...with the following 3 goals in mind:

1) Keep it console-friendly, as that change is inevitable, and any changes to the game have to be made within that environment.

2) Avoid the cycle of nerf-and-buff as much as possible. Those may be inevitable, but are never fun.

3) Keep things fun, which means *more* variety, *more* ways to play, never ever less.

This is what I came up with:

We have passives, which apply in a sort of hap-hazard fashion to all skills in a tree (and sometimes outside the skill tree, which is odd and can create game-breaking synergies). We also have a handful of buff skills that take up active slots. Some are great, some aren't so great. What they all have in common is that right now they all lock down a button. That's one less button to be used strategically. You can sometimes stack enough buffs so that you're quite powerful (for example, Sorceror with 2 pets, Bound Armor, and Magelight)...and your gameplay is reduced to hitting one button. That's not very exciting.

So, how about introducing some extra slots purely for some of these buff/passives? This way applying buffs doesn't remove an action button, therefore doesn't restrict gameplay. Take abilities like Molten Weapons, Bound Armor, Haste (I'm not very familiar with NB skills, this may not be an appropriate change), and Restoring Aura off the bar, put them in slots. If you use a menu to apply these skills to slots and not buttons, it's still very console friendly. This could even open up the opportunity for pets outside the Sorceror class.

My thinking is that this system would also open up alternative methods for fixing balance. There could be buff/skills that augment weapon use, or increase stamina regeneration. A player could choose to mini-max in traditional MMO fashion, by applying all damage/healing/survival buffs, or take more balanced options. There could even be slotted skills valuable primarily for both small group and raid play. The mini-maxing and group buff approach would be what end-game content and pvp players use, balance most likely for solo play, questers, and pvp.

So that's what I've got. It would increase variety, increase complexity, and hopefully increase fun. It would also create more opportunity for minor tweaks rather than gameplay-changing nerfs.

I don't know what the process is for getting a recommendation like this to a Dev's attention, but if this sounds good to you, I would appreciate if you'd hit "Agree" or "Insight," or "Awesome." That has to do something, right? Thanks.