I have a few questions about abilities in the game:

-Witcher Training "Vigor Regeneration" The game manual says level 2 provides vigor regeneration outside combat. Seriously? CDPR does know that if you press up up down down left right B A, hit enter and then wait a little while, your vigor regenerates all by itself, right? Does level two do something cooler--is this one of 10,000 typos in the manual?

-Riposte: I'm finding it hard to time this. Really hard. I've never succeeded. Is it powerful enough to continue trying? Does it use vigor?

-Whirl: is this as good as it looks?

-Dagger: Daggers seem perfectly cool, and I'm not complaining, but wait a minute.... daggers cost money, hurt one enemy at a time, and if you run out, you need to get back to town to get more. Bombs are free (just use alchemy), hurt multiple foes at once, and you can make more any time as long as you have ingredients. Is dagger training really a smart way to spend my limited talents?

-Arrow redirection: i got suckered into taking this because there were tons of guys with bows in the prologue. Now it seems pretty weak, and you have to use vigor to succeed with it. This isn't really a question, it's an observation.

1) Vigor Training. It's the lowest ranked skill in the entire game. What do you expect out of it?

2) Riposte is great if you have vigor and timing. If not, don't waste points in it.

3) Whirl is the best three points spent in the entire game (costs 3 into sword tree to get; you could effectively stop there and never put another point into the sword tree and still have most of the effectiveness of the tree imo).

4) Daggers deal a lot of damage. They're meant to cost money. In fact, they're a bit cheesy. I specifically don't use daggers because of their cheese factor.

5) Personally, I think it's pointless, and there are far better ways to spend your first six points.

It speeds up the regeneration Start blocking, as soon as the opponent starts hitting you, you should see a sword icon, that's when you should hit attack. Better. Outside of single tough foes such as bosses, it's rather useless. For bosses it's pretty much overpowered. Other than that, it's only useful for a single quest where it's required. Unless you're running the steam version and absolutely have to have all the achievements, it's rather useless

The quest doesn't require dagger training. You "get" it for free, for the duration of the mini-game. If we're thinking about the same thing (the party).

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I dont know what kind of console controller nonsense youre talking about here, but it sounds like a cheat. Regardless, Vigor and Vitality seem to replenish just fine at default levels outside of combat, so I never bothered with these. IN-combat vigor regeneration might be something you want to look at for a more magically oriented build, or if you plan on trying to block your way through the game (which I wouldnt, BTW)
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[edit] sorry, confused this with parrying. I have no direct experience with this skill.
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Yes. A must have talent for any build, IMO.
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You can craft them much cheaper than buying them, but you do rely on a crafter for them. Their carrying weight makes them only situationally useful, but they can be especially helpful against some bosses. You can throw them faster than bombs. Completely optional, but I wouldn't go out of my way for them.
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My instinct is to call this useless, but who knows how much damage that single point I put in it actually saved me over the game. You dont tend to notice the arrows. But yeah, I would call this easily skippable.

follow up on riposte:

Does it at least do a lot of damage?

Same as regular attacks, with higher level it has a small chance for automatic kill.

Of all the skills stated in this post so far, the only one I'm using in my current playthrough is Whirl. Whirl is this game's version of group style and is, in my opinion, a must. You may be targeting one opponent, but if there are others in range of your swing, it damages them too. 1 point in the skill and you do 50% damage to those other targets and 2 points lets you damage them 100% as much as the main target. It's worth it.

On the second level of Riposte, as stated before, there's a small chance of automatic kill. Even on the first level, if you use it often enough in combat, you can gain the Parry ability, which is a chance of automatic riposte against an attacking enemy. The downside to the skill, I've found is that Geralt can still be hit when he's going through the riposte animation. I started out liking it, but now I feel those talents could be put to better use elsewhere.

Arrow redirection, useful in chapter 1, if you go hunting and running in the forest at night. You'll likely run into Scoiat'el patrols and they have archers. Other than that, there aren't that many archers in the game you have to fight. Boost Quen instead and close into sword range as quickly as you can when archers show up.

Daggers: they don't do that much damage against the bosses or unique monsters since they've been nerfed and most other monsters and enemies attack in groups. Go for bombs. They're more useful.

Just my two cents' worth.

the only thing worth spending a point for arrow redirection, is the mutagen slot

yep, if you want to min/max your character certain builds profit immensly from the additional mutagen slot. sword/alchemy is so overpowered you can "one-shot" the most bosses, some even bug out if you kill them too quickly.
so for general gameplay: I would not invest a point
for special builds you can only create using mutagens: yes