skill tree suggestions for new players with no previous pso2 experience

[soulpimpwizzurd]

yeah, so if you're new and you haven't played pso2 and you don't know much about the game, chances are you also don't know what skills you should level up in your respective class tree. in this thread i'll list my suggestions and say what i think is good and bad, and why.

i'm typing this up since i got to participate in closed beta extensively, and a little bit in pre-open beta, so i messed around a lot with skill trees and skills to see what did what and what was effective/ineffective. many closed beta players have a good grasp of what skills to get since they had access to a large amount of free skill tree resets/configurations as well. however you new players are unable to capitalize on experimentation, as from open beta on, skill tree resets / extra skill tree configurations will cost real money.

so read up if you don't wanna burn a hole in your wallet (unless you'd like to become one of sega's loyal and generous benefactors)

i'll mainly state what i think are must-haves. if i don't address a skill it's because i feel neutral towards it and it's your choice if you want it or not. i may also state skills i feel are unique and should be mentioned, or skills that are incredibly bad so you should avoid (like ranger traps [however they may have been buffed, i am not sure])

use this gardios's awesome skill calculating website to get acquainted with skills.

http://ryuhiroshi.ry.funpic.de/index.html


super old and probably nobody is reading this now, but just letting everyone know, fury critical is pretty bad. adelheid gave solid proof that all it does is let you hit your maximum damage range. it does not increase damage at all. absolutely not worth getting.

hunter:

Spoiler!

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sword gear- i assume sword gear will be the strongest against dumb mobs that just have too much HP and need to die. aka hard mode. sword gear is basically a combo meter that rapidly depletes the longer you are not hitting an enemy. if you build it to level 3 then your photon arts do more damage and gain significant range. photon arts that are chargeable go to max charge within 2 seconds instead of ~6.
sword gear is weak against bosses that move fast/you are unable to continuously combo. thus it may prove inefficient in future boss battles where you cannot be on the boss as much as you'd like to, simply because it moves too fast (snow leopard perhaps) either way it's a good skill, and really dishes out damage against dumb moving mobs that have too much hp. however due to the dedication it requires to unlock, consider your options before you choose sword gear.

do note that sword actually dodges slower and recovers from the dodge animation slower than gunslash/partisan/wiredlance/unarmed.
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partisan gear - probably the safest option. you charge it by holding down shift to guard, or by letting your character "twirl" its partisan after an attack or photon art. the twirling takes roughly 1-1.5 seconds for one charge (partisan gear charges 3 times, a charge is depleted when a photon art is used. that photon art will have significantly increased range), and roughly ~2-2.5 seconds from shielding to charge.

if you want future safety, i recommend partisan. it's strong against bosses because it has a photon art called trick rave or something, which basically allows you to hit weak spots on bosses that typically you cannot reach or hit as a hunter unless the boss falls down from an event (such as breaking it's tail for the dragon, or breaking its legs for ragne), and it has good mob control.
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wired lance gear - its gauge charges simply by attacking mobs with wired lance and it does not deplete over time. apparently its supposed to increase range / damage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9V9vf00YBE&feature=player_embedded

^1:12 shows the effects of wired gear gauge. the first ninja seismic toss suplex photon art is regular, uneffected by the wired lance gear gauge. the second is effected by the gear gauge.

a lot of people like wired lance. it has excellent crowd control and has one incredibly powerful, large AOE and range attack where your character swings a mob around like mario does bowser in mario 64 and damages everything within range. however it's not that effective against bosses. i personally think partisan gear is a better choice if you want to only choose one gear. but both wired lance and partisan are on a very useful branch of skills, so it'll only take 2 skill points to get both gears so its not that bad if you wanna mess with it anyway. for all i know, it may get buffed/change in the future, so yeah
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war cry basically is like the hunters "taunt" skill. it supposedly takes aggro from mobs.

okay i messed with this skill and it doesn't seem to be that effective in making you an aggro magnet. granted i only had it at a low level like 3 or something but yup. may prove to be more useful where there are a bunch of mobs and you want to make sure they're not targeting rangers/forces, but war cry doesn't seem that useful in this game.

