Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
Unless made incredibly well (as in, there are next to no functional examples available across all MMORPGs, even per a particular tier of a particular expansion for a particular class) where multiple builds are optimal. Even then, a talent tree on its own only gives you the choice of what you want to prune from yourself, and limits your options to, typically, the most exciting choices. You can have exciting choices 1 and 2 of the 8, or 3 and 6, or... so on. Isn't it better generally to just have more intelligent button usage designs in the first place, pick a theme and build, and make the most of it instead of spreading the class thin in attempting to support for the sake of choice?

To be clear, I am generally an advocate of things like talent trees... as tools of character progression, world-building, and character-world interactions. But, they are among the poorest solutions for combating bloat, which is the only way it'd be able to replace pruning anyways.
Check Path of Exile