[Vyktoryah]

Aptitude is a very strange stat, and for most players, I realize that for their build to be viable in PvP(And sometimes even in PvE's earlygame) You need to run anywhere from 30-49 Aptitude. Aptitude as it is, due to effecting bonus stats, and not base stats, makes it something of a MUST, which seems really... Odd? Outside of a stat like Vitality, I feel no stat should feel mandatory in almost every viable PvP build.

Aptitude to my knowledge, was meant to be a stat for 'Jack of all trades, master of none' type of builds, but currently as I mentioned before, it seems to not fulfill that role.

Reworking it to effect your base stat total, instead of bonus stats, would probably resolve this issue, and make it so jack-of-all-trades builds actually can get the most use out of this stat.
For an example of what I mean, imagine you are a race with 4 Strength, but invest nothing into that stat, and have no other modifiers but say, 36 aptitude, bringing it up to 10. Currently as it sits, when you view your base-stat it will read as 4+0. However changing it so that aptitude gives base stats will change this to 4+6. This will cause Aptitude-given stats to diminish as heavily, and perhaps put less emphasis on it as a stat overall. Perhaps change the EXP gain it seems to give from 1% to 1.5%, so that in PvE it still makes some sense to get for that.

It'd be nice to run a build with my races base-aptitude, and not feel like I'll be gimped in PvP unless I run an ultra-gimmicky, yet somehow viable build.

Then again, the diminishing returns system is still hard to properly read, and my suggestion may mandate it more than it currently is.

I hate Aptitude as a stat in its entirety and think it was a very silly addition to the game that adds little to the overall gameplay. I am sure I am not the only one who groans at the fact you have to run it on most builds or feel otherwise inferior.