Ah. Alright then, thanks for the tip. I'll keep that in mind.

I think I see what you were originally asking about now.

You aren't required to invest points into every single tier of skills to move down the tree, just that you invest enough into the tree overall. For example, I could open up Get Some by just maxing out every skill in the first two tiers and skipping tiers 3 and 4 entirely. COMs don't contribute to any of this, they just increase the effects of whatever skills they cover.

Hope this helps.

I'm still kind of confused as to how you got points in items later down the tree without expending them in earlier ones. If COMs really are the trick, which ones did you use to get this to work?

I'm not sure if I'm answering your question, but this is what it looks like without any COMs on.

The skill tree doesn't seem to make sense. How'd you get zero points in those skills (particularily in Rampage and Gun Lust) but still manage to put points into those? I'm probably overlooking something here.