Since a new thread seems like a good opportunity to collect my thoughts, I might as well share my experiment for rearranging the tree to be more flexible. Literally one less node vs the current arrangement yet I think it makes it so much easier to mix and match across the main paths without having to pay 1-2 point taxes everytime you cross over.
They dont have to do it exactly like this, but I think it shows how they dont even need to remove things to make it more flexible, just give people more direct cross branches without tax nodes.
I invite you to try replicating your build with it to see if it it saves you any points, its not much but it saves me 2-4 points which I know I could damn well use.
On the topic of bad arrangement and whether or not to remove ‘useless skill’ bloat, I do think that some of the useless skills would actually be useful if actual thought and care was put into their place in the tree.
The example ive highlighted in the red circles is swapping the 5% grenade regen perk ‘Demolition Team’ with ‘Catch a Breath’. I explained the rationale in more detail in a seperate topic but the TLDR is:
While not as good as the 60s regen perk ‘Demolition Stockpile’, its still better than no regen and could be good as a budget alternative. So where do they put this less effective perk? At the deep end of the tree in a very expensive place to reach, later on in the same path that you find its superior version of course!