Why does "Elemental Nova" only have one upgrade passive?

[Marikhen]

Just started playing the Mage, liking Elemental Nova, and after looking at the passive grid I'm somewhat disappointed that Arcana Elementorum is the only passive you can use to upgrade Elemental Nova.

Yes, I can clearly see "Ice Nova," "Fire Nova," and "Lightning Nova" and all the upgrades past them. I'm just curious if anyone knows why "Elemental Nova" only has one upgrade strictly for itself because I like the concept of an "everything in one" nova and the specialization or cycling options the individual Nova sidegrades offer obviously break that.

[Draken]

There is also Silenced Spark.

If you go into the Lightning Nova you can turn Elemental Nova into a channel and then remove the Lightning Nova again, reenabling Elemental Nova now as a channeled skill.

You can then also take quite a few of the other passives behind Lightning Nova.

[Psojed]

There's a unique item that makes Elemental Nova always an "Elemental Nova" regardless of what nodes you pick.

[Mark Stroker]

because the game is bad

[Marikhen]

Originally posted by Draken:

There is also Silenced Spark.

If you go into the Lightning Nova you can turn Elemental Nova into a channel and then remove the Lightning Nova again, reenabling Elemental Nova now as a channeled skill.

You can then also take quite a few of the other passives behind Lightning Nova.

The developers let you break pathing like that on the passive grids?

[Draken]

Originally posted by Marikhen:

Originally posted by Draken:

There is also Silenced Spark.

If you go into the Lightning Nova you can turn Elemental Nova into a channel and then remove the Lightning Nova again, reenabling Elemental Nova now as a channeled skill.

You can then also take quite a few of the other passives behind Lightning Nova.

The developers let you break pathing like that on the passive grids?

What do you mean with "break pathing"?

[Marikhen]

Originally posted by Draken:

Originally posted by Marikhen:

The developers let you break pathing like that on the passive grids?

What do you mean with "break pathing"?

Remove nodes in the middle of a chain. You put points in A, then B, then C, and then remove B.

[Draken]

Originally posted by Marikhen:

Originally posted by Draken:

What do you mean with "break pathing"?

Remove nodes in the middle of a chain. You put points in A, then B, then C, and then remove B.

It's not doing that.
It just disables part of the effect of a node. Kind of like a lot of other nodes do. The secondary +7% more damage effect of the Lightning Nova mod even stays.

With your example of nodes A, B and C:

If you enable C it does something, but in return disables part of what node B does. All nodes are still active and doing something.

[Marikhen]

Ah, gotcha. I was reading Luminaire for some reason, not Silenced Spark.

Shame none of the other elemental nodes do that because having to turn Elemental Nova into a channeled skill just to upgrade it past 4 points feels like a pretty big downside for any build that doesn't want or need a channeled nova.