Anyone have any advice for designing a specialization tree? Specific information I'd love:

• Advice on choosing a spec's skills. My assumption is first, choose skills that are iconic to the spec (such as Melee for a Marauder, etc.), regardless of whether the career provides them; then look for things the spec really needs but doesn't get from the career, then other skills.
• Placing Talents. I can generally pick existing Talents or design new ones, but I'm not sure where in the tree to place them. It seems like some trees (but not all) have different specialties going down one side or the other. Should I try to group similar Talents together vertically, or should I mix them up?
• Connecting Talents. This is where I'm having the most problems. There's a huge variety in how spec trees are connected, and I'm not sure I see the logic in why some Talents are connected but not others.

Skills would obviously be related to the job, so that is fairly simple.

Placing Talents is a bit more challenging to avoid making your tree clearly the best.

Connecting Talents generally has to do with speed of progression desired, as well as, slowing the min/max syndrome.

More detail as to what you are looking to construct and whether it is to be included in a career or as a universal spec would be helpful. It's tough to give specific advice and answers to general questions.

If your specialization has more than one thing going on (for instance Scoundrel has a both social and a combat aspect), organize one niche on one side of the tree and the other niche on the other side of the tree. Any talents that would be useful to both can fill in the middle and have lines cutting through.

For connections, you can also have a learning curve, hiding better talents higher-up in the tree by requiring some linear progression first. Slicer is prhaps the best example of this, but FSE uses both this technique and the left/right sub-specialty technique.