Originally Posted by
gigawuts
Yeah, uh...
To answer the OP:
You'll probably want sword gear, as it's the only gear that rewards you with consistent bonus damage potential. The wirelance gear is good, but limited in that bars need to be filled by dealing damage and then the bonus is only for PA's, and PA's drain a bar. Sword gear is filled by damage, but never actually drained by anything except time spent not dealing damage. The sword gear lets sonic arrow strike three times and shortens rising edge and nova strike charge times from 5-6 seconds to a cool 1 second. The damage potential is very nice.
For which skills to put bonuses in, well, that's still not really confirmed. It's only recently been determined that JA Bonus DOES apply to PA's (confusing wording suggested it didn't), and traditionally percentage bonuses far outweigh fixed number bonuses.
Then the issue nobody is sure on is crits versus ability versus s-atk. S-ATK definitely raises your max damage range. Ability definitely raises your minimum damage range. How much? I'm not certain myself. What is it crits actually do? More damage, but we're not 100% sure in what way.
My new tree will be JA Bonus 1 & 2 skilled up to 9 & 10, then sword gear, just counter, and step reversal. I'm getting the best vibes from this loadout, but that's me.