at the moment if your party is well coordinated enough, pretty much all enemies will be constantly flinching in the first place since they'll be constantly attacked, so the main rule of thumb in this game is "what will let me kill things the fastest." war cry is not a skill that will allow you to do so. i personally don't think it's that effective, and i am unwilling to max war cry to find out if it can be effective. but lol i guess you can get it if you want. TAISETSU NA KOTO WO MAMORU TAME NIwwwwww
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fury stance / fury critical
fury stance increases your physical damage but decreases your defense. the higher you level fury stance, the more attack you gain, and the less defense you lose (i also think the duration increases but i'm honestly not sure.) fury critical increases your critical hit rate while fury stance is engaged. therefore it is an incredibly strong skill.

if you want damage as a hunter this is pretty much your best option. i'd be making these two skills top priority to max after getting the other basics such as just guard counter and just reversal
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just attack bonus 1+2
these are good for damage, pretty much in this game you'll almost always be doing just attack versions of attacks. however it only increases damage of regular just attacks, not photon art just attacks, so it's not super useful.

in my experience i find that the highest damage output and survivability combination of technique is generally dashing around doing your dash attack on mobs to build up pp, and then just photon art-ing. so in all honesty i rarely use just attacks, except on bosses.

i'd get this but i'd probably only get enough to get fury critical. increasing your general attack seems like a smarter option, through s-atk up.
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just guard+just counter
you want both of these. just guard is a perfect guard. when you time guard right before an enemy hits you, you'll just guard. it's good for three reasons:
1. it takes no PP to do (you can just guard forever)
2. you take little or no damage (most of the time i took 0 damage)
3. the enemy you just guard actually takes some damage from your just guard

just guard is a very good skill that you want to get good at using. just counter is also good, because after you just guard you're stuck in the guarding animation for about ~1-2 seconds. you can instantly break out of this frozen animation if you get just guard counter. it allows you to do a regular just attack right after a just guard.
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automate half line
if your hp falls below 50% you have a chance of automatically using a monomate. i think this skill isn't worth the points until you have nothing else to spend points on, to be quite honest. you have to max it to have a decent chance of it working (50%) and that's a ton of skill points you could be spending elsewhere. unless you have little faith in your ability, i would not get this. practice overrides the necessity of automate half line
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step attack is necessary. it lets your character do a fast attack right after dodging. this skill is necessary for fast paced, more advanced hunter gameplay. get this.
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just reversal isn't necessary but it's highly helpful and lets you get back on your feet quickly, thus, it's a good skill to get. it lets you recover after receiving an attack that sends you flying. DO NOT SPAM THE SPACE BAR WHEN TRYING TO "JUST REVERSAL". YOU MUST TIME IT, THAT IS WHY IT HAS "JUST" IN ITS NAME. IT WORKS THE SAME FOR ALL CLASSES, YOU CAN'T SPAM THE SPACE BAR. you have to hit space bar right after your character faceplants on the ground, and your character will jump up and do a spinning recovery. you should get this skill, it's only one point. all classes should
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hp+ is pretty much garbage in my eyes. you can get it if you want but if you're playing a hunter, you should be practicing dodging/just guarding attacks anyway. pso2 is unique in that lag is a very small/non-existent factor, so it's very possible to have perfect runs where as a hunter you come out untouched, if you practice (i never ever got lag hit by a monster ever. the only times i got hit where when i messed up myself)
as long as you have enough defense to survive any attack more than once, you can simply just run away and heal.

anyway you can get it if you want but it's just like auto mate halfline. practice overrides the necessity of hp+
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thats pretty much all i have to say on hunter

ranger:

Spoiler!

as a ranger you'll mostly be spamming the usage of launcher. it's an incredibly powerful weapon that boasts constant, powerful AOE damage, and long range. as a result, getting skills like standing snipe is not necessary. (you can fire the launcher in rapid succession if you jump with no "reload", and if you're equipping a rifle you're probably going to be wanting to move around while you shoot)
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weak bullet/weak hit advance1+2

weak bullet is arguably the largest contribution to a party a ranger can give. you must get this skill. its strong because it basically creates a weak point on any type of enemy including bosses, and if that weak point is attacked, it does large damage.

