[Trenton]

It's called a specialization because you are supposed to specialize in it. Not have a shitton of other spells with it. Call me old fashioned but the costs should be increased more!

[Method T]

It's called a specialization because you are supposed to specialize in it. Not have a shitton of other spells with it. Call me old fashioned but the costs should be increased more!

Yeah, let's make it impossible for someone to use Sand or Metal without being a human using either melee, or another earth specialization.

While you're at it, let's also reduce the hotbar down to 8 spells from 10, because as a specialization, you won't even be able to afford a full hotbar, like the game has always intended.

In-fact, we should further specialize existing trees and limit them to two spells per piece. Metal's two spells shall be Stun 1 and Root 2. Sand's spells shall be Root 1 and Shield Invuln 1. Having any sort of flexibility or interesting spell combinations shouldn't be allowed, because it hurts the playerbase's immersion.

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Your viable build options currently are a combination of Metal or Sand, alongside an earth elemental spec, or any non-elemental specialization. As long as you are fine with never having any hiddens. 

Just as an example of the other three Earth Specializations and their costs alongside Metal/Sand currently, it's like this.
Crystal (180 rpl Human, 200 RPL Racial 8Spells 1 aura), Nature (185 RPL Human, 200 RPL Racial, No Hiddens. 9 Spells 1 aura). Bone (155 RPL Human, 175 RPL Racial. 7 Spells, No Aura.)
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The excuse of 'Specializations should entail exorbitant costs to prevent branching' only really works if the specialization has enough in it to be specialized in. Instead of four spells that are essentially CC and little else.

[Jetniss]

It's called a specialization because you are supposed to specialize in it. Not have a shitton of other spells with it. Call me old fashioned but the costs should be increased more!

Yeah, let's make it impossible for someone to use Sand or Metal without being a human using either melee, or another earth specialization.

This is literally a lot of us as is. Except those of us outside of Earth don't have as many options, utility, cc, and whatever else found in our affinities.

[Teemo]

Metal didn't deserve the hit imo. Sand nerfs were fine, though I would've preferred the nerf to burial on sandstorm instead. It'd just be more fitting since it's the intermediate and is sand's major burst spell, but that doesn't matter much..

Metal is so expensive and needs a good damage source from another tree. Earth alone doesn't have many follow-ups to the cc metal provides. The iron grip -> crushing iron just doesn't do a lot of damage, especially since people will tend to block before crushing iron. A specialization that's essentially a setup tree shouldn't cost 80 for four spells.

[The Friggen Sawbones]

nerfing trees by increasing their rpp cost isn't a great way 2 go about it.

[Detective100]

Sand magic had.... Really great, and easy potential to be used with other trees for devastating, easy to landcombos that could have been used to wreck you in. The increased RPP costs, while perhaps a bit much at certain areas, helps in making people either fully commit to the gimmick, or pick and choose what they want out of sand.

The sand root in particular was the big culprit, due to it being a root AoE that moves with you with a decent duration.

Not sure about metal though. Frankly, didn't have a chance to fight against one.