Unfortunately they can’t make Shaman too appealing or everyone will slam Gurgthock.
That said, I am disappointed that the “drawing together” of the class wasn’t seen to completion, as teased in SL start. I want Enhancement to have Lava Burst instead of Lava Lash, and for a row or two of talents to be a little more similar to each other, with just new layers to interactions depending on the spec. I want Enhancement to feel like a Shaman first, and then a melee class. Same goes for Restoration or Elemental. Class identity is slammed up and down, from these forums through Reddit and Twitter. Yet it seems to not be connecting to the people that need to see it.
PvP talents are a terrible system – far worse than actual talents – to try and plug fixes for poorly designed baseline interactions. It offloads design work to the community try and decide “How much do you really see this as an issue; what are you willing to sacrifice?” Further, there are skills literally designed for PvP interactions as PvE skills (Unstable Affliction and Vampiric Touch built-in dispel protection), and then there are PvP cards good for PvE content (Ride the Lightning). I’m all for a system for making Player versus Player fun and engaging and give a sense of progression and counterplay, but just so everyone is clear THIS IS NOT IT.
To me, PvP talents would exist like the old talent trees that are filled with multipoint hotfix-able talents which benefit the damage “to Players”, healing “to Players engaged in PvP combat”, and damage taken “from Players”. Points are earned by PvP – no matter ranked or unranked, the points are earned and spent the same. In trees, there are capstones for them which provide a one–point benefit. Example; an Offense tree may have a capstone that provides a Shattered Frost spells a Mortal Wounds effect, or a Utility tree which provides dispel resistance to Polymorph, or a Defense tree which grants an upgraded shield (like Triune Ward) removes Hypothermia from Ice Block. Your specialization grants a point in your role (Damage is Offense, tanks and healers are Defense) and you may choose how to allocate into the other trees. You can only achieve one other tree’s ‘mini’-capstone from maximum attainable point limits and hard restrictions on cross-role depth.
The big key here, they can fix classes and specs performance in PvP in isolation from PvE (something they already do with hidden spell auras). Obviously this all hinges on them having classes well designed and balanced in the first place, which seems painfully apparent isn’t true (unless you build “the right way” which makes up for most of the design issues with “plug” talents, like Sabertooth for Feral Druid).
As long as the system exists as a ‘deck’ of 20 PvP ‘cards’ where the player picks only 3, the depth and fun of a PvP MMORPG I don’t think will ever be realized…
/shrug
TL;DR-- The sooner people realize the game has been made by Candy Crush developers since at least Legion, the happier we can all be.