Does anyone spend category points to upgrade a tree?

[cctobias]

Already had it via Neck slot.

Yeah, but this still all boils down to "When all other bases are covered."

I mean I think you are kind of lending credence to the idea that investing the talent line is one of the very last options that are done.

Its not that its NEVER appropriate, its that its almost always the LAST option, so its only done in a situation of abundance.

[HousePet]

I was pointing out that "When all other bases are covered" actually happens.
A lot of the comments in this thread are, "all other bases are never covered".
Situations where all the obvious choices are covered, but you still have a category point left over, do happen. So a discussion of how you spend this extra category point is important.

[jenx]

Another tree well worth boosting is Archery Training, to get extra bonus on Aim and Rapid Shot. A 10% boost to rapid shot, when combined with other speed bonuses, can make a big difference to dmg per turn.

[Mankeli]

lol, have you ever run up Discharge and Feedback etc to max? Unbelievable damage, and critting on the second discharge talent at high levels keeps your psi levels up for ages.

lol, have have you ever used inscription slots? Pretty great things to have.

Also you should probably notice how I have advocated against using cat points to increase cat mastery so that my non-cornac characters would have enough cat points to unlock both Discharge + Nightmare and 5 inscription slots (unlike the builds you are advocating for).

Also, before posting:

Another tree well worth boosting is Archery Training, to get extra bonus on Aim and Rapid Shot. A 10% boost to rapid shot, when combined with other speed bonuses, can make a big difference to dmg per turn.

One should read:

Please provide some evidence...

And:

Having higher mastery is better than having lower mastery but not necessarily better than the benefit you'd get from other uses of that cat.

Pretty sure you lolling is not very convincing evidence be it solipsists or archers.

EDIT: IFAIK Archers have no less than five locked trees + possible escort categories (although these are much worse for archers than for many other classes, they already have survival (and field control) unlocked and don't pump magic stat).

[jenx]

well, i think then this post shows that some prefer to boost cat trees, and others don't. simple as that. different play styles. given the same increase in effects, some people think the boost is worth it, others don't.

[Mankeli]

well, i think then this post shows that some prefer to boost cat trees, and others don't. simple as that. different play styles. given the same increase in effects, some people think the boost is worth it, others don't.

Well, yes and no. If one is going for the highest chances of winning with optimal play, then the variation on playstyles on any given class is much smaller than it would be otherwise IMO.

And I'm not asking for actual numbers and talking about opportunity costs just to prove someone else wrong: I'm interested if there are some combinations I've missed myself so I could learn new things. I just think that because most of the good players agree that upgrading the tree is very rarely (some may argue never) worth it, the burden of proof lies on the ones that claims there are many instances where it's good.

[jaumito]

A while ago, I catpointed an archmage spell/Meta tree - by misclick rather than choice, duh! On the good side, it allowed me to spend only 2 points on Disperse Magic and 3 on Metaflow and still get the full benefit from these talents (and I guess Spellcraft's spellshock got a boost as well), and since this character was strapped for class talents points, in the end it wasn't such a bad deal. I don't think the point has been raised yet, but upgrading trees doesn't only boost talents a bit, sometimes you can get generic/talent points back from talents that scale on raw level too.

[HousePet]

Optimal play?
Optimal for what? Fun, a challenge, winning on insane?
Different people play the game in different ways. The game is pretty forgiving on normal difficulty and you can play around with fun builds and still win.

[jenx]

look at winners on roguelike, plenty have extra cat points in categories.

[Mankeli]

Optimal play?Optimal for what? Fun, a challenge, winning on insane?
Different people play the game in different ways. The game is pretty forgiving on normal difficulty and you can play around with fun builds and still win.

It's pretty clear what I meant. Also the OP asked is it worthwhile upgrading a tree and I would be inclined to believe he meant "is it useful". It's perfectly fine to try to play some fun experimental builds but if people are given advice based on "fun" then they should probably be explicit about that.

look at winners on roguelike, plenty have extra cat points in categories.

