Choice constriction

[SealedInSong]

I love this game and I will not threaten to leave it or any other such silliness based off of some preliminary reports to changes in my gameplay. I think there are a lot of really wonderful things about this enhancement pass, including more SLAs for all classes, new and flavorful abilities, and a much more palatable layout than before.

Now that that's out of the way, my general impression is that I will have fewer choices than ever in how my character evolves.

Off the top of my head:

• I can't choose to have a lot more HP or a lot fewer HP for something else--we're all just getting autogranted HP based off of the purity of our class split.
  Lost: choice of investing in HP, the multifaceted choices of multiclassing splits. Gained: more incentive for everyone to wear the same armor, have the same 20 levels in a specific class, have the same XxCharnamexX, etc.
• I can't choose to specialize in a specific element; instead, I have to pump up my Intelligence base and modifiers and treat every element the same unless I'm a specific prestige.
  Lost: choice of mastering an element or magic type. Gained: "general magic" ability that everyone else has.
• I can't choose to self-heal in specialist/hybrid classes as well as before on account of a lack of positive spellpower lines. Moreover, I can't choose to focus on positive healing unless I spend a ton of points in a prestige that I don't necessarily want as a cleric. Nor can I even invest in negative energy spellpower in the Heal skill as a pale master (though I haven't seen the pale master tree yet, so this may be mitigated somewhat).
  Lost: choice of being self-sufficient to whichever degree I want. Gained: the ability to activate auto attack and be at the mercy of the healbots behind me who are also denied the ability to choose the split of healing/meleeing/offensive spellcasting that they once were.
• I can't choose from a diverse profile of enhancements before I get a capstone; I have to purchase a bunch of trash enhancements to qualify for my capstone.
  Lost: choice of purchasing only the lines that interested me and then getting the cherry on top of the capstone. Gained: a bunch of useless enhancements like Wand Heightening before I get to the pithy core abilities that everyone wants and needs, such as Wand & Scroll Mastery.

I went back over this list to try to remove as much snark as possible because I don't believe it generally helps the community or devs to wade through in most cases, but there's enough alarming material out there in the preview that I can't contain myself.

I'd like to open this thread to specific comments from the community about what choices they've lost and how to regain them. Thanks for your time.