The Passive Tree should be the same across all classes.

I think the witch part of the tree is a placeholder because witch was not initially planned to be released in the EA [Druid was probably "in" instead].

I have played only with witch since early December and my feeling is that it is a heavily undercooked character which is only "in" because it has the animations to make it mechanically functional in the game.

As result, I wouldn't take these tree nodes as "the norm" for POE2 for now.

Let's see what happens once "the other" minion character [druid] is released and see what's the state of the tree at that time.

Aren't the changes only affecting the areas around the class start though? To account for gameplay differences and make early game smoother? Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about as I didn't even notice any changes. My witch and my sorc went all different ways anyway.

I strongly agreed when i first saw they are different, but actually there are reason to make them so as Jonathan said in one of the videos (i dont remember what exactly, i belive one of the ZiggyD podcasts).
And those reason tbh are kinda legit.

The difference between starting locations aren't that huge (but can be annoying non the less). Played both caster BM and sparkmage sorc.
Starting BM/Witch nodes are all about minions pretty much, making them useless for a caster build, but i personaly didnt find it that much troublesome.

I kinda dont mind the current consept, but deep in the heart i would prefer the tree to be the same across all clases as well. Its gonna bring PoE2 closer to PoE1, but i feel like the consept of united tree is what makes PoE.

It's honestly extremely minor and not build breaking in the slightest but I do think it's kind of unnecessary.

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Ankh_13#4218 wrote:

Aren't the changes only affecting the areas around the class start though? To account for gameplay differences and make early game smoother? Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about as I didn't even notice any changes. My witch and my sorc went all different ways anyway.

They are, but again, compared to Witch Sorc has quite nice ES/Mana nodes at the start making it tiny bit better for some builds.
Not every witch plays minions, but also can say the same about Sorc.
Who knows, there might be minion Sorc builds in future, so imo making the hybrid starting locations would be better, but will be more cluncky.

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Leent_j#1771 wrote:

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Ankh_13#4218 wrote:

Aren't the changes only affecting the areas around the class start though? To account for gameplay differences and make early game smoother? Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about as I didn't even notice any changes. My witch and my sorc went all different ways anyway.

They are, but again, compared to Witch Sorc has quite nice ES/Mana nodes at the start making it tiny bit better for some builds.
Not every witch plays minions, but also can say the same about Sorc.
Who knows, there might be minion Sorc builds in future, so imo making the hybrid starting locations would be better, but will be more cluncky.

Sound like there should be even more options and routes around the starting area. But making the tree even more convoluted, especially at the beginning comes with its own problems, I guess they wanted to avoid that and optimize for new player experience.

And hybrid nodes, people will always complain that they "don't use half of that" and would prefer specialized ones.

They should honestly remove the early defense options because they are a trap anyway. Just remove them and replace them with the witch/sorc notables.

+1

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Ankh_13#4218 wrote:

Sound like there should be even more options and routes around the starting area. But making the tree even more convoluted, especially at the beginning comes with its own problems, I guess they wanted to avoid that and optimize for new player experience.

Agreen, currently i feel like PoE1 tree is more interesting, but 2's tree isn't bad at all.
More options can be confusing, and im pretty sure they dont want it.

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Ankh_13#4218 wrote:

And hybrid nodes, people will always complain that they "don't use half of that" and would prefer specialized ones.

Actually the reason why they made it like that.
Jonathan said that if there was a node giving 8% spell damage and 8% minion damage, players didnt really pick it compared to just 8% spell/minion damage.

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The_Song#4903 wrote:

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ibims111#7338 wrote:

...

POE1: Each class has the same tree but starts at a different location.
POE2: Each class has the same tree but starts at the center of the tree with a different starting point.

They are both the exact same system. All classes in each game share the same big tree, each node on the tree is the same for each class in each of the poe games.

Incorrect.

Each starting area is going to have 3 version in poe2.
One for each of the classes that actually starts there, and a third generic one for any other class.
Currently we can already see that the Witch has some of the spell nodes replaced with minion nodes nobody else gets.

please explain. so, I got it that witch differs with minions nodes. Clearly game breaking. But what are those 3 versions of the skill tree?

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ibims111#7338 wrote:

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Bakubylozajete#1182 wrote:

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POE1: Each class has the same tree but starts at a different location.
POE2: Each class has the same tree but starts at the center of the tree with a different starting point.

They are both the exact same system.

Check starting nodes of Witch and Sorceress.
They are different.
The same will be true for all dual class from the same starting point.
Which means that in PoE2 characters don't have the same tree.

okay, I might got this wrong, there are a bunch of nodes at the start that are different. But does this bother you because now you have to work around the fact that you have choice? Seems not like a severe issue to me.

The inportant stuff, howa, mom, etc. those nodes are the same. Honestly, who cares about 8% minion damage nodes in the first 20 levels? this does not make or break a build. I hope they will keep it as is. It makes sense that a warrior cannot spec into minion damage at lvl 1. It makes sense that a witch cannot spec in to attack speed at lvl 1. This has to do with a coherent game, consistent world and class fantasy.

If you prefer to level with minions you either take witch to benefit from the starting nodes, or you go with the class of choice and work around the lack of minion nodes at the start. Or you do not level with minions and enjoy another leveling build until you can reroll into the desired build. Part of the game.

What you´re really asking for basically is, that we do not need any classes, we just login, start at the coast with the same tree for all, the nodes should be a drop down to select which ever fits your build best and with the first ascendancy you get another drop down to chose the ascendancy from. No class fantasy, no solving, no work around, just boring builds cause everyone plays the exact same thing. Because without obstacles like we have currently, there only is one best build.