For a start, you're going to have to define your schema. Does one tree have one row or is it one case has one row?

By updating at row level, you've instantly lost the ability to tell the user what time this data changed, unless you're throwing everything in an audit table and at this point you're already halfway to Event Sourcing.

ES gives us a convenient way to throw a pile of information over time and not have to worry about defining the final schema up front, we can do that when constructing the views of aggregates.