.enter() was sort of confusing for me at first, but you lose the data-binding goodness of D3 if you drop it. I think the real issue is that the tutorials don't really explain it correctly: .enter() is where you add things and make changes that will be with the nodes for their lifetime. Do that, and then do your update logic (setting path attributes & fills, etc.). Don't run update logic when instantiating nodes, except for animation.