the reason why weak bullet is incredibly powerful however, is because if you fire it onto a bosses weak point, it will stack damage. so on top of the boss receiving damage because it's already a natural boss weak point, the weak bullet being shot on to that weakspot will cause all damage to that area do even more damage.
put simply:
boss weakpoint+weak bullet shot on to weakpoint= "you can hit the weak spot for... massive damage LOOLOLOLOLLOLO"

no but people argue that it's so powerful it's broken. so perhaps you may want to avoid this skill if you don't want to kill bosses at the speed of light

weak hit advance increases the damage you do against weak spots. thats pretty awesome. there are some rangers on these forums who have done over 2k/3k+ damage, probably because they abused weak hit advance. you should too.
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jellen shot. an enemy you with with jellen shot will do much less damage. quite helpful to your party, allows them to be more bold and potentially inflict more damage on a boss. a good skill i recommend.
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panic shot- i personally have not used this but i've seen it used, and it is used with launcher. enemies hit by it have a chance of getting confused and start hitting each other instead of players. pretty useful. i would get at least one point of this.
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bind bullet - i used this in closed beta and it honestly seemed utterly useless. someone else may chime in on this one but i found it to be a terrible skill. it might have changed though since closed beta
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stun grenade - it's even more worthless than bind bullet and to top it off you have to PAY to use it!? looooooooooooooooooooooooooool. i wouldn't get this if i were you. i got it to like level 3 and considering you have to pay to use it, it seemed to NEVER stun enemies, even point blank. might have changed since CB.

it costs meseta to use stun grenades (gotta buy'em from the shop), but iirc it doesn't cost any PP to chuck a stun grenade.

a pretty cool skill that in reality sucks. if you're paying for it, it should at least guarantee stun but it doesn't.
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traps

all traps suck. might have changed but they take a long time to plant, and they don't do that much damage. overall not worth the points, and they're not cheap either.

if their duration was extended they could be potentially more useful, since you could just plant a bunch of traps in one spot and then detonate them all on the boss (they're remote-controlled) however, they explode quickly. you can only really plant two traps at a time if i remember things correctly. and the first trap you plant will explode soon after you plant the second. the main reason they suck is the planting

it seriously takes a long time to plant traps. it's stupid.

unless they got buffed in OB, not worth it
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just reversal
works the same way for all classes, hit space if you get sent flying and faceplant to recover almost instantly. it's a useful skill.
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force:

Spoiler!

i didn't play force much so i don't have much to comment on it. however important information you should know is:

weapon attributes such as fire are no longer penalized when attacking an enemy that's native attribute is fire. ( aka if you hit something that is weak to ice which means it's natively fire, hitting it with a fire attributed weapon will not be penalized in damage)

from the above i assume that goes the same way for techs (i think.) so yeah.

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charge pp revival
un-charged tech attacks are incredibly weak and largely useless. you will find that you almost never use un-charged techs. that is why you must make it your first objective to get charge pp revival.

it allows your passive PP restore to be active while you charge a tech skill. highly useful
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freeze ignition
basically explodes all frozen enemies. has a cool down, and apparently doesn't even do that much damage from what i hear. i don't think it's worth the time but that's up to you. considering the fact that frozen enemies are likely to become unfrozen when being attacked (most likely by your team mates) that will make your chances to effectively use freeze ignition even less. i would not get this.
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photon flare
a good skill but unfortunately it's stuck at the bottom of the ice tree. it increases your tech damage in exchange for your maximum hp. i don't know if it's worth it
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most people seem like they're bending towards the following combo:
getting charge pp revival
then getting bolt tech pp save. apparently if you max bolt tech pp save you can cast zonde for only 8 pp (each point into bolt tech pp save saves one point, so maxed at level 10, subtracts 10 pp)

considering the information that weapon elemental attribute is no longer penalized, chances are high tech attribute is the same way. which means when it comes down to it, you just want to figure out what tree will give you the highest amount of damage output.

your most likely answer is the bolt tree.