[Guide] Main Weapon skill trees

A small guide on main weapons and skills that complement them. Skill trees that won't be included are survival (because it provides universal benefits), Production skills (they are for crafter's/tamers but tamer tree is a bit of special case), battle skills (benefit is offset by skill points.)

So... Let's get right into it?

First thing to note is that main weapons is that their skill tree provides a skills that would be effective if used with that particular weapon but not always. Eg: you can use the blade tree skill warcry with any other main weapon.

Consider the following categories:
Mana control: How easy it is to create combos to efficiently use skills. Eg: Creating low MP cost skills which deal high damage without affecting proration greatly or having high AMPR to offset high combo MP cost.
* Improved by using skills [Impact] and [Decoy Shot] from the magic and shot skill trees to improve efficiency and AMPR.
* Having a higher mana control enables more skills to be used before having to stop and recharge via normal attacks or otherwise.

Skill point efficiency: How many skills are actually useful in the end game, eg: for shot skills, the ailment skills don't see much use for their ailment ability and are used as 'save tag skills' instead. With good skill point efficiency, it becomes easily to adopt complement skill trees.
* Improved by taking only the skills you will be using in a combo rather than taking all skills in a skill tree you may or may not use.
* Take skills that provide more overall benefit rather than situational benefit.

Synergy: How easily it is for the main weapon to use skills from other main weapon skills without too much hassle. Eg: being able to focus on physical attack or magical attack without crippling the other significantly.
* Synergy with your sub skill trees are important. Using martial skills with a magic user for example isn't very efficient as it tends to take away from both physical and magical rather than benefit the two.
* Proper synergy can even boost the overall efficiency of your build by allowing you to perform in more situations but to achieve diversity, you often have to sacrifice skill point efficiency. In Toram, this is a constant struggle owing to the large number of useful skills and limited skill points.

Damage Rating: The amount of damage in the least amount of time. This refers to the rate and not the highest damage possible as rate is far more important than compared to just unleashing one big attack every 5 minutes.
* Rarely is DPS understood as for what it should be and that is damage per second. 100,000 damage per second and 1,000,000 Damage per 10 seconds is the same DPS ability.
* Your goal, if you are an attacker or solo player, is to achieve the highest possible DPS rather than the largest possible damage.

Defensive ability: Skills devoted to offsetting damage innate to that weapon alone and not sub skill trees like buff and assist.
* Defense can come in all forms be it in simple guarding and evading, using special magic skills or even offensively by locking down the enemy.
* The best defensive ability comes as a combination of the effort needed, the strength and the rate of such.

Scoring from worst to best:
Garbage (Too poorly performing in that category)
Not bad (Good but needs some complement)
Good (Can perform well enough without complement)
Superb (Does not need any complement in that area)

*Despite being superb in a category, it does not mean you can neglect it but instead, you can focus on it and become even better in it.

Blade skills​

Mana Control: Good. Damage and trigger slash boost ampr significantly and proper use of swift attack can significantly reduce MP cost.

Skill point efficiency: All skills serve some use one way or another. Highly self sufficiency skill tree.

Synergy: Can use skills from most other skill trees with minor issues.

Damage Rating: Superb

Defensive ability: Good, has self recovery and invincibility frames (i-frames) but can be better as it is infrequent and costly (respectively).

Shot skills​

Mana Control: Superb, nearly impossible to run out of MP unless using very high cost skills.

Skill point efficiency: Garbage. Ailment skills rarely serve their purpose other than being used for save tags. Sneak attack is rather near useless as negative aggro gear is better and fatal shot is quite fatal due to long animation. Even worse on bowgun.

Synergy: Not bad synergy but it is rare that they will be useful .

Damage Rating: Superb, especially if you know the boss pattern and can evade properly.

Defensive ability: Garbage. Ailment skills have limited effectiveness especially with bowgun which allows the use of a shield to boost the rating to superb.

Magic skills​

Mana Control: Superb, can instantly recover almost all MP.

Skill point efficiency: Garbage. There are few skills in the magic skill tree that have any use and even then, their effectiveness is reduced due to boss ailment resistance that can extend for up to a full minute.

