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Our group Nethermancer and Elementalist (myself!) are getting close to the 8th circle and this triggered a discussion on the usefulness of the mandatory Hold Thread talent.

Question: Have you ever seen this talent used in one of your game?

We didn't find any situation in our games where access to it would have been helpful.

Using an Enhanced Matrix for "Thread: 1" spells cover the basic use case of Hold Thread, without the cost in strain or a circle 8 talent;

If you want to maximize the duration of a spell in a battle:

• Casting it early and adding a duration thread to a spell would compensate for the lost duration due to the early casting;

• Re-Casting the spell while you wait would also help;

• Or just not caring to cast the spell earlier, a duration of only "ranks round" is still 8 rounds at circle 8.

If you want some type of surprise effect, you can synchronize your round of thread-weaving so it coincide with the other party members actions. (It's only 1 thread after all, if you can't complete 1 thread with a step of at least 15 in thread weaving and a karma dice, you are not lucky!)

A second question:

Did any of you house ruled this to change Hold Thread for another talent? Maybe a talent from the Journeyman talent options list?

For Nethermancer and Elementalist banish would seem an appropriate choice. It blocks you from getting banish at circle 5,6 or 7 but this seems a small price to pay to avoid Hold Thread.

A replacement for Illusionist and Wizard is less obvious maybe : Tenacious Weave / True Sight ?

Third question: Did the developers for 4th edition ever commented why the left Hold Thread the way it is?

In standard combat, not necessarily all that useful. All I could think of that wouldn't be equivalent to the other uses you mentioned is a niche situation where someone's pulling a move-attack-move style action such as a swoop attack. If you need to hit them with a short range or touch spell Hold Thread could allow you to do it.

In RP situations it lets you jump right to casting a spell with up to 2 threads (if it's from an enhanced matrix). How useful that is really depends on the situation and the spell.

new guy here. but this one i know

it's for when you don't know when you're going to want to be ready to cast the spell, but you know (or expect) it will be soon.

like "when the cadavermen walk onto the narrow bridge" or "if the bandits don't surrender (before you run out of duration on the talent)". without the talent, you've got at least one turn where you don't have your threads woven in between each cast, and that's if you weave the thread(s) in one action every time; if the event you're waiting for happens at a time not of your choosing, that leaves you with a 50/50 (or worse) chance of being ready when the trigger occurs. not ideal. having hold thread at, say, 10 ranks, means you have only one in eleven chance of that happening if you can weave in a single turn.

obviously not as important for buff spells that you'll be casting from hiding on hidden friends, but i'm sure you can appreciate that a two thread fireball (that won't hit your friends when they charge in) is quite substantially different from a one thread fireball

(or, in the case of a nethermancer, a two thread chilling circle where one of the threads can be to increase radius, which you save until the enemies get near you, or being able to use friendly darkness instead of ethereal darkness, either of which would generally make the fact that something odd is going on pretty obvious).

This way your standard matrizes become enhanced matrizes as well, just that you receive strain, so you still need some tactical thoughts.
Or as already mentioned: You can prepare 2 thread spells / have an addition thread.

But yes, I know what you mean, it isn't the talent I'm looking for to get either.