a point where an item is almost mandatory in any build to output more damage.

You could find some other solutions to give the great feeling of spreading explosions and damage throughout a pack of enemy for each type of build, with alternative skills for each weapon. Which would rely on the exact same mechanic of giving a "free skill" on a specific case... for instance :
. Ring A : Casts Tear of Etheliel at your character position when you have spent 150 wisdom / rage
. Ring B : Casts Winter's Grasp when dealing a critical hit ( 1sec CD ) or Casts Winter's Grasp when you've lost a total of 1/6 or your max life.
. Helmet A : Casts Juggernaut every 25secs
.... etc etc...

But "The Trial" should only work with the same limitations as the skill : pistols, bow and dagger. It will encourage people to build more diverse characters and not only rely on the same item over and over again because it is a free bonus skill for any character. Especially if you have diverse items just like above.