List of skills and their diminishing returns?

[burdfishdemon]

This may be a lazy question, but has anyone made a list of skills and what levels they are "worth" leveling to? Or should you max any skill critical to your build, generally?

[Matthew]

I don't know of any list.

Though as a general rule you want your "attack" skills to be maxed (and over-maxed ideally, through gear).

Most passives aren't worth going past the cap, so enough skill points to reach the soft cap while wearing gear.

The list of skills/passives which only need 1 or 2-3 to be effective is rather small and probably wouldn't take too long to write up. Though there are a few.

And obviously if you aren't using a skill or passive at all for your build, it can be safely ignored.

[Heresy]

Originally posted by burdfishdemon:

This may be a lazy question, but has anyone made a list of skills and what levels they are "worth" leveling to? Or should you max any skill critical to your build, generally?

Without actually doing any math and just glancing and generally playing around with a few different builds it seems that their are tiers every 4 levels in skills. idk if this is fact or what but each 4 levels seems to be next step in diminishing returns. So 1-4 is strongest, 4-8 is lesser and 8-12 is even less but i cant confirm this. Just a broad observation.

[Draug]

Originally posted by Heresy:

Without actually doing any math and just glancing and generally playing around with a few different builds it seems that their are tiers every 4 levels in skills. idk if this is fact or what but each 4 levels seems to be next step in diminishing returns. So 1-4 is strongest, 4-8 is lesser and 8-12 is even less but i cant confirm this. Just a broad observation.

From what I've seen, flat attributes on skills tend towards increasing scaling, while % based attributes tend to have decreasing scaling. (Area of Effect scaling is an exception to this flat attribute scaling generalization, as is effect duration ... mostly)

More important to note are the "break points" on skills where either something stops scaling or something important improves. For example, the Nightblade WPS all have a break point at 5, where their chance to activate no longer increases. Not that those skills don't continue to improve, only that when you get them there, it may be a good time to work on the rest of the build before returning to max out Execution. Or with the Shaman's Savagery at levels 9, 16, and 24, where you gain an extra charge level.

Returning to the question of how many points to invest into a skill, it will depend what purpose said skill has in relation to the rest of your build. For example, if you are using Bloody Pox as a primary damage skill, you want to put everything you can into it, but if you are using it to activate a Celestial Skill, then 1 point in it and its modifiers is enough. (Although, even in that example, I'd still put as much as possible into Wasting for the OA debuff)

As to why you probably won't ever see a list of how much to invest in skills... You could ask the question of how much to invest in the Soldier skill Veterancy and still get at least a dozen answers, all of which would be correct.

[RodHull]

As a rule you want to max primary attack and defense powers, added to that any skill which doesn't suffer diminishing returns. Some abilities are worth over levelling to as high as you can get them, others suffer diminishing returns the higher they go and are usually left at max or there abouts. Others are pure 1 point wonders like say Menhirs will which is fine but no more than 2 to 4 points is worth investing in that. Another good example would be Phantasmal armour which is decent but not worth sinking tons of points into.

Honestly though it hugely depends on your build, most people for example who use grasping vines just use it to proc other abilities but i have a build which uses it as a primary attack so ive maxed it out.

But yes just check in grimtools if unsure some abilities are obviously not that great to sink lots of points in others are.

[burdfishdemon]

These are all great answers. It seems careful looking is required, but you only need to figure it out once. I'm using a vitality-based ritualist with a fair amount of ADCTH, and so my skills are savagery, then 3 chance on attack skills from shaman/necro, devouring swarm, totems, siphon souls, mark of torment, spectral binding, grasping vines, and then a bunch of buffs.

I was wondering if it's worth maxing savagery. I noticed you get 7 charge levels from 9 points and it takes until 16 to get another. Plus I don't have bonuses for physical and lightning damage. BUT I use it so much that it seems worth at least 9 points, and the chance on attack skills (e.g., feral hunger for necro) seem to be worth about 5 or 6 points since they're the basis for my ADCTH.

[MrStitch]

I don't know if anyone else does this, but i've had times where i put on a piece of gear that adds a +2 to a skill that i already had capped... so then i'll respec and take two points out to add them somewhere else. It *feels* like after the cap that it doesn't do a whole lot, but like someone else already said, that's just a broad observation.

[Heresy]

Thats a good point tho there are things such as say Brimstone that dont get better after the max split lvl which is 5-7 fragments at lvl 10 or something. AS someone mentioned before, skills that increase aoe range to a certain point then stop would be considered a soft cap. Also the gaps how you mentioned if it takes 16 points to reach the next lvl then ranks 10-16 of that skill are kind of obsolete and you would benefit at keeping it at lvl 9 until you have the gear to get it to lvl 16.

[RodHull]

Originally posted by burdfishdemon:

These are all great answers. It seems careful looking is required, but you only need to figure it out once. I'm using a vitality-based ritualist with a fair amount of ADCTH, and so my skills are savagery, then 3 chance on attack skills from shaman/necro, devouring swarm, totems, siphon souls, mark of torment, spectral binding, grasping vines, and then a bunch of buffs.

I was wondering if it's worth maxing savagery. I noticed you get 7 charge levels from 9 points and it takes until 16 to get another. Plus I don't have bonuses for physical and lightning damage. BUT I use it so much that it seems worth at least 9 points, and the chance on attack skills (e.g., feral hunger for necro) seem to be worth about 5 or 6 points since they're the basis for my ADCTH.

The damage from one extra charge is not worth it imo, tbh if your vitality based id leave it at 1 most likely as its not really adding much anyway. The best parts of savagery for non bleed/light builds is tenacity of boar which is amazing and storm touched for the att speed. The skills like feral hunger are usually only worth going to max proc chance with unless your build is heavily focused on them (like say a soldier who uses the markovians set would want markovians high as it gets a lot bonuses)

9 is fair though if your happy spending them there, but i wouldnt go higher personally.

Originally posted by MrStitch:

I don't know if anyone else does this, but i've had times where i put on a piece of gear that adds a +2 to a skill that i already had capped... so then i'll respec and take two points out to add them somewhere else. It *feels* like after the cap that it doesn't do a whole lot, but like someone else already said, that's just a broad observation.

If its hard capped then yes thats normal to take points out, if its soft capped it depends on the skill. Some become very strong when over capped. Many of the debuff abilities for example are well worth over capping.