I am going to list here a lot of skills that I think could be consolidated in order to allow more varied playstyles in the game. These are just my views, and I obviously don't expect everyone to share these same opinions. No particular order, just going down the skill trees. Note that many of the issues found here could be fixed with a 'not fixed' 100 point system, and allowing certain skills to cap at 50. I believe that, for action tree, we need 100 more points overall to vary the builds (+ whatever skill points veteran points give.)
-Animal Care a secondary ability under anatomy when it's added. Otherwise no tamer is going to have the points to heal their pets. And bandaging is overall not a great way to heal, anyway, and requires too many points for a very basic task.
-Herding a secondary under advanced CC. Overall I think herding takes up too many skill points as it is, and herding is essentially a skill that will allow players to have mount + pet, a necessary skill for tamers and even just horse runners.
-Endurance & survival combined. One entire skill tree (100 points) for swimming is just really not great design, and forces swimming into this weird grey area. Additionally with boats in the future, this will ultimately need some change. I would defer everyone's coming argument here and say that if they allowed resistance swimming to be put just under endurance (resistance swimming no longer requires survival), and swimming effected swim speed / stamina / breath, it would be a fine solution too.
-I am in agreeance with the other post here that says all melee combat should be under 1 skill tree, with additional melee buffs in a separate skill line. Since this is not likely to happen, I believe poleaxe skill should be its own skill, or poleaxes requires just axes, and poleswords require just swords or spears. The pole weapons requiring 200 points is quite annoying, and they are nowhere near 100 skill points better than the other weapon types.
-Mental Offense becomes a secondary. This would allow more hybrid type characters. And look, with the new intel curve, we aren't going to see non-intel people using magic anyway. This just allows for more varied builds. I would defer to mental training becoming secondary, and mental focus becoming a primary so that we could choose.
-Archery is eventually going to cost too many points to do anything but be an archer, but I will wait to see what changes are made to the current system.
-Active Regeneration & meditation secondary abilities. Look, no one is going to put skill points into these two abilities. They need to be made secondary. They have no use in combat, and it's simply a mechanic to rest in between fights (mainly PVE). I would also say that passive regen should be made primary with this change, as the points spent in Passive regen are much more useful than the points spent in active regen.
-Alchemical dissolvents & alchemy contraptions should not require Alchemy. This is really the break-even point between being able to make a maxed out refiner. Having these 100 points in Alchemy as a refiner is a total waste, but right now is a necessity.
-Armor crafting, realistically, should not be tiered the way it is, or laminated armor should just be removed. Laminated / Soft armors act the same way (similar stats) and can use the same materials. The laminated tab is just wasteful in order to reach plate armor. Additionally, the 'armor crafting' ability should not take skill points, as it is wasted skill points (in this way, only the actual armor crafting styles cost points, so -100 points needed either way.) Overall, I think that it would be a better system if the armor crafting skill tree was designed in a non-linear approach (can just craft plate) and the different recipes took skill points instead.
-"Boywer" over arching tree should not take skill points, 100 points can be added to Decurve if we really want to get technical.
-Crafting appliances is overall good. The ore extraction appliances tree is overall good. The parent skill here does offer some benefit and is therefore a good use of points. Again, Alchemy contraptions is the ONLY ability here that requires an additional skill tree, even though we could infer that the other utilities here would require some other form expertise (ore extraction appliances requiring basic ore extraction, as an example) and the alchemy parent should be removed.
-Extraction is overall good.
-On material lores, there are two main changes I would make. First of all, I think scales should be dropped to a secondary ability. As posted above, alchemical dissolvent should not require alchemy, as alchemical minerology does not, so remove the parent there. Lastly, silk should be moved to animal materials (because it is from spiders, an animal, just like crepite & anthropod carapace), wool moved to animal materials, and cotton moved to botany. Textiles is a needless waste of skills for the min-max armorcrafters and just for padding. If we want to really pick hairs here, let's make ironsilk/ironwool/plate scales a new primary under "advanced animal materials" so that you need to spend points for VERY high end materials (similar to master alloys), but for the low end materials, too many skill points are currently required.
-Weapon crafting is fine overall. Again, I don't think the 'weapon crafting' parent skill should be a primary as it does not offer anything without an additional skill. Also, axes need to be removed from either BLADES or BLUNT. Axes are currently the only weapon type that require 400 skill points to craft (Weapon crafting + Basic Blades + Blunt Weapons + Handle and Pole), all other weapon types take 300 points total.
-Zoologies overall need a balance down to 50-70 skill points for either taming or butchering. Honestly, my preference here is Zoologies is a primary ability and everything underneath becomes a secondary, with higher end enemies becoming primary skills, but I doubt that happens. At the very least, let's just say Mamallia is a secondary ability now due to everyone needing horses.
