The Passive Skill Tree Needs Color Coordination!

I'm really liking the passive skill tree, but one of the things I hear people say is how it's intimidating. However, I don't think that needs to be the case. Right now the tree is structured in a very neat ordered manner with specialized skills clustered into groups, "highways" to connect those groups, and the entire map divided into three divisions for STR, INT, and DEX. On that note, I suggest the following to make the structure and purpose of the tree more obvious.

1. The tree is currently split into thirds, with one third being INT passives, one third DEX, and one third STR. You should tint the background with red, green, or blue to reflect the primary attributes of the skills underneath it.

2. The lines connecting the "highway nodes" should be more prominent, or alternatively the lines on the skill clusters should be more prominent. Just something to more clearly distinguish the "meat and potatoes" skill clusters from the "filler" highway nodes.

3. Skills which affect a particular weapon type or elemental damage type should have the background around them color coded.

4. Keystone skills, and other unique and exotic skills and skill clusters should get some extra-special highlighting to distinguish them from the more mundane skills.

I concur with Strill. Regarding 3. - weapon/armour/damage skills are usually (or always?) grouped. Therefore it makes sense and would be feasible to display big icons (e.g. an axe, a breastplate or a flame) behind these groups in the background, so that you can easily locate where to find what.

A smashing idea! I think a couple of added colors and graphics would make very quick work of deciphering the sprawling skill tree. Even people familiar with it such as veteran beta players could benefit from taking a quick glance and the added graphics to help them plan for their next couple skill points.

Background icons would be applicable to "Frenzy", "One Handed", "Spells", etc. as well. Love this idea.

Yep I actually spend a lot of time looking for that needed skill... this should help a lot.

Some sort of categorization would be definitely be appreciated. Marvelous Idea

Amazing idea! I can't stress how much time I have spent/wasted combing through the passive skill tree. Even when I have already planned out a path I find myself zooming in and out for many minutes just trying to recall where certain skills are located. It is an amazing system and all it lacks is differentiation, classification, codification, and coloration.

Sweet god that would be usefull , ten minutes ago i just finished looking for all the minions skills and it took 15 minutes ...

Would really love a good way to see diffrent "nodes" and such

As a poor beta-key-less fan looking in from the cold outside I'd like to say this sounds like a great idea that would help new players a lot.

Excellent idea!

Probably change only backgrounds and group skills by some kind of factor. (Weapon, Damage, Elemental, Stats)
And regroup them to better clustered.

Another useful addition could be : skill filter!
We can choose needed ones and fade others.
Because this idea with whole list is good, but still there is majority of players who FOCUS on something instead of doing jack-of-all-trades.