The suggested gems has a few of its own problems that I'm surprised they haven't fixed yet. But no, not that.
I think you're overreading intent into what are mostly clarity and balance constraints, not some grand attempt to kill creativity. Yes, Rathpith changing from generic spell damage to non-channeling spells is a narrowing, but it's also a response to PoE1's long-standing problem where broad modifiers end up being mathematically correct for everything and functionally meaningless as choices. Specialization isn't inherently railroading, sometimes it's the only way uniques don't just collapse into "best-in-slot for every caster."
The same logic applies to things like Heralds requiring specific weapon types or Lightning Rod being locked to Lightning Arrow. Those restrictions aren't random flavor decisions, they're guardrails. In PoE1, the moment a mechanic proved even remotely efficient, it tended to metastasize across the entire skill ecosystem. One interaction would become numerically correct for dozens of builds(hi2u impale, reservation abuse, stat-stick offhands pre-3.5, etc.)that had no thematic or mechanical relationship to it, simply because the system allowed it.
We've seen this cycle play out repeatedly in PoE1. Broadly applicable mechanics turn into universal enablers, then get scaled back, reworded, or nerfed into irrelevance after dominating for a league or two. GGG spent years playing whack-a-mole with unintended synergies that trivialized balance and crowded out alternative options, not because creativity was flourishing, but because the rules were too permissive to sustain long-term health.
PoE2 is very clearly trying to address that at the foundation. By tying certain mechanics to specific weapons or skills, they're limiting how fast and how far a single interaction can spread. That allows them to balance those mechanics more aggressively without worrying that they'll instantly become mandatory for half the roster. It's a preventative approach rather than a reactive one - less "let everything through and nerf it later," more "define the lane first so it can be tuned properly." Mark talks about this a lot with his stances on nerfing.
You can argue that some of these constraints are too tight or overly conservative and that's a fair critique but framing them as evidence that PoE2 hates creativity misses the actual goal. The intent isn't to force people into "follow build guide" anymore than that is the case for PoE1. It's to stop the game from degenerating into the same narrow meta where a handful of interactions dominate until they're inevitably crushed. Whether they've struck the right balance yet is debatable, but the motivation behind those restrictions is far more practical than people give it credit for.