are the passives weird or is it just me?

[Tanyon]

There are 18 passives.

10 of them seem to be good for any build. They pair with anything. True passives.

Then the other 8 are specific to that skill tree and are situational passives based on whether you are using that skill type.

All three frost ones are ONLY good for frost. None of my clan uses that so we never even bothered unlocking those.

I think maybe they should have done 1 of two things.

1) Make the top passives all universal like: reduce V blood damage, increase speed while in shape shift, do X more weapon damage, do x more spell damage, get X increase in leech. Then the other two tiers apply to only those skills so +10% damage with chaos spells, 15% chance to summon +1 addition skeleton with unholy spells etc..

2) Make them all universal or all skill type dependent.

It just seems like there is 0 rhyme or reason to anything they did with this.. or maybe I'm completely off my rocker.

Now mind you I do not play PVP so maybe this might be more of a PVP thing? No idea.

[Xenobunny]

I think the passives are worth speculation and discussion, for the future of the game.
Vrising has a lot in common with World of Warcraft classic in the way balance works. WoW classic utilised damage types, resistances, and a whole whack of conditional effects (debuffs) exclusive to classes to create some lateral play in a player's power scaling. Beyond your character's level and basic stats, the spell schools of frost, fire, ect. and the conditional effects associated with them greatly extended the nuance of late game content. You had to overcome Molten core with fire resist gear, Naxxramas with frost resist gear. This specificity of a build extended to the classes in pvp and made the experience more varied. It also dulled the power gap. It is more possible for a lvl 20 to defeat a level 30+ if there is a greater array of utility to put to play rather than the raw gap in stats/damage.
When WoW retail came along it crunched that nuance back into simple numbers, simpler conditions, and we got the item level system. Nobody considers damage type or the variable utilities. The conditions are flat (stun, dot, snare) with fewer modifiers that make these features a signature of your character. It is only the march to the next number for your item level. Lateral potential is reduced and player's invest less in their characters uniqueness.

If Vrising develops an expansion, the present system for spells and weapons will likely find a tier 4. But because the game is not exactly an mmo, it runs on a server life cycle, it must provide lateral power scaling to afford levelling players a sense of signature in a world that goes from power cap 100 to power cap 150. For PvP, and because the game expects you to play it cyclically in pve if you play online. You are likely to play again and exclusive modifiers keep the rise to power a forked path.