All classes should be able start in any area.

Build diversity would increase if you can pick your starting area instead of being forced to say start north if you pick witch/sorc.

The passive tree idea came from Final Fantasy 10. The key part of using the board was using friend spheres. ie changing your starting zone.

Why can't a warrior start in the sorc area if they want to cast spells.

Because they wanna keep the illusion that the tree holds diversity,but still pigeon-hole players into what they want the archetype to do in general.

Like it'd be fun to make a Witch totem build that scales off it's elemental damage,but they seem to want to relegate everything to its own playstyle.

The idea of starting all at a central point would quickly neutralize classes though the ascendancies moderate that. I think a central starting point is not necessarily wrong but then I used to play Scion in POE1 a lot.

This would destroy what it means to be a class and what ascending means. Witches would no longer ascend to lich if they can start in the warrior area. Starting in the warrior area is what makes a warrior a warrior.

I actually think it wouldn't increase build diversity. A few ascendencies would quickly become the best for each weapon/skill. It's even possible one ascendency would become the best for every weapon/skill. I don't think this is a great idea.

It would also defeat the purpose of having multiple characters in the first place.

If every character could start on the passive tree wherever wanted, they may as well delete all these characters, bring back Scion and let her access every ascension.

Moreover, it would be a drastic *reduction* to build variety to allow this.

Chober Chaber.
Two handed mace that goes with minion builds.
People are going to want to use melee on Witch, add Minions to Warrior, and use it on Templar once that's an option.

If characters can start wherever they want on the tree, then the Warrior, Witch, and Templar melee minion builds will be identical. No variety.

With the characters having different starting points, then the Warrior, Witch, and Templar melee minion builds are three different builds. Variety.

This was how the earliest passive trees were in the PoE1 closed beta. Every class started in the center point, but each class got different bonuses from attributes. You could go anywhere on the tree as any class, but if you cross-classed your build, it would be inherently weaker than a class that stuck to its main attribute (this was when there were only 3 classes).

This setup didn't last very long. As new classes were planned, there needed to be some distinguishing factor between them, and that was starting points. Now, in PoE2, we have classes and sub-classes, and there is still a need to distinguish them.

You can still get to where you want to go, you just have to figure out the shortest paths to get there while taking important nodes for your build along the way.

I have a Warrior/Warbringer that uses Dark Effigy totems and Essence Drain as my main DPS source. Why warrior though? because +1 to maximum totems and the shield block defenses, there are totem nodes, chaos damage nodes, duration nodes going up towards the witch area, etc.

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Jakzca#7793 wrote:

You can still get to where you want to go, you just have to figure out the shortest paths to get there while taking important nodes for your build along the way.

I have a Warrior/Warbringer that uses Dark Effigy totems and Essence Drain as my main DPS source. Why warrior though? because +1 to maximum totems and the shield block defenses, there are totem nodes, chaos damage nodes, duration nodes going up towards the witch area, etc.

This ^
Played all three patches with the mace blood mage.
Of course there's some ineffective travel nodes, especially starting one which gives spell damage, though i can wear the crown of eyes to use it anyway.
But if you want to play "effectively" just play meta as most players do. If you want to play for fun - you can easily do whatever you want.

Imo that's the whole point of having the shared tree and its very cool in PoE in general, no other arpg that allowed this. And that's why i was a bit upset when they introduced class-specific nodes on the tree, it was a little of out PoE main idea i think.