What's Better, Skill Tier VS Skill Damage?

Without using a gear set or weapon that utilizes any attributes or talents that enhance skill tear or skill damage.
If you only wanted to use skill tier or skill damage, which one is most effective at bring enemies down the quickest? PVE

This is hypothetical because I realize using both along with a gear set and weapons with talents and attributes will enhance the overall effectiveness.

However, just short of me literally grinding for months to create 2 identical builds except the only difference would be 1 set has skill damage and no skill tier and the other would have all skill tier and no skill damage attributes, I'm just trying to determine, of the 2 attributes and all other things being equal, while having no effect on skills, if I had to choose only one, which is best to get the most out of a drone? Has anyone tested this?

If not, I will Test it. I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask and I might be able to save myself months of grinding just to find out.
I've searched forums and the web but have not been able to come across this question before.

Much appreciated, Exnihilo
aka N-O-U-S...

@n-o-u-s Fundamentally, Skill Tier is to Skill Damage what Critical Hit Chance is to Critical Hit Damage. If you have 200% CHD, but 0% CHC, then you have zero chance of having bonus damage applied, and the 200% is a wasted investment, ceteris paribus. This is why all critical hit builds first focus on maximizing (60%) chance, and then damage; so as to maximize occurrence of invested bonus damage. This may appear to be an extreme example to demonstrate a point, but we had exactly this scenario before us with one individual, and after our explanation, they retorted, "But I have 200% CHD!".

Although not as definitive as the above example, Skill Tier is basal skill power; damage for lethal skills (ie. mortar turret, assault turret, striker drone, oxidizer/corrosive chem launcher, etc.), and distraction efficacy ("status effects") for non-/less-lethal skills/devices (ie. blinder firefly, foam chem launcher, EMP, shock traps, decoy, etc.).

WRT hybridization, the ultimate intent of this topic, it is best suited for survivability under some permutation of lower difficulties and individualistic gameplay. When the game shifted over to an arcade-style extreme bullet-sponge fest, it quickly became apparent that a jack-of-all-trades-but-master-of-none approach was ineffectual and directly responsible for teammate casualties on the highest difficulties (raids, legendaries). Consequently, builds shifted towards an all-in approach, and specialists were tasked respectively under coordinated team play.

Skill tier since the overall upgrade it will give for other aspects will easily be better than skill damage with no tier

@v4mpir1
Interesting, I learned something new.

Thank you!

@xcel30
This makes sense, I never thought of it that way.

Thank you!

@n-o-u-s I have made six tier skill builds with a huge amount of skill damage or status effects depending on the build, sure your turret, drone, hive etc will melt enemies, but you lose out with weapon damage, you are firing cream puffs at them. I did that when wanting to go up SHD levels fast with little effort, I let the skills do all the work.

If you use Perfect Insync on your gun, it will do good damage when both weapon and skill kills are made.
Plus it is easier to proc your skills.

@hralex1951

If you use Perfect Insync on your gun, it will do good damage when both weapon and skill kills are made.

^^^^
This, completely. My fav skill build (by far) is my EP/Status build. It's full on with status damage on every piece and skill haste for secondary attributes. There is zero red in this build.

However, my weapons of choice are Test Subject and Harmony (for long distances). Get the double buff going with both skill and weapon damage (usually a dropped Stinger hive) and my gun isn't shooting "cream puffs" any more. It's actually a fairly potent combo, and shreds almost everything easily.

None of that helps how squishy this build is though, so I have to spend lots of time behind cover. (lol)