It has now been brought to my attention that Paul wants a general consensus of "yes" from muters (not necessarily high ones) in order to implement this suggestion:
1) Anyone will be able to use essences to reroll items
2) Rerolling items using essences will be instant
3) Rerolling items will no longer grant transmuting proficiency
4) Suffusencing effects and rewards will be buffed to compensate for increased essence prices
Paul asking for a consensus suggests there is a high likelihood that he will be willing to make this change for us, if we do want it. So, it seems to me, that now is not the time to take this decision lightly as this will change the game significantly if implemented.
So, if you are a transmuter, please vote Yes or No in this poll, and let's let Paul know if we want this
His quotes from the original topic are below:
Quote (njaguar @ May 30 2018 09:53am)
This is an interesting idea. If all of the top muters to agree to this, I'll consider it, but note that it will make it that much harder to catch them since you're effectively halving the progress in this skill by removing half of it.
Quote (njaguar @ May 30 2018 11:28am)
It wouldn't work like that. It'd be an instant transmute once you use essence + item.
Quote (njaguar @ May 30 2018 12:23pm)
Would have to buff the effects and rewards of suffusencing to compensate for the increased value of essences, for sure. It would definitely not be a "simple" change, since it creates a cascading effect on other stuff.
Background on what this change would mean
My original suggestion was to change the transmuting skill so that anyone could use the essences created by transmuting to reroll items. Paul indicated that this would lead to two additional changes (if this suggestion were implemented, Paul would make rerolling items instant and players would no longer gain transmuting proficiency from rerolling items), and indicated also that suffusencing would be buffed to compensate for the increased essence value. One side-effect of this would be that prof gains would be halved because transmuters would no longer be able to gain proficiency from the new, instant rerolling portion of the skill (the only way to gain proficiency in transmuting would be through deconstructing items into essences).