Mysticism, Imbuing, and Focus

Currently, both Imbuing and Focus can act as the secondary skill to Mysticism, strengthening its spell duration, damage, or mitigation effects. They buff it equally.  However, Focus also offers the adventuring benefits of up to 12 points of stamina recovery and 6 points of mana regen. In contrast, Imbuing offers no direct adventuring benefits.  You might be wearing armor or wielding a weapon that your character imbued himself, but the effects are static, and any skilled imbuer skill could have done the same to your stuff.

This makes for a pretty obvious choice.  Focus helps the adventurer much more than Imbuing.  The only reason for an adventurer to have it as part of his template is if he had no craftsman on that shard to more naturally carry the Imbuing skill point burden.

I see three options:

1. Do nothing.  Allow Imbuing to continue buffing Mysticism as it does now, with no side benefits.
2. Eliminate the link between Mysticism and Imbuing.  You would need to grandfather existing characters so that this change would not ruin existing templates.
3. Add some adventuring benefits to Imbuing. These would likely focus on Mysticism, just as Tactics focuses on weapon skills, not magic ones.

Here are some possibilities for #3.  I didn't want it to just duplicate what Focus offered, but instead give characters two viable choices. I'm not necessarily proposing all of them at once, but some set of features to add some balance.

1. Imbuing would add Lower Mana Cost to Mysticism spells.  Maybe each 20 points of Imbuing would add 1% to the character's LMC rating.
2. It could add Faster Cast Recovery. Perhaps each 40 points of Imbuing would add 1 to FCR of Mysticism spells.
3. It could add Luck.  One formula could be Imbuing * Mysticism / 100 equals amount luck gained.  A human with 20 JOAT skill in both Mysticism and Imbuing would automatically start with a Luck score of 4 (20*20/100).  An advanced character with maxed Mysticism and Imbuing would have a base of 144 Luck (120*120/100). A human character who chose to max Mysticism but take no Imbuing would have a base score of 24 Luck (20*120/100).
   

Quote: Currently, both Imbuing and Focus can act as the secondary skill to Mysticism, strengthening its spell duration, damage, or mitigation effects. They buff it equally.

Then why change it?

Its the same with Magery, Eval, and Inscription.

You can build your template to suit your play style.

When Stygian Abyss was first released, all the gargoyles were isolated in Ter Mur.  There was no moongate outside the Royal City.  Characters created in Ter Mur had to go kill stuff and work up imbuing to get decent armor and then brave the Abyss to reach the rest of the world.  So at that point in time, it made a lot of sense to have characters that had both mysticism and imbuing.  No houses could be placed until you had sufficient queen loyalty and gold, so there was nowhere other than your backpack and your bank to store things you picked up. Not being human, if you wanted to unravel loot you needed to put on at least a little imbuing skill to do it.

@Pawain, as you probably saw, the first option was, "Do nothing." I don't think that is a bad option at all.  However, if Imbuing did actively buff the character in some manner, the OP mentioned ways it might do that. Note that I have several adventurer characters with crafting-related skills. One such combo is an archer/bowyer and another is swordsman/logger. The first combo offers no adventuring benefit, while the second buffs damage when fighting with axes. So such thematic relationships already exist in game.

@Margrette, I did not know those things about Ter Mur history.  It sounds kind of cool.  When creating a character (at least with the EC) it gives the option of creating the guy on the Ter Mur facet. This is not actually an option any more, yuor character is created in New Haven regardless, but your post explains why Ter Mur was ever an option at all.  That original design of building loyalty and escaping Ter Mur through the Abyss was a good one, IMO.

Problem solved.  You do not need both.  You only need one for the Mysticism support.
Only one will apply.

From https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/skills/mysticism/

Just as magery needs the support skill, evaluate intelligence, mysticism needs the support of a second skill to give effectiveness to the spells. This can be either Focus or Imbuing, when damage spells are cast, if both skills are present, the effectiveness will be determined by whichever of these two skills is the higher.
Focus has two purposes in regards to Mysticism:

• Acts as a damage modifier to Mysticism spells – The higher your Focus, the more damage you do
• Allows you to passively Regenerate Mana (slower than meditation) and Regenerate Stamina. Unlike meditation, focus is unaffected by your choice of armor.

You can put Imbuing on your Crafter after you get your Loyalty points.

I use Meditation and Imbuing for the Mystic support.

I dont understand what you original Point is.