Ok so this is, for all intents, a beta release of the game. So that being the case it seems everyone agrees the skill system is a little broken and a bit uninformed.
Skills leveling with the character seems abit much, so what if instead "trained" skills level with the character progression.
And make the Proficiency tiers more apparent and easier to understand.
Also, I haven't found a progression tree for trained thru legendary in the manual yet.