The difference changes based on which class you are, but the current system promotes placing points into defense until you can get the +75hp, then speccing into mobility to get fuel regen, faster dodge cooldown, and the three +15 HP points. This is, from my experience, much stronger than any other combination, and kills the balance. The only time to consider something else would be on a sniper mech... even then, it's probably still better than boosting damage, unless you sit extremely far back and never engage/take return fire.
Furthermore, the +EU carrying capacity optimizations/internal are just ugly to me... they are completely useless except in one game mode, where they become extremely good. Kind of forces you to change your optimizations between game modes, which is just awkward to me. I'd like to see a redesign on their part.
Lastly, I feel like most of the optimizations are simply too weak. Most of them have an effect of less than one percent. Maxing all of the bullet damage options in the damage tree gives you a grand total of 7% for 9 optimization points spent.
Some may argue that it is a good thing for optimizations not to have a huge impact, and to some extent, I agree... however, they are currently so pathetic that it's almost pointless to bother with them at all. If a matchmaking system is implemented, it will mostly solve the problem of fully ranked players having an advantage over new ones, so I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be improved to add a bit more meaning to them.
Thoughts_
Edited by Immie, October 26 2012 - 10:29 PM.