Ultimates that invalidate skill tree upgrade points

[Hyndis]

I've noticed that there are some ultimates that make it so that the points you invest in the skill tree upgrades are completely useless.

This means that depending on what ultimates the player chooses they may be wasting a huge number of skill points. Fully upgrading a tree costs 14 skill points, so this is not a small investment.

Skill tree upgrade points should always be a benefit of some kind. Feeling like you're throwing away skill points isn't great.

Examples of invalidated skill tree upgrade points:

* The medic's drone skill tree gives upgrades to cooldown and damage, but if you use the defensive drone it doesn't shoot, so there's no point in investing in it. If you invest 4 additional points in that skill tree you get only +2 to healing for your defensive drone. (IMO, the medic drone skill tree ought to instead give you more drones so it applies equally to both attack and defense, and so medic can be a pet class.)

* SWAT's ricochet skill tree is pointless if you're taking the infinite ultimate which gives you 100% ricochet chance. If you plan on using the infinite ultimate you should not invest any skill points in the upgrade tree at all, because they're all wasted.

* SWAT's grenade tree includes cooldown bonuses, but there's an ultimate option to make this ability always on and active.

* Tank's fury unleashed ultimate has an option to make it permanent, but 3 out of the 4 skill point upgrades are for duration and cooldown, which don't matter if you're using the permanent ultimate option.

Example of good skill trees:

* Engineer is amazing. Every skill tree upgrade point is good. No matter what you pick you're getting some bang for your buck on your skill points.

* Huntress' skill tree is also great. Again, no wasted points here. Everything you take benefits you regardless of which ultimates you pick.

[anguelwyvern]

wait what ?
your complaining because basicly the last upgrade make the whole "skill" better (permanent)
thus, making the "lower" upgrade (CD reduction) useless ? by spending point in them ? but wait you need to spend point in them to even REACH that "ultimate" upgrade right
i really fail to see why your dissatisfied, with this
like
did you expected the last upgrade to make it worse ?

i fail to understand, really

[Hyndis]

You can unlock the alternate without upgrading the base skill in the upgrade tree. If I remember, the ultimate costs 5 points to unlock while the base skill costs 14 points to fully upgrade. Each point you invest costs more than the last point, but the ultimate is on a separate upgrade tier.

However because the ultimate cancels out the base skill upgrade points you shouldn't even put those upgrades in place.

It takes about 3 full runs to get those 14 skill points to spend in the first place, so its not a small investment of time.

[Lupine Cheshire]

Hyndis is talking about the training, the permanent upgrades you access from the main menu, not the level up during the actual run.

[anguelwyvern]

Originally posted by Lupine Cheshire:

Hyndis is talking about the training, the permanent upgrades you access from the main menu, not the level up during the actual run.

oooooh ok that make sense, yeah i was super confused

[TwisT-Chi]

Originally posted by Hyndis:

* SWAT's ricochet skill tree is pointless if you're taking the infinite ultimate which gives you 100% ricochet chance. If you plan on using the infinite ultimate you should not invest any skill points in the upgrade tree at all, because they're all wasted.

* SWAT's grenade tree includes cooldown bonuses, but there's an ultimate option to make this ability always on and active.

Agree that Medic's training is a waste depending on your evolution. But at least I can rationalize SWAT's upgrades. If you're just starting on with not a lot of training points to spare, drop 5 points in Ricochet's ultimate and take the Infinite upgrade everytime. Going from 25% ricochet to 100% is big.

Later on when you max out SWAT's training, a maxed out RIcochet has 75% chance to bounce and shattering gives your bullets a chance to bleed and injure. Its a legit tradeoff of 100% bounce vs 75% bounce + bleed especially if you have other sources of slashing that can get you 10+ tags. Just dropping 1 point in a maxed Ricochet will already get you 40% bounce. Thats pretty big at the start of a run.

And despite Grenade Trail's "always on" description for bleed grenades, each grenade toss is still on a short cooldown (something like 2s). I haven't tested this but I suspect cooldown reduction makes each grenade toss faster. I personally prefer the domino evolution because it makes for a nice screen clear.

[attackmuffin]

if we take the tank for example i generally take the evolution that makes the skill boost the whole team so its not a waste for me. also wouldn't this also apply to the T1 and T2 weapons as well? once you evolve the weapon the points spent in training are kind of pointless.

however you can also look at it like using training points to help get you to the evolution since the points do help until you max the skill.

[Kalafiorek]

Hi! We didn't want to limit anyone's options by making the Evolutions require leveling the ability to its max on the skill tree, so we've made your choices to be just that - your choice. Please keep in mind, that while some Evolutions make some of the previous bonuses redundant, you still can:

• Not evolve at all (saving level-up options for something else or having bad RNG),
  
• Select an evolution that does still benefit from the node's bonuses,
  
• Have an easier time leveling up and ranking the ability.

We believe these three points still make it worthwhile to have these bonuses. Similar thing goes for weapons - while higher tier options don't benefit from the points spent in the lower tiers, you still benefit from them in almost every single run, because you're still using these weapons before evolving them into their higher tier forms. Please also remember, that there's no stress related to all of this, as you're always free to respec your points spent into each tree, both by taking the points off of each node, or by pressing the point reset button.

[Baka-gaijin]

I agree, a lot of the skill points are useless/invalidated (e.g. all skill points for the first 2 weapon types for each class).

There's no interesting decisions to be made - just save those (which are like half of all skill points) to the end after maxing out everything else. They are very, very low-impact also.

Feels kind of bad.

[Undecim]

I'm so glad I found this discussion - Was literally coming here to ask why would I get the "synergy with Swat" upgrade so my drones have a chance to have their shots ricochet...but the defensive drone is the much better option and gives much more value to the run - but doesn't shoot at all...