“Diablo (1) did not have skill trees, it was a feature added to Diablo II, and then more or less copied by World of Warcraft. Some could say to World of Warcraft’s detriment as it’s been struggling with how to cope with a skill tree system, which has huge inherent issues with very little benefit, for years. Diablo III, like Diablo II, is an evolution of the series and game systems.”

‘Cause then it woulda looked silly when they used the same animation fer that tanking trinket’s Dodge effect. Cain’t be havin’ that, oh no….

Picking a small number of active skills is immensely more engaging than having several actionbars of situational skills. Rift has it particularly bad with all the mostly redundant skills, if they kept the number of skills low per soul, it would have been more interesting when combining souls, and it’s the worst game for over-reliance on macros to automate the experience.

Hopefully it is more difficult to min/max than to find a couple of builds that have good variety and can be changed up depending on situation, and some of the runestones just sound more fun than others.