Why are there so many flask nodes on the tree?

The game isn’t finished, but I agree. There is a ton of filler on the tree that nobody takes. It looks impressive but doesn’t meaningfully shape decision making.

They needed something to replace all the life nodes

I believe that it's part of their vision. They want players to constantly use flasks, rather than destroying everything with leech and other mechanics so quickly that they never run out of their health or manapool. It just isn't really working, because players will always want to make builds that reduce or completely get rid of having to use flasks - mainly because it's way safer to leech in an instant rather than having to rely on finger reflexes. This includes bosses too. I guess they're good for some campaign bosses while leveling if your build is (very) weak damage wise but that's about it. It's nearly always better to have more damage or defences which in themselves already reduce the need for flasks. So yeah, I agree that there's way too much flask nodes for no reason. I guess that some unique build might use them in the future but right now, they're mainly completely useless.

I feel like 50% of the nodes are just trash that nobody takes. Shitty flask nodes, super situational nodes, charm nodes, just to name a few that take up much of the tree

There are just so many dead node clusters overall. Some just have weird conditionals and some just provide almost no benefit like the flask ones. And some just provide very little for the cost.

Yeah and Flasks are kinda meaningless anyways. in 0.1 you Act1 they mattered but now last 2 seasons I dont think I have ever even looked at the modifiers. And when it comes to tree yeah no way im taking any of those nodes.

I suspect the answer is that GGG has overextended their development resources for a long time now, so they simply don't have the the resources available to work on things like the passive tree.

We'd all consider the refining and iterating on the passive tree to be important to the game, but when it comes to development triaging it is currently up against things like finishing the campaign acts, classes, ascendancies, weapon types, skills, endgame system rework, next league mechanic, and PoE1 development. With that much overextension of their workers, even important things are getting ignored since there are even more important things.

It's very obvious that GGG severely underestimated the amount of work that PoE2 would take. They've admitted as much, so that's not even a guess at this point. It's just a massive undertaking and they need a lot more time to get the game where they want it.

You have to remember what the mindset was going into poe2.

They saw the success of poe1 but saw how far it had strayed from their goal of a grindy difficult punishing but also rewarding experience. PoE1 became a game where unless your build was 1 tapping entire screens moving at > +100% MS, many didn't want to even consider it viable, and certainly not popular. 99% of the content there is trivial with a bit of practice.

They went into poe2 wanting to make a far more grueling and challenging experience that forced players to stay on the edge of their seat at all times requiring constant focus. Flask usage was part of that. They like flasks, but only when you as the player actually use them. They wanted to all but kill any form of automation (though oddly left in one of the single best sources of automation in the entire game w/ CoC). With flasks having to be used manually, they wanted to provide ways for you to improve it like any of your other metrics like life (oops, nm), defenses, damage, etc. They had figured all players would of course need to be constantly monitoring flask usage and would want improvements for it.

When 1.0 officially launches and a whole new wave of players who haven't played poe1 and don't want to pay for EA come in, maybe they'll finally get the undeniable feedback that literally no one wants this and give up some of their absurd design philosophies.

idk amazon pathfinder flask techs.

is it just me or is 100 Skill points not enough to do what you want.

you grab some defence like energy shield, some damage maybe Some nodes for power charges And whoops Your all outta skill points. You cant grab ailment buildup, crits or whatever else you wanted

When concoction builds were in a better place those flask nodes were very useful. If more of those nodes had to do with charms I feel it would fit better overall though.