The more spirit gems you add, the more you force us to use 3+

I hate this level of socket pressure. I wanna use different skills, not passively have strong effects.

Weird direction. You talked about an "aura" meta gem once, where the fuck did that go?

I believe spirit gems should simply not take slots at all period. They're already limited by the spirit pool.

And anyway why even have a limited number of slots at all? What's wrong if I wanted to make a 20 active skills build? But asking for unlimited slots might be going too far for GGG.. So...

I've been saying this since 0.1: the more I level up the more I am "forced" to replace fun active skills with spirit gems. And in the end I am always left with 1 or 2 active skills and the rest is all just passive buffs. My passive tree has nothing that is specific about my weapon so I could use weapon swap easily, mix playstyles, have more engaging combat. But if I do that I leave 2/3 of the damage on the table.... This issue is the reason why I had so much fun playing acolyte with darkness! All my skills were active, combat was dynamic, it was fun! (But not worth it in comparison)

I agree. Gem slots should either be unlimited or at the very least there should be unlimited slots for spirit gems and separate slots for the second weapon set.

Definitely need more slots for alternate weapon set usage.

Druid proves that right now.

As a wolf I am using 6 active skills to pull off combos and synergies.
I was considering to use wolf for single target and bear for swarms/trash, but I realised I dont really have enough gem slots to pull that off.

So in theory, the passive tree allows for interesting interactions due to each weapon slot allowed to have a sliver of differing passive tree points allocated (e.g. I would lean into cold for wolf and fire for bear, using two talismans).
This is kinda cool and allows even more build crafting than POE1, but then is limited by how many active skills you can slot, making those plans kinda meh.