Yeah, and I had a roguelike win with a character that left 23 class talent points unused and probably several that only had one prodigy at the time of winning the game. With a character class/race combination that doesn't inherently suck, you can pretty much do whatever in normal difficulty and still manage to win with 0 deaths. Yet, leaving 23 class points unused has very little to do with optimal character building.

I think Insane is a difficulty that really starts to punish you from doing suboptimal things -yet probably all classes are winnable although something as horrible as a wyrmic are probably pretty hard to win with. If a major part of legit insane winners are upgrading trees with cats then I'm all ears.

[HousePet]

See that is a problem. This is a Dumb Questions forum. Not a how to win insane difficulty forum.
Implying insane difficulty warps the suggestions being made, and newbies might think that insane strategies are needed for normal difficulty.
Sure, all of the survival strategies will help them win, but many of the insane strategies contain unfun stuff. We don't want newbies thinking they need to do the unfun stuff to win on normal.

Also, can anyone remember what the value of upgrading a category was like before the scaling was changed?

[donkatsu]

Optimal play?
Optimal for what? Fun, a challenge, winning on insane?
Different people play the game in different ways. The game is pretty forgiving on normal difficulty and you can play around with fun builds and still win.

Obviously people are talking about what is optimal for winning. Fun is subjective and most people have the ability to distinguish what is fun and what is not for themselves without having to ask. It's pretty obvious when people ask "is X a good choice?" what they're talking about; there really is no excuse for confusion here.

See that is a problem. This is a Dumb Questions forum. Not a how to win insane difficulty forum.
Implying insane difficulty warps the suggestions being made, and newbies might think that insane strategies are needed for normal difficulty.
Sure, all of the survival strategies will help them win, but many of the insane strategies contain unfun stuff. We don't want newbies thinking they need to do the unfun stuff to win on normal.

You just seem to be really adamant against giving advice to people who are literally asking for help, and that seems like the actual problem here. The questions generally boil down to, "what will increase my chances of winning". The correct answer, in this case, is "usually not upgrading trees". It doesn't matter what difficulty you're playing on. If the time comes and someone actually does ask "is it impossible to win if you invest in X", they will of course receive the obvious answer, "no", and you can be the first to tell them.

[jaumito]

Obviously people are talking about what is optimal for winning. Fun is subjective and most people have the ability to distinguish what is fun and what is not for themselves without having to ask.

Even optimal is subjective when you factor in playstyle or habits. Is using autoexplore 'optimal' play, for instance? Compromises, compromises - there are lots of them, you can't avoid them, and they all come in the way of optimal play.

[donkatsu]

Is using autoexplore 'optimal' play, for instance?

No. No it's not. It's strictly suboptimal.

But everybody already knows that not using autoexplore is tedious and unfun (for most people, that is: I do know that there are some people who like mapping stuff on their own in games, which I don't understand but hey whatever floats your boat). They can weigh for themselves whether it's worth it or not. Nobody can tell you how you feel about not using autoexplore, that's something you yourself already know. You don't need to ask other people. But other people can tell you how likely you are to die if you use it, and that may not be obvious to a new player, which is why optimal is a useful and plausible question to ask but "fun" is not. Which, in turn, is why we assume you're asking about whether it's optimal and not whether it's fun.

I autoexplore all the time, by the way, because it's more fun that way. Never would I ask a forum community, "should I autoexplore?" to mean "is autoexploring fun?" because that wouldn't make any sense.

[HousePet]

But saying something is suboptimal doesn't give enough information.
Autoexplore is suboptimal, but does it matter on normal difficulty? No.
Running around without status curing stuff is suboptimal, but does it matter on normal difficulty? Yes. Very much so.

I am definitely not saying don't give people advice when they are asking for help. I am saying, make that advice as useful as possible, by providing context.
On normal difficulty, optimal play is only a very small subset of the play choices that can win.
Would you tell someone who wants to get their first win to start scum the shops and drown every npc available until they got an optimal start?