I’ll take a look, my only concern then would be ammo efficiency even with the talent and a vet on the team in havoc.
But maybe it’ll be more in favour than vet for special sniping, have to see. I could see arcs possibly bypassing some of the modifiers…
Isn’t restauration pod better view as plus 80 to 120 percent of ammo reserve for a game of 20 to 30 ? it seems fine to me no?
I find some of your choices for “tax nodes” rather puzzling. For example, weakness analysis doctrine & ablative wards are both very good and near universally applicable talents. There are so many incidental dots being spread in normal teams that WAD should have quite high uptime even in non-arc builds. And, if nothing else, ablative wards make pox bursters significantly less dangerous for a laughably negligible downside. I would be extremely happy taking either talent en route to arc grenades on any build. Indeed, I would be happier about taking either of those talents than I would be able taking either of the arc grenades modifier talents.
Slaughter protocol, ablative motion routines, & target-neutralization feedback are also not taxes as they do not effectively gate access to anything. Slaughter protocol literally is not needed to path to any other talent and thus cannot be a tax by any stretch of the imagination. And neither target neutralization feedback or ablative motion routines effectively gate access to the blitz/aura because the alternative talents are highly worthwhile and near universally applicable talents. Instead, these three are merely bad/extremely niche talents, which every class has plenty of.
I wouldn’t call ammo restoration pod a tax either, though I can understand why you choose it. But it only gates access to advanced combat doctrines. Any build taking a ranged only ability should be glad to have the ammo regen. It’s just that the talent is rather unimpressive and perhaps a little weak, much like ACD itself. Similarly to the arc grenades above, I feel significantly more vexed by ACD’s modifiers than anything leading up to it. Regardless, once the ranged part of the skitarii tree gets a little love I doubt most people will see ammo restoration pod as a burden on their build.
Tax nodes should be talents that both gate access to a chosen, valuable part of the tree with no reasonable alternative and have little value to the build in question. Precision combat augurs is a good example that you correctly identified. As it is a generally low value talent that is gating access to a keystone and the alternative talent, superior defense engrams, is not valuable to a large number of builds; i.e. any melee centric build that isn’t taking artificer servo skull. I would go a step further and say that hybrid combat covenant is also something of a tax as well if you want the keystone. As it’s a poor imitation of veteran weapon specialist.
Ablative Wards is a tax if you’re already very good at avoiding damage/corruption and don’t want WAD. WAD is good and yes if you have e.g. psyker it’ll be running non stop, but if you don’t you’re relying on your teammates to apply DoTs if your build doesn’t and also consistently attacking the same enemies as the player on the team applying said DoTs. I’ve absolutely had runs where nobody has DoTs. But like I wrote, it’d be fine where it is if Ablative Wards was moved slightly.
For example, I can’t think of the last time I got hit by a burster explosion before FS made them more buggy with this latest patch. Maybe a burster wave on maelstrom.
On arc grenades the problem is more the subnodes feel like they should be rolled into 1, I agree there. But this is then compounded if you don’t want the talents leading in to them.
Slaughter protocol I didn’t mark as a tax, it’s just weak and the conditional uptime for the increased % is really not needed when it’s weaker than zealot’s equivalent even at best.
Yes I suppose technically Ablative Motor Routines isn’t a tax, it’s just so weak you don’t actually have a real choice there, you take Uncapped Arrestor and that’s that. With Target Neutralization Feedback I disagree, if the 15% damage from the node beside it doesn’t give you new meaningful breakpoints it absolutely means you have a 1 pt tax either way, but you’re right, if the 15% does help you hit a new one in conjunction with other talents it’s really just a matter of having a straight up better choice on the way to grabbing shield (and you can dip to grab Advanced Combat Engram below said better choice).
Restoration pod is a tax or not depending on the ammo efficiency of your weapon. But yes, ACD’s problem imo is it’s just too many nodes for what you get, skitarii’s other ults get away with about a 3 point investment total to unlock their full potential, ACD is 4 for all damage boosts +1-2 for reload speed and toughness gen. Not counting its other issues.
I suppose I consider these tax nodes because they reduce flexibility which FS touted for skitarii. I’m not entirely against forcing a higher point investment for good talents, but it feels like you can get away with very little of that and just take the good stuff on the stronger skitarii builds (chordclaw, electro, etc.) whereas the weaker ones or where the good talent of two isn’t that important to said build.
For example chordclaw and redline have talents that are just universally useful to all builds gating them, arc grenades and the shield don’t despite being the weaker blitzes as they stand.
That’s fair and I missed that one going over the tree. I think if the uptime was longer it might be better in general, I’d suggest they just add a second link as an alternative for this keystone like the others keystones/blitzes that are set up like this, but there’s nothing that’d be a non tax around it at that corner.
My apologies, I didn’t realize you weren’t calling slaughter protocols a tax. Disregard that bit then.
Other than that, I think your criticisms are over focused on the concept of perfect breakpoints and perfect play. When the game is a lot messier in practice. Yes, in the idealized scenario with ideal play you don’t need ablative wards because all corruption is technically avoidable. In actual games that is decidedly not the case. Bursters have been one of the most singularly dangerous, run-ending enemies in the game since launch. And often due to wild, unpredictably buggy behavior. Tox gas & fire are also extremely common in auric and above. Burgle goo corrupts extremely fast and it’s not uncommon for your choices to be goo or death. And in havoc you have to add more of the above plus bloody blight. Ablative wards lets you tank a H40 burster on one wound and positively swim in tox, goo, blight, etc. without being beholden to a beacon zealot. This is a very meaningful survivability boost on a fairly squishy class for just one talent. That’s not a “tax” on any difficulty above malice. It’s a solid, additional defensive option. And one with a non-defensive alternative that is perfectly reasonable in a huge variety of team comps.
Similarly with sureshot cogitator, sustained assault doctrine, and the like. Just because they won’t give you any additional breakpoints into single target testing in the psykhanium doesn’t make that damage useless in real games. There’s a lot of chip damage floating around via AoEs, dots, cleave, whatever. And that extra damage can secure you additional kills to generate you more capacitance. Sureshot is even sitting right next to, and synergizes with, one of the strongest capacitance talents on the class. Even for a weapon like the arc maul, with middling finesse damage and kinda questionable headshot accuracy, this can be pretty damn good.
And of course you still have the option to just come at reactor coil recharge via the ammo max talent if you still really hate sureshot. You can complain about how you don’t need the extra ammo, but speaking as a vet main I’d love for its max ammo talent to be so bloody accessible. And that’s on a class with much better ammo regeneration plus access to guns with generally better ammo efficiency. This sort of options is a good, if small, example of how granular and customizable the tree is. Skitarii buildcraft is way more interesting than any of the traditional trees because of this flexibility. And it’s only going to improve once two of the classes ults get fixed and the non-skull blitzs get some well deserved upgrades.
Because the tree and class do have very real issues. It’s far from perfect. Even once they fix ACDs bugs it’ll still be the most talent point intensive ult in the game by far because the base effect of the ult is not really that great. Arc grenades and especially refraction emitter are clearly worse blitz options than the skull that also cost too many talent points. Even if they’re over hated on and sometimes it makes sense to take them for specific builds. The “balance” between the auras is just as laughable, if not worse, as it is on any other class. If it wasn’t for the extra base toughness I don’t know if I’d bother with any of them 90% of the time. Plus I think some additional links between various talents and branches would be beneficial; if not moving some of the auras/keystones in towards the center a bit. But niggling complaints about “taxed” by reasonable talents is just so much noise and misses the forest for the trees.