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[tokumboh]

I have gone through a number of build looking at the skill tree and having enough XP/GXP/C bills it is fun to trial thing but the reality is that at some poiint I am going to have to grind some new XP GXP and C bills. So how do I make my choice after having a evening (2hr ) of grind

Looking at my historical stats I would get about 13200 XP 1320 GXP and 1.5M Cbills for two hours grind.

What would I spend it on I asked and then it dawned on me the choice that you are making will chain as you move through the tree for example taking on a

Well I tried to come up with a plan for my AC-PRIME

Well there are strategies I could go for:
1. I could spread the points understanding what I needed such that each was raised incrementally
2. I could binge on what I think is most important at the time
3. I could pick such that I can make thing more flexible until I have a clue as to what I want tout of the mech

Now I have Skill Tree for several mechs but I chose the ACH-PRIME(C)
Now I know where I want to be so it is easy for me to pursue 3a so here is my choices

For ACH I have the standard build small laser build, and I would push mobility over everything else at the start but basically it comes down to 4 things on that tree kinetic burst, hard brake, anchor turn and speed tweak, you are not going to be torso twisting damage away if you can help it and if you did you'd not be lasting very long in a light you'd go go with speed and information is life so

To get 5% KB and 5% HB take 3 SPs

I would also like to be able to scout better so that means have a better radar and also better target acquisition so I reckon I dip into the sensor tree and take 14% SR and 7% TIG 3 SP

Then it get tricky I would then actually go for an extra consumable slot so I can have a UAV, coolshot and ARTY and then for the UAV I would hit the duration since this would bank me more C bills for detection and if there are LRM boats I get C bills for the damage so on a good match they can almost pay for themselves. The coolshot help when I brawling other lights or need to keep the DPS going so I spend 3 SP on miscellaneous

Now the problem is that for a light you are going to have to give up something so looking at the Armour and operations trees to get to cool run and heat containment and the armour buffs is really expensive at 3 SP each to hit the first in each tree and if you want to have any improvement in weapons laser duration coming down some you still end up spending 3 skill points so essentially I chose 2 of the three to put 3 SP into

I also take the first JJ skill as again improving heat whist try to escape is again important

Now when I take the match out yes the sensor range is good but there is nothing overwhelming and indeed when I take out a fully mastered design I feel again not much overwhelming over an unmastered mech and yet I have had to make many choices and quite a bit of testing for what can be described as not much gain. Now if you were a new player the choice and the trade offs are daunting.

I feel that concentration on the Skill Tree is being used to as a mask to change the game fundamentals.

I think PGI is trying to increase TTK so they are generally nerfing the heat containment and cooldowns on weapons to generally nerf, They are using the skill the power of Clan weapons versus IS (Clan weapons are already hotter and their cooldown quirks in the Skill tree are less)

I feel the discussion about the skill tree is basically a discussion about the minutiae of the game rather than the overall fundamentals. The fundamentals of the game favour boating weapons over mixed builds unless the mixed builds have synergy.

for example BSW-X1 with 4MG 3SRM4+A and ERLLor LPL and a XL280+ engine works well as a brawler but in fairness it is not seen as the meta skill tree or no skill tree and indeed it does not take away from the fact that most maps favour Gauss/PPC and ER LL builds with the ERLL build still having enough DPS to brawl once the short range builds have been attrited enough

Now I am not sure that the skill tree promotes anything at all and for some people it creates a frustration that we are spending huge effrot and resource on parts of the game that I perceive to be less broken than for example the maps which seem overwhelmingly to favour long range builds and game mode which have less strategic intent and one game mode that fails to attract enough players to make it viable now fixing those things would make more sense to me and I am not sure that this never ending quest for the holy grail of 'balance' is getting anywhere at all