I just sent this to the devs via the in-game suggestion box and I thought I'd repost it here for some discussion:
These skills serve no purpose beyond gatekeeping. The amount of people who are actually making use of these skills is miniscule. A regular progression of a skill should go:
- Earn skill
- Use skill until a more powerful skill becomes available
- Upgrade skill
- Use upgraded skill
Keeping Flamestrike as my example, very rarely is anyone every going to use low levels of Flamestrike. By the time someone actually manages to get their hands on Flamestrike 1, their other inherent skills are going to be much more powerful making Flamestrike 1 not practical to include in a rotation. The only reason to get Flamestrike 1 is to allow you to climb the ladder to a higher level of Flamestrike that you can use. Meanwhile, the higher levels of Flamestrike are readily available for cheap on any used tab. For the privilege of learning Flamestrike 4 for 1,200 councils, I have to pay 25,000+ councils to get Flamestrike 1 which I'm never going to actually use or sit watching used tabs hoping someone sells it to an NPC vendor not realizing what it's worth.
This also applies to crafting. Sticking with the Priest theme, if I want to take up Carpentry to synergize my crafting with my combat skill to build my own staves, I need to get the Shoddy Priest Staff recipe before anything else. But since it's required for all higher levels, the price is extremely inflated above the higher levels of the recipe. By the time anyone gets their hands on the recipe or has the councils to buy it, the staff itself is useless. The amount of time someone is going to be in the combat level zone to use the Shoddy Priest Staff makes it impractical to craft for selling.
I don't like pointless items in MMOs that serve no purpose. Because of the scarcity of these low level skills they are effectively rendered useless as they only serve as gateways to the higher level abilities.