The trees are very disjointed in some cases - the gifts can stay but the progression needs to make logical sense. If that means making more, smaller trees, or fewer, larger trees for some clades then that's what should be done. It does feel like a monumental waste and effectively gives a gift twice the cost as the precursor is something you have no intention of using in your build.
Gifts are still missing meaningful descriptions as well which makes value judgments impossible. Knockback resistance? Well if I don't know how much I can't weigh that decision against other gifts.
Other ways to do it would be to change the tiers into x points required, so you are free to choose from any of the first tier gifts to unlock second tier, and subsequently third tier. Complete freedom to choose the gifts you like.
This would inevitably result in certain 'Junk' gifts which are the least useful always being avoided but assuming gift selections are monitored would give perfect metrics to feed back to the balance/development pipeline to make these less useless.
It's not all about utility either; if you want to allocate them based upon character/racial theme (I'm looking at you human temperate resistances and forcing pilfering to become better at magic) this becomes impossible with the current structures.
This has all been said before though so enough pearls for now.
