The past few content patches have narrowed the styles of play. Having to upgrade everything in one tree before moving on leaves less room for customization and therefore a less competitive style of play all around. I would hope that new patches would resolve ths by not having to have 100% complete a previous tree to unlock the next one. One suggestion is to have a minimum point balance in order to unlock the next tree (meteorite, firetoken, exotic merchant and I'm going to assume talent and alchemist soon) Encouraging just one style of play limits people's options and will not retain many players once they progress into the midgame. Please reconsider point allocation/tree unlock mechanisms in the future.

I think there are some other issues that makes it so there's less room for customization. Fact that armor is a completely useless stat. Totally under powered with 90% cap, and you quickly lose any benefits that armor gives. People just ignore it. Also with more and more heroes, it gets easier to create a big enough difference between damage and HP to make glass cannon build work and once you get there, it's the only way forward. If more heroes are being added, HP / balanced build becomes totally obselete or a disadvantage, just like leveling armor. Total waste of time and crystals. Very quicky 4 mana + spellcaster heroes were added to the game. Together with all the specialization researches/upgrades, such as mana, rage and energy resource, fist fight, projectiles and magic spells, and healer, damage and tank specialization. You basically wanna use as little specializations as possible, while giving most heroes the benefit. Mana + Spellcaster heroes is the only way forward. If people can unlock new trees, without having to max them. This problem probably get worse. Because right now people would just focus on mana + spellcaster heroes, move to the next tree. Do it all over again. Now when you have to max the trees, at least everytime you max out a tree, you sort of put all heroes or stats on equal footing. And so with the new tree, you can decide again what the best approach is. If I didn't have to max out trees. I probably wouldn't have switched to a Guardian Build. Because Guardian research would be ignored in tree 1 and tree 2. However, since I did have to max the trees. Guardians kept up with heroes damage. And in Tree 3, as GP is the first research, and it gives 68% per level, 60 levels max. It actually became a good alternative for a quick push forward.

Seconded. Research or talent trees in most games usually mean that you can't upgrade everything and you have a certain freedom to choose what you specialize in. They just don’t make sense when you have to upgrade everything. And it is especially annoying that we have to upgrade armor, which is totally useless. (now in exotic merchant, too) Since we have an upgrade system in the form of research trees, it would be much more fun to be able to choose your own path.

I completely agree. There is no build when you are compelled to evolve everything in parallel. What we have is just the freedom to choose the heroes that will best fit the mechanics of the build already pre-defined by the game. We can't even try to "shape" our playing styles through equipment, as armor is useless. What we have left is attack and health. And it's clear to everyone that focusing on attack provides the most effective evolution. And as far as Verkade says, in my opinion, if the player has regretted a decision or made a decision in favor of a certain stage of the game and wants to "reassemble" his build he must work hard at it. Betting on your instincts is part of any decent game... ...As well as paying for your mistakes.