Remove damage from start of passive tree and bake it into the skills

I make tons of new characters and try a lot of different build combinations on hardcore and the game just feels bad if you don't go for damage in levels 1-6 and pretty much 6-10 also. The damage should just be automatically incorporated to the skill gems at these levels and the passive tree should instead be offering a choice other than damage vs defense.

Main motivation for this change is that it would allow more build flexibility to come online at lower levels. If I want to make a Bow Sorceress/Witch or a Caster Warrior which is one of the great features of the skill gem system I have to suffer in the early game because the first levels are a complete slog without the right type of damage.

The proposed change is to remove damage from the start of the passive tree and bake it into the skill gem levels naturally. The game should feel the same as if you would have taken the damage nodes, but you may have some extra utility from the passive tree such as Stun Buildup, Regenerate Maximum Life, or Stun Threshold on Warrior for example. Is anyone actually taking any of those nodes at the start of the game?

I have tried going full Energy Shield on Sorceress many times and it just feels so much worse than going for damage, even on hardcore.

Sounds about right. The damage nodes in the different start areas do feel mandatory very early on. And that's not even mentioning that even if one would allocate the early defense nodes instead, it would probably be in their interest to deallocate them later on and switch to the damage ones anyway since stuff like +5 shield or +10 evasion etc become fairly meaningless in late game.
So there's basically little point in having the defense ones at all. Moving the damage elsewhere wouldn't make them more meaningful though. But the start nodes could use a rework indeed

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unmasque1#3357 wrote:

The damage should just be automatically incorporated to the skill gems at these levels and the passive tree should instead be offering a choice other than damage vs defense.

+1

No. Never going to happen.

It is complicated build subject to explain. You need to be long time poe player and have understanding of building.

Utility is absolutely useless.

If you put no damage, people will shortcut to the nearest damage.

That is the basic law for starting. No exceptions.

Later you start switching those increases for multipliers and defenses.

Also, the DPS chain is about 100% in most cases.

You are talking about hidden 100% damage increase to all skills in game.

Forget it.