Combat Intuition will put up a flash orange wedge near the center of the screen, if and only if someone looks at you(like an Operative using Homing Beacon) and they are NOT on your radar already.

It basically comes down to, "Are you really using that ability you spent a point on? If not, is there another class you might switch to that has a purchasable ability that would be nice?"

Ha. Ha. Yes. Much better than my wall of text.

Heh.

My general experience so far has been to Main either Soldier Engineer or Operative, and sub Soldier Medic or Operative.

With basic extra supply and supply rate increase from the Universal set, a Medic can get by without those two specific supply boosting skills. Likewise their buffs including healing are rarely useful. The core Medic skills seem to be Self Revive and Lazarus, so it's probably the best class to sub.

Engineer on the other hand is just so tempting to pretty much get all the skills. Soldier is a bit similar with everything but Scavenge and Satchel Charges being fairly useful.

Specifically, a main Soldier / sub Operative and a main Engineer and sub Medic.

I've got two level 20s, a main resistance, and a main security. I know it doesn't make much difference, as you get to play both, but it just looks good on the character selection menu.

With one character, I managed to get the best out of engineer, soldier as well as my favourite general abilities, so with the second character, I just did the same, except in medic and operative.
It just means that if I fancy playing the more damage based classes, I play one character, or if I fancy playing the more tactical classes (well, they are for me, anyway), I choose the other.

I've made a dedicated character for each class. Medic is maxed out, next to max out is my soldier. Started my engineer last night, then comes operative.

I plan on making a couple hybrid characters after that if I'm still playing a lot by then. I was thinking of going soldier/engineer and medic/operative, because in my eyes, those play similar to each other. The former being good in tank form to get things done, the latter benefiting from being quick on the battlefield.

At the moment I have (as far as I can remember):

Universal
Battle Hardened, Supply Rate Increase, Supply Max Increase, Silent Running, Sprinting Reload

Soldier
Armour Piercing, Flashbang, Kevlar, Scavenge

Operative
Homing Beacon, Comms Hack, Firewall, Sticky Bomb, Caltrop, Hack Turret

With the intention of getting Control Turret, Satchel Charge, and others I havent decided upon if there are more points to spend.

Due to the style of Brink, sticking with one class seems inefficient. So I have a mix of Ops/Eng so I can switch around those two when needed.

My setup

Universal abilities
Battle Hardened
Supply Max Increase
Combat Intuition
Sprinting Reload
Resupply Rate Increase
Silent Running

Engineer
Kevlar
Gear Head
Light, Medium, Gattling Turret
Improved Weapon Buff
Extra Landmine

Operative
Homin Beacon
Sticky Bomb
Caltrop Grenades
Hack Turret (my fav)
Control Turret
Cortext Bomb EMP Grenade

This is the best setup I have found for my character and it seems to help the team better than just staying ops or engineer all the time.

1. you have the best engineer now
2. If you have teamwork, everyone should be fully specialized in a single class to be most effective at what they do.

I tend to not bother maxing out a tree, mostly because I'd rather just get a basic buff out to everybody. By the time your pips have replenished, some people will have died already and need another buff. There have only been a couple matches where I've actually run out of buffs to hand out as a medic and sat there twiddling my thumbs, and it's because (for some reason) me and my team of AI were completely stomping the enemy AI... so there wasn't really any need to hand out Speed Boosts or Metabolism, would have just made the match all the more of a cakewalk.

But that said, I do have a lot of fusion classes. Medic/Engineer, Soldier/Operative, Engineer/Soldier, etc...