Synergy: Garbage. Building for magic and physical has no real use in this game and even then, it takes nothing to do some normal proration from normal attacks and go again.

Damage Rating: Not bad. Magic burst is slowly becoming a considerable magic dps. Finale is simply too slow and too costly for its damage.

Defensive ability: Garbage. Only knockback and stop is present to defend against enemies and stop has a 1 minute cooldown whilst knockback doesn't always work.

Martial skills​

Mana Control: Not bad. Has an MP recovery skill in addition to a slight AMPR boost. Needs to be complemented with external skills to keep up with rapid skill use however.

Skill point efficiency: Not bad. But very situational. Rarely would you use heavy smash in a combo given the low armor break chance of shell break.

Synergy: Knuckles is a very open weapon yet at the same time, very weak. You need to correctly synergize skill trees to maximize the effect you are going for whether it be offense, defense, support or breaker. Or even just solo.

Damage Rating: Garbage. Martial skills are terrible for damage if used on their own as they are. It requires maximizing crit damage as well as regular attack and in some cases even stacking pierce to mitigate defense power of enemies. With that same effort, if you can 10-shot a boss, another skill tree will enable you to one-shot kill.

Defensive ability: Target dependent. If the target is highly reactive to ailments such as flinch, tumble and stun, it is garbage. If multiple enemies? It is garbage. If just one target with no reactivity? Superb!~

Crusher skills​

Mana Control: Garbage. This skill tree plays hell with mana. You need to find a way to at least offset the drain on mana from these skills. The reason stems mainly from Goliath strike skill which has a 5MP cost (3MP if halved).

Skill point efficiency: Superb. Nearly all skills are useful with the sole exception being straight punch which gets overwritten by Godhand. Even then, the skill doesn't exactly lose its purpose due to its add-on ability.

Synergy: Crusher skills are high speed in nature and because of this, having more skill trees won't exactly help given you won't use them much often. Saying that however, it still synergizes extremely well with defensive style builds due to breathworks and Godhand skills.

Damage Rating: Good. However due to the charge time required for Goliath, it is not superb. The rate is lower when compared to blade, dual swords and halberd.

Defensive ability: Superb. Many skills available to create defensive combos with.

Mononofu skills​

Mana Control: Good. Shukuchi bolsters AMPR significantly.

Skill point efficiency: Low MP cost of skills make this skill tree very efficient even if the skills themselves aren't always useful. At lv150, some of the skills become completely useless.

Synergy: Few skill trees work harmoniously with mononofu compared to other weapon types yet at the same time, it is also more focussed/rigid in its role, mainly as a counter style damage dealer.

Damage Rating: Superb. Boss difficulty is irrelevant. Mononofu has skills for all boss types. High defense, low defense, constant attacker. It doesn't matter unless you are terrible.

Defensive ability: Mononofu skills are counter based and as such can nullify damage and deal damage (zantei and bouncing blade) or restore some MP (magadachi). It is heavily reliant on your play skill.

Halberd skills​

Mana Control: Not bad, almost erring on good for those who can accept risk and fight with low health to use war cry. Even has chronos drive which can restore up to 390 MP without risk but with proper combo set up. Not exactly superb because of the risk and time factors (respectively)

Skill point efficiency: Good. All skills have a use in some way.

Synergy: Synergizes well with skill trees that boost attack power rather than those providing new active skills.

Damage Rating: Superb. It is the strongest skill tree in the game in offensive ability. 100% pierce against all enemies and innate high critical ability brings down almost any target very quickly.

Defensive ability: Very reliant on skill and experience. You can potentially be one-shot with this skill tree.

Dual swords skills​

Mana Control: Good.

Skill point efficiency: Very high. All skills useful in some way or the other.

Synergy: Doesn't need to synergize with other skill trees but in such an instance, it would work best with skills which boost attack power.

Damage Rating: Superb. Very high damage rate and can prorate it's own damage easily.

Defensive ability: Superb. Multiple i-frames skills means you almost never get touched if timed properly.

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And those should be the main weapons. For some areas, I had to explain rather than give a rating because of how human reliant those areas were.

EDIT: More clairty.

 

More like an overview, doesnt look like a guide. Those who can't decide which weapon to use can probably benefit on this.