The talent "Surplus Cooldown" only takes effect after players have enough trinkets to have over 50% cooldown reduction. "Set Bonus" is still luck-based but can impact early players, switching those two talents would smooth out talent progression.

There are also two T1 talents that change gold find (by gold mission and by gold from standard chests). I don't personally find either of those worth investment, but newer players might like a T2 talent that improves gold find. A monster spawn might be good as well (one suggested 'Come at Me, Bro'), which might fit T4. A few players have suggested a talent that auto-collects drops (at least gold), but my understanding is that responses range from "will never happen" to "maybe on a future event crusader" with others concerned that such a crusader might become viewed as a Mandatory Formation Character.

On a related note, I find it strange that EP missions do not display the EP of all crusaders. Only on EP missions requiring a minimum of EP. As EP is what we are attempting to improve and many players have a focus on bringing crusaders above 200, showing us at a glance would be a nice but small change.

But it would be so much nicer if the EP always showed like it does on EP-requiring missions - because going down the line and waiting for the pop-up on potentially dozens of portraits time and again is really quite boring.

Seems like this would be an easy change - keep the pop-up for when you really need the reminder for who they share a seat with, but put the EP on the portait.

In fact, maybe all crusader portraits should have EP locked at the top, even if it's not an EP mission. That would allow us to more swiftly send crusaders who aren't in the top bracket for more EP to gold missions or the like.

More on the original thread topic, a few players suggested a new talent to jam into the active tree: speeds up monster spawn in proportion to overkill damage done (possibly for a number of areas based on the level of the talent). This would also help speed up those earliest tedious areas without ruining the balance down the line or making Paaarfection impossible. By making it linked to overkill damage instead of just area or talent level, it helps maintain a dynamic sense and also allows them to slow down when the player doesn't want or need that many monsters. That would help race through the first X hundred areas (I hear lots of complaints about cycling through the first 300). Or such a talent could go into the rumoured T4.

Speed Runner, Endurance Training, Storm's Building, Every Last Cent, and Extra Training could have more levels. If the design team think just increasing the limit might pose problems, the cap on those talents could be set by the maximum tier talents unlocked - so Every Last Cent could still stop at 20 for a T1 player, but might have 30 or 50 for a T2 player.

I like the short ep missions and making a talent that makes "missions" in general shorter I dont like.