> A major 'feature' of D3 is its ability to update the dom with the new svg elements.

A major feature of D3 is its ability to update the dom incrementally as data changes.

FTFY

> Given that libraries like Ractive and React handle dom updates in a much more sane fashion (just re-render the entire virtual dom instead of mucking around with individual nodes), all I really want is a library to generate path attributes for the svg elements, and hence find paths.js to be a much simpler option.

So it's more sane to "re-render the entire virtual dom instead of mucking around with individual nodes"? Is it insane that D3 does the mucking around for you so that you don't have to re-render the entire dom? Wouldn't that be a good thing?

It would if D3 did so in a transparent, intuitive manner. One of the major issues beginners (including myself) face with D3 is the steep learning curve due to the fact that it isn't always clear what exactly a method does and the API can almost feel cryptic at times. I remember adding one method at a time in the chain to 'reverse engineer' the behavior (I could've read the source, but plunker's auto update makes it easier to experiment). If you look at the questions on Stack Overflow, a large percentage are in fact around the dom behavior.

tldr: D3 was an excellent tool when it came out, but I personally find Ractive + Paths to be much simpler and straightforward options. I think you'll agree if you give it a shot!