I really dont think so. The nonlinear skitarii skill tree lets you branch out in many different ways and you basically have a sliding scale of how much you want of each thing. Its not like your picking between two mid nodes on a normal linear tree, your picking between a big damage buff or a big toughness buff, or sacrificing some damage for team utility or etc. I dont think there will be a META skitarii, there is so much variability with it that what you bring entirely depends on your team and personal preferences.
Meanwhile the other classes are like you pick between the best of 3 options and then you again pick between the best of 3 options. So you basically always have to pick what is the best out of some mid options, leading people to narrowing down on the optimal choices at those points. Meanwhile skitarii just lets you immediatly take whatever you want, at most your spending 4 points to branch out to something even if its on the other side of the tree from the core side of your build.
Meanwhile the other classes are like you pick between the best of 3 options and then you again pick between the best of 3 options.
Can you give me an example of this kind of problematic path branches, other than Vet’s middle line where you choose 5% grenade on kill regen and 25% toughness (and even then, I used revive talent in the past before revive speed buffs and 10% rending on autogun builds). That’s the only instance that I know of where one of the options is completely superior to the other two. Maybe Hive Scum right after the Blitz, nobody really uses Slippery Customer or Regained Posture.
i made a thread earlier about how the skitarii tree is more or less just a 4 branched talent tree with less choice of which talents you want to pick
Raichu posted some excellent statistics in there too
the sole interesting thing it added for me was how you can just pick every damage talent at once if you don’t pick an ability but that doesn’t outweigh bad tree design for me
anyway the main conclusion is that skitarii has like vastly more “required pick” talents for pathing than the other trees actually because it’s not interconnected at all unlike e.g. the psyker tree
My point is not that the nodes you are forced to pick arent decent or sometimes good, its the lack of choice in if you get to pick them or not. Like zealot for one. The entier top of the tree is just toughness nodes, Pick the toughness nodes you want basically, maybe you grab a extra one or two if you want
Like, do you like any of these or are you just picking the ones you think will be the most useful to you. You cant skip these to min max damage if you want, or go for more team utility, no you MUST take at least two toughness nodes immediately before proceeding.
My point isnt that these arent good talents, my point is that you MUST take the talents in the prescribed order, usually being like pick what toughness talent you want, then pick a damage talent and etc. I cant skip picking up a blitz or ability, you pick one. I cant skip toughness nodes you have to take them, etc.
Again, my whole point has been that skitarii is a different type of restrictive. Yes you need to path to things but you have OPTIONS not “pick best of this selection” then repeat like 6 times until you reach the bottom of the tree. Very rarely do you branch out horizontally its always straight down. You pick the best toughness nodes, then the best blitz, then the best aura, then the best ability. Yes there are issues but you actually have choices.
Well 4, depending on if you are counting Until Death and Holy Revenant then that is 6, your forced to take until death and until death is useless without holy revenant. Then you are taking Benediction unless you are running fatmangus and zealous is pretty much useless so that is 7.
Yeah that is what I meant. And just in general I prefer having options over being forced down a linear path. Yes skitarii in a way is 4 paths, but the branching options are actually pretty decent in a lot of places.
Most of those are giving you defense for free as a bonus not being a defense node you have to take to path down a tree. Honestly I definitly prefer certain toughness bonuses being attached to things for free rather then them being obnoxious modifier nodes.
Yeah Slaughter protocol was a mistake there. But the others like, Foe-Render is not a defensive aura, Flensing is basically exclusively for damage, and Hydraulic Impact is for damage.
So you have Voltaic Restoration, Servo Core Recharge, and Threat Detection Imperative. So 3, like I said.
i don’t really get what the point you’re making is. what’s the difference between a “free bonus defense node” you spend a point on and a “defense node you have to take to path” you also spend a point on?
you have to take both to path, right? whats the difference
mind doing the tree again because i’m not following how we end up at 3 only. foe render does give toughness so it’s a toughness node if the zealot aura is. flensing isn’t exclusive damage, it literally gives TDR. i don’t get why those don’t count. and if you don’t pick slaughter protocol then where do you put the point?
I mean, let me put it this way. Is charge a defensive ability? I mean yes the toughness is a nice bonus but your mostly using it to move fast and do a big chunk of damage. Flensing is the same way, you get +15% damage and access to the other nodes that give other big bonuses. Its just they took the modifier node that you would have had to take to get it in a normal tree, and just added it into the ability. Same with Foe-Render.
My overall point is that you have a lot more options. Like for instance
i don’t get how that really addresses the point i’m making.
the point is, zealot makes you pick a toughness generation ability in order to path down. so does skitarii.
you are forced to pick up talents on the way that you might not want, on both. what you said earlier:
this applies to skitarii too.
the same goes for all other kinds of talents. you can’t actually build a skitarii build just doing what you want. you’re forced to pick up one of these talents to get redline capacitors for example
that means you have to pick between one of these paths. you have to take at least 4 talents here that you might not actually want, just to take redline capacitors.
(i skipped doing the rest of the lines but you get it)
where you have to pick at least 3 talents here that you might not actually want, just to take whichever keystone you want.
And this is where the illusion of choice comes in IMO lol. Certainly at higher difficulties, where they become essential. Same with all 4 capacitance nodes which you seem to skip in these layouts. They are truly essential to all builds though
I’m not saying that skitarii is super revolutionary. It could use some work. But it IS better, much more options and variability, a lot more minor tweaks you can do and I see myself constantly adjusting my builds, and hell the class also has 3 equally viable abilities and 3 pretty much equally viable keystones.
eh… the only really unique thing is that you can skip picking an ability and go for noospheric instead. but that’s kind of just down to being possibly bugged and just broken op in the first place. otherwise you’d never skip one of them so the ability to skip them is just not interesting.
otherwise, i’ve been mostly annoyed by how every single little change needs me to make a whole new build save because i can’t just swap out blitz like in the other trees, and the nodes are far less interconnected so you can’t make other minor adjustments either. it’s worse for actually playing the game in that sense
