The skills will be ranked in those categories:
Bad: These skill sucks, only spec in it to get further down the tree, and only if there are no better options for you.
Mediocre: Very specific and it can be good but requires effort and the outcome tends to be lack luster.
Average: Can help, not bad choices for going down trees.
Good: Good skills are worth specing into, they will help without necessarily being the focus of your playstyle. Definitively worth taking.
Outstanding: Skills of this rating will be gamechangers and should be taken by almost all Wilhelm players.
Because the number thing confuses the masses it seems because math is hard or something.
Afterburner Good
An incredibly good skill, it’s buffs are fantastic but the projectile speed can mess up some weapons but the extra speed it gives to wolf and the reload is amazing.
Firesupport Good
All and all a great skill to take, it’s just a flat non-multiplicative damage boost to both you and wolf. Basic but very good.
Venom bolts Mediocre
Interesting skill, it can be useful but not too much. The corrode chance isn’t useful but the dot can help with dps. Unfortunately its only corrosive and that’s not a super helpful damage type yet(awaits dlc)
The extra dps it gives wolf is negligible also.
Suppression Average
It’s buff gets to 30% at 5/5 which isn’t that great as that’s arguable how much extra 30% will give on most weapons but giving wolf 75% is nasty, it’s almost good enough to a higher tier.
Laser guided Outstanding
This skill is basically death mark but way better{need citation}, it’s one of those fantastic skills that helps with raiding in a major way.
Reports of it having around 87% bonus damage keep going around, needs further testing.
Rolling thunder Average
This skill can add a ton of damage to wolf, only problem is it requires other skills to make it good. It tends to get over rated a lot.
Kill switch Mediocre
Damage is low, blast radius is low, plus if there are no enemies around or wolf can not find one you might get blown up instead.
Scramble Good
Having wolf die (albeit rare for this) and come back once is awesome, plus adding in a max on (30 at 1 point)50% extra time is even better. It’s a skill that at least one point should be put in it if you go down this tree.
Cold war Good
If you don’t use cryo weapons this skill is some of the best mobbing skills in the game, it’s just not good with cryo weapons. It’s used for bonus damage, not crowd control.
Escalation Outstanding
This skill is very under rated and honestly makes no sense, it’s almost like get some from BL2 plus it adds multiplicative crit damage of at 5/5 is 25% which if multiplicative adds way way more than just 25%.
Omega strike Average
Damage is a little lack luster, if wolf is moving too fast it can miss. It’s a good skill just gets lowered for being a capstone, it’s not capstone material.
Laser focus Average
Since this only affects lasers and only lasers it’s a lower skill, it’s damage is additive.
Man and machine Bad
This skill is mostly crap, it doesn’t help too much with survivability and wolf rarely even gets hit. Kind of just pointless.
First to fight Mediocre
This skill might be good on some raid boss depending on a persons play style and for mobbing it’s only ok if you’re sniping.
Targeting scope Average
The accuracy buff means very little on everything but lasers but the crit damage is very good, 50% crit buff isn’t a joke but it’s just one of those skills that doesn’t help all the time.
Power fist Average
Possibly lower or higher, requires more testing. Really only good on frozen targets but finding it lack luster in general.
Emergency response Good
This is actually one of the better skills in this tree, 15 seconds of a good fire rate buff and reload speed is fantastic considering more than likely you’ll have full shields again pretty damn fast anyways so it’s almost like a constant buff. Rank might get raise with more testing.
Shock absorbers mediocre
Couple of issues with this skill: Can’t sprint while ADS, strafing, and jumping unless you were running. A lot of areas are low gravity which can screw up strafing.
It’s 20% additive is good, the ability to shoot while running is good, it’s just a very niche skill and only fits into a small amount of play styles.
Divert power Good
Love or hate this skill it’s quite good. If nothing it’s basically just a skill to get your shield back up to full and get that last enemy without dying.
Plus it’s quite usable on raids.
Welcome to the gun show Average
This skill is like a worse version of ranger on some levels, it has higher buffs but less buffs. Accuracy and recoil reduction can mean very little on most guns. Mag buff on most guns will only give you one extra round, maybe two.
Meteor Slam Bad
Doesn’t add damage, just range. the range is noticeable but short of ehh.
Vengeance cannon Average
DPS is ok at best. Having to stop firing to let this start up is annoying. This skill can proc cold war.
It’s a good skill but frankly it’s dps is just too low in the current state, needs like a 15-20% buff to be ranked good. While active your lasers don’t have recoil, but this could be one of those UI bugs.
Auxiliary Tanks Outstanding
Straight up one of the best skills for S&W, the duration and cooldown as a T1 is quite nice since even if you don’t spec down this tree it’s still something you can grab.
Fortify Average
This skill isn’t bad at all, it’s gun damage buff is very nice, health is pointless for the most part.
Energize Good
In tandem with the dreadnought tree this can be very good and bad at the same time, it’s a very nice tank skill and can boost your friends shields too.
Heatsinks Mediocre
It’s an OK shield skill but the bonuses are really low and it’s fairly lackluster.
Terminal protocol Average
The damage it deals is too low and the radius is too small. A bit too weak for TVHM honestly. The constant shock is OK for shield stripping but slightly too low on damage.
The great part is the walking versus crawling but other than that it’s unreliable.
Rapid reinforcement Good
One of his better kill skills, the buffs are good for most of everything.
Zero hour Mediocre
Not super useful, the area of effect is small but the healing is nice. Problem is you have to stand in it.
Hazmat Containment System Average
Don’t get the ranking wrong it can be a good skill, just it pretty much only affects DoT and unless you are in an area where you get DoTs a ton it’s just not that useful as you need to have a dot on you for it to be effective.
With dots also not lasting very long the damage reduction is not really super useful currently, but the dot spread can be.
At best it’s a one point wonder.
Kinetic Armor Bad
This skill just isn’t very useful, increasing health isn’t really that great in endgame and melee attacks are sporadic at best not to mention the explosive damage it deals is very low.
Hard to Kill Bad
This skill might be good is it didn’t wear off so fast, you don’t gain too many stacks normally before they start dropping and the damage reduction is negligible.
note
This skill might be good is it didn’t wear off so fast, you don’t gain too many stacks normally before they start dropping and the damage reduction is negligible.
It has uses and isn’t 100% bad but it still has a lot of flaws. It’s close to the border of bad and mediocre.
It’s mainly only useful on boss fights which are a small percentage of the game.
It’s a still you love or hate, there really isn’t an in between. Some adore the skill but it only fits into one playstyle really. Most of the time it’s wasted skill points.
Overcharge Outstanding
This is probably the best end-cap skill he has, this buff can be a game changer if used correctly on a solo raid. In co-op it’s usefulness is unending.
