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Taking leech nodes makes it better.
if you want to invest in leech its not hard to just take the nodes and not worry about it.
All well and good to say "just take the passive node and see how it goes" but fact is that it costs you regrets to undo a choice.
The problem isn't working out which nodes buff leech. As you acknowledged, it's working out which ones to prioritise. If I have three points but there are five possible nodes I can take, which ones will help my build the most? It's impossible to know without understanding how the mechanic works, and it is a complex mechanic to try and understand.
And there will be some situations where in order to improve the leeching, what the player should be doing is not taking more leech nodes, but instead taking more damage nodes to increase the size of each leech instance.
I appreciate that u/Mark_GGG took the time to explain it using an example but the fact is that his example is a full screen of text. And this is to explain how leech works when you hit a mob a couple of times with your weapon, which is pretty much the most fundamental game action that exists in ARPGs like PoE.
In his "simple" example, there are five input variables (Maximum Life, % increased Maximum Recovery per Life Leech, % increased total Recovery per second from Life Leech, % increased Maximum total Recovery per second from Life Leech, and % of Physical Attack Damage Leeched as Life) from which three leech-related variables are derived (Life Leech Recovery Rate, Maximum Recovery per Life Leech, and Maximum total Recovery per second from Life Leech).
Mark's example is just physical damage life leech. We also have mana leech, and now there's also ES leech. And You can also leech from non-physical damage types, which means you might need to stick the damage conversion calculations on top of all that! There are just too many things for a player to have to try and work out. I am all for complexity. I love how complex PoE is. But leech in PoE is somewhere beyond the "too far" threshold, I am simply not going to bother to try and build a leech character.
I guess what I'm saying is, there is an opportunity cost to taking any passive node - which is that you don't get to take something else instead. A player should have some assurance that it is going to improve/help their character, but with leech specifically, there is no guarantee that additional stacking on one of the relevant variables will make any difference whatsoever to their character's power level; the player has to actually work out whether or not it will. And IMO that is a problem.