Past a certain point, you have all of the Passives you really need, and I can definitely think of a few Skills that I’d love to have just one or two extra points for, so I think it’d be nice if we could convert Passive points into Skill Levels. There’s not much else to the concept - just something that would give some extra build options.
I figure a decent limit would be every 4 Skill Levels allows you to put a Passive point into it, so you can have up to 5 Passive points put in at Skill Level 20. If you’re absolutely committed to the idea, you could sink 25 Passive Points into Skill Levels, but I can’t imagine someone doing something like that outside of memes.
I have messed with quite a few builds that dont actually use the last 20 or so passives - well, they dont make a huge difference to the build… So sacrificing the “oh where to put the last few passives” might be interesting. There are also a few early nodes that you take because you have to, not because you want to and putting them towards getting another skill point could be way better - especially if these passives count toward passive node requirements.
A simple way to “employ” this idea may be to add an additional passive tree to the class passive. Like a separate line at the bottom, where it has a row of 4 or 5 nodes evenly spaced, with each requiring 5 passive points to “activate”, each would then add 1 Skill point to that base class skills as if the character were wearing a +1 skill gear item. It would have the same benefit as also adding passive points to allow you to get further in the passive tree. Maybe they apply to the skills that you unlock based on passive point spend
With the recent patches its pretty easy to get fairly high +skill boosts from gear so I doubt any skill would be excessively overpowered by this and it may even make for, as you say, some extra build options.
