So well, after now having come back and played for a while, I must say, I kinda dislike alot of things with todays UO.
One of them being the skill templates....
I'm sorry if this is just one of thousand rants that you probably already seen, but it just HAS to come out.
Allright, here goes...

1) Chivalry is seriously overpowered. I mean comon. I wasnt planning on including it on my warrior, but my guildmate convinced me. And I must say, I'm glad I did include it. I have it capped at 60, yes just 60, and it's bloody godlike. Skills like Consecrate weapon, SJ, Cure/Clouse Wounds and Enemy of one are just insane for any PVM charachter. And at later lvl you even have a AOE ressurect/heal spell.
I mean, the damage bonuses and the ability of using SJ and some extra healing are so huge that, basicly, if you want to get as good as possible, Chiv is a bigger must than anything.

2) Bushido is nice, though somewhat shallow but it's totally ok. I like that they included the whole Honor Virtue into it - Gives it a good feel.
However, it feels very shallow, and doesn't have any secondary compliment skill, just like Chivalry. Basicly, its just uber. And Bushido doesnt ever require Regs or tithing points. Like I said, shallow, and almost a no brainer just as well as Chivalry.

These 2 are imo problems of todays warrrior templates... I mean I'm on Europe and almost everyone, I mean eeeeeveryone uses Chiv/Bushi combo.
I don't know how things are going as far as producing new publishes but imo both Chivalry and Bushido need a change, it shouldn't be viable to include them both in a template.
It's just silly cookie-cutting - Get some decent armor, weapon skills + bushi/chiv, a nice weapon preferbly slayer weapon, and then go on using consecrate weapon + enemy of one and it's all.... LOL. I was hunting and killing dragons with ease with just enemy of one and some halfarsed items when I was at ~80ish mace fighting.
I mean, Dragons, cmon?

When I played UO Renaissance etc it was suicide to go up against a dragon all alone at that skill level IIRC. Now I just run and completely TANK a dragon with a warrior with 80 mace skill, 60 chiv and around 80 bushi.
They should make Focus much more important, or simply nerf the mana regen items or something, because these templates are seriously overpowered IMO... They just outshine all other options you have to go with.

/End of rant.
And sorry if you have seen this a thousand times already. I really am.

It seems that there might be a post or two talking about the imbalance of skills. Hopefully they will be addressed in the future .

Vepl

The dev team at the Chicago town hall meeting stated that they plan to address a lot of balance issues, partly with the release of Stygian Abyss and partly as their first major project following SA's release.

(If that gives you any hope!)

Well yes, it does. I really hope they will work on something that stops all the cross-skill templates. I mean... a necro/chiv/bushi fencer or whatever is just, wrong

ALthough a MUCH debated topic, I enjoyed reading your post. Well said!

VERY GOOD TOPIC AND YES SOME SKILLS ARE A LITTLE OFF BALANCE

Well I kill that type of char easy just how you do so....


every char has a thorn