You said it correctly. For casual players, there is not much build diversity on an exalt or two, but that does not mean there isn't build diversity in general. Sentinel league was bad and people started spamming RF because of the broken archnemesis mods making people prioritize tanky builds, and the most popular is RF Inquistor. However, when we get to ashes of the stars with great mana reservation effeciency, this opens up a lot of options. With ashes i beleieve absolutely any skill can be taken to T16+. If you go up to a 50+ ex budget and some crafting knowledge, most skills can be taken to pinnacle bosses. The bottom line is that the majority of the playerbase is really quite bad at the game, thats why the build diversity is bad statistically. They have to follow build guides in order to play, so the 10-15 most popular build guides end up dominatiing the meta. Hopefully with the unique item buffs and reworked league mechanics people can learn to farm some currency and start making their own builds. 99% of the playerbase can't even name 20 active skills.
![[PoE] My most insane RNG event in 5 years of Path of Exile - Stream Highlights #573](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Qntaj5MgU1g/mqdefault.jpg)
You said it correctly. For casual players, there is not much build diversity on an exalt or two, but that does not mean there isn't build diversity in general. Sentinel league was bad and people started spamming RF because of the broken archnemesis mods making people prioritize tanky builds, and the most popular is RF Inquistor. However, when we get to ashes of the stars with great mana reservation effeciency, this opens up a lot of options. With ashes i beleieve absolutely any skill can be taken to T16+. If you go up to a 50+ ex budget and some crafting knowledge, most skills can be taken to pinnacle bosses.
The bottom line is that the majority of the playerbase is really quite bad at the game, thats why the build diversity is bad statistically. They have to follow build guides in order to play, so the 10-15 most popular build guides end up dominatiing the meta.
Hopefully with the unique item buffs and reworked league mechanics people can learn to farm some currency and start making their own builds. 99% of the playerbase can't even name 20 active skills.