Path of exile offers a lot of choice, but it also offers a lot of the illusion of choice. The more builds you make, the more you realize that you need to spend most of your nodes on boring things, and rarely on things that make you do more damage. People tend to take a lot of damage nodes when they are newer to the game, which works really really well early on, so it’s easy to get suckered into. The “kill it before it kills you” strategy works really well, right up the point where it doesn’t, and then your character tends to be unplayable. It’s one of the many pitfalls of POE lol.
It’s all ok though, because the learning process and experimenting is most of the fun of the game. Seeing how far you can push a build idea is endless hours of fun really. If you do start looking around at build guides, you’ll notice that they are all very similar when it comes to defense and utility vs damage nodes.
POE is at least 3 different games. Early game areas 1-5, mid game 5-10, and then mapping and lab runs. All 3 of those often require a rethink on your build. It’s one reason you see so many guides that use different skill sets to level vs what the actual end game build is going to be. Many build don’t even use the skills they are ultimately going to use until level 60+.
POE certainly gives you enough things to think about, and understand. It’s one of the reasons the game has such great longevity, there seems like there is always something to learn.