And finally, remove secondary stat point required for every ability. Each ability now has 1 stat attributed to it. This way, we can get back to pre-skill point nerf while not having the numbers be inflated due to higher hybrid stats.
-Animal Care a secondary ability under anatomy when it's added. Otherwise no tamer is going to have the points to heal their pets. And bandaging is overall not a great way to heal, anyway, and requires too many points for a very basic task.
-Herding a secondary under advanced CC. Overall I think herding takes up too many skill points as it is, and herding is essentially a skill that will allow players to have mount + pet, a necessary skill for tamers and even just horse runners.
-Endurance & survival combined. One entire skill tree (100 points) for swimming is just really not great design, and forces swimming into this weird grey area. Additionally with boats in the future, this will ultimately need some change. I would defer everyone's coming argument here and say that if they allowed resistance swimming to be put just under endurance (resistance swimming no longer requires survival), and swimming effected swim speed / stamina / breath, it would be a fine solution too.
-I am in agreeance with the other post here that says all melee combat should be under 1 skill tree, with additional melee buffs in a separate skill line. Since this is not likely to happen, I believe poleaxe skill should be its own skill, or poleaxes requires just axes, and poleswords require just swords or spears. The pole weapons requiring 200 points is quite annoying, and they are nowhere near 100 skill points better than the other weapon types.
-Mental Offense becomes a secondary. This would allow more hybrid type characters. And look, with the new intel curve, we aren't going to see non-intel people using magic anyway. This just allows for more varied builds. I would defer to mental training becoming secondary, and mental focus becoming a primary so that we could choose.
-Archery is eventually going to cost too many points to do anything but be an archer, but I will wait to see what changes are made to the current system.
-Active Regeneration & meditation secondary abilities. Look, no one is going to put skill points into these two abilities. They need to be made secondary. They have no use in combat, and it's simply a mechanic to rest in between fights (mainly PVE). I would also say that passive regen should be made primary with this change, as the points spent in Passive regen are much more useful than the points spent in active regen.
-Alchemical dissolvents & alchemy contraptions should not require Alchemy. This is really the break-even point between being able to make a maxed out refiner. Having these 100 points in Alchemy as a refiner is a total waste, but right now is a necessity.
-Armor crafting, realistically, should not be tiered the way it is, or laminated armor should just be removed. Laminated / Soft armors act the same way (similar stats) and can use the same materials. The laminated tab is just wasteful in order to reach plate armor. Additionally, the 'armor crafting' ability should not take skill points, as it is wasted skill points (in this way, only the actual armor crafting styles cost points, so -100 points needed either way.) Overall, I think that it would be a better system if the armor crafting skill tree was designed in a non-linear approach (can just craft plate) and the different recipes took skill points instead.
-"Boywer" over arching tree should not take skill points, 100 points can be added to Decurve if we really want to get technical.
-Crafting appliances is overall good. The ore extraction appliances tree is overall good. The parent skill here does offer some benefit and is therefore a good use of points. Again, Alchemy contraptions is the ONLY ability here that requires an additional skill tree, even though we could infer that the other utilities here would require some other form expertise (ore extraction appliances requiring basic ore extraction, as an example) and the alchemy parent should be removed.
-Extraction is overall good.
-On material lores, there are two main changes I would make. First of all, I think scales should be dropped to a secondary ability. As posted above, alchemical dissolvent should not require alchemy, as alchemical minerology does not, so remove the parent there. Lastly, silk should be moved to animal materials (because it is from spiders, an animal, just like crepite & anthropod carapace), wool moved to animal materials, and cotton moved to botany. Textiles is a needless waste of skills for the min-max armorcrafters and just for padding. If we want to really pick hairs here, let's make ironsilk/ironwool/plate scales a new primary under "advanced animal materials" so that you need to spend points for VERY high end materials (similar to master alloys), but for the low end materials, too many skill points are currently required.
-Weapon crafting is fine overall. Again, I don't think the 'weapon crafting' parent skill should be a primary as it does not offer anything without an additional skill. Also, axes need to be removed from either BLADES or BLUNT. Axes are currently the only weapon type that require 400 skill points to craft (Weapon crafting + Basic Blades + Blunt Weapons + Handle and Pole), all other weapon types take 300 points total.
-Zoologies overall need a balance down to 50-70 skill points for either taming or butchering. Honestly, my preference here is Zoologies is a primary ability and everything underneath becomes a secondary, with higher end enemies becoming primary skills, but I doubt that happens. At the very least, let's just say Mamallia is a secondary ability now due to everyone needing horses.
And finally, remove secondary stat point required for every ability. Each ability now has 1 stat attributed to it. This way, we can get back to pre-skill point nerf while not having the numbers be inflated due to higher hybrid stats.
