The folks at Pirates of the Burning Sea have posted the latest in their series of Developer diaries which examine the class and skill changes in version 1.4 of the game.

If you havent read about the general skill changes, check the start of the first devlog in this series. You can find it here. The general changes to Cutthroat(new pirates) are linked to the new Buccaneer career. You can find information on the Buccaneer here.

A lot of the cutthroat changes were aimed at skill order and acquisition instead of new skills, since they already have so much functionality. The old skullduggery chain is gone, although some of the skills still exist. Due to the addition of the Buccaneer, Cutthroats now have the same number of skills as other careers. The two careers are intended to work together with complimentary abilities to compete on even terms against national groups. The removed skills were generally tiered skills and redundant skills. Were trying to move all the important Cutthroat functionality into a more condensed list, thereby providing more options with the same skill selection. This is harder to quantify, but important.

Read more here.