I admit it: I'm a coward. The first time I fired up Path of Exile 1, accidentally tabbing over to its sprawling passive skill tree filled me with an instinctual dread, like I was coming face to face with some ancestral human enemy. How could my frail, mortal mind ever hope to make sense of it? Dejected, scared, defeated, I slinked off back to more understandable videogames.
I was determined not to do the same thing when I got into Path of Exile 2. I failed. Mostly. I have to be honest, seeing the approximately 8 billion winding nodes in PoE2's passive tree was no less intimidating than seeing them in the first game. It just fits badly into my brain: What if I make a mistake? What if I embark down a road that completely stunts my character, dooming me in the long run? There are a thousand different commitments to make and they all seem vital and irreversible—the skill tree looks like a maze, and I feared that taking a wrong turn could lead me to some inescapable dead end.
