To be fair, this is mostly because of the Legendary that casts it automatically even without the talent. It may not be a problem in 10.0. Can’t say for sure though.
Talents:
Out of the specs I play at 60 (I don’t feel comfortable commenting on 50-59, even if I know the spec well) I’ll include a small explanation when I can. Even if I feel other talents need fixing, I’ll only comment on talents that I think are borderline useless, at least in the content I play.
Survival - Per Row:
- Row 1: Terms of Engagement. - I actually -love- this talent, but unfortunately, the other 2 are just genuinely a dps gain. Terms requires killing to reset, and you have to be at range to use Harpoon for the extra focus, which in turn often just nets a neutral gain. This -might- have a use in arena, but can’t comment on that really, and if it was a PvP talent, then it should probably be made into a PvP talent.
- Row 2: Murder of Crows AND Steel Trap - They aren’t bad, per say, but Bloodseeker is just too good and passive to justify not using it.
- Row 6 Flanking Strike - I think it’s technically better than Tip of the Spear, but it needlessly complicates the spec to the point I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone use it. I still believe they should remove this as a talent completely and do what they did in Legion - Replace Kil Command with Flanking Strike. If they want us to be able to use it as range, then have it function as Kill Command if we use it at range.
- Row 7: Chakrams - I’ve seen a few people use it, but in general, the other 2 talents are just too good to not use one of them. The 2 recommended survival specs on icy/wowhead are literally based around those 2 talents.
Also to note for hunter in general, I fully believe that either Camouflage or Trailblazer should be made baseline. Trailblazer is the most likely candidate, as we used to have Aspect of the Cheetah baseline. It feels really bad losing out on Trailblazer if I need stealth or vice versa.
Natural Mending has its uses in end-game content, but as I don’t do that, I stick to one of those 2 lol.
Destruction - Per Row
- Row 2: Shadowburn - The use for it, as an execute, doesn’t really work, as it does low damage, even with the increased crit chance. The fact it costs a soul shard further complicates that.
- Row 6: Grimoire of Sacrifice - This… confuses me. We were told they purposely made this talent a DPS loss as they believe warlocks should use pets. So… why do we have the talent in the first place? (This is for Affliction as well). I loved not using a pet, but I can’t justify the dps loss.
I main Demonology, but honestly, 90% of those talents need to be fixed. There’s pretty much one set talent per each row that is viable. Though in 9.1 a new build popped up for more simple rotations, but still less dps.
I can’t comment on my other 3 60s, as I’m either not comfortable enough with them to comment or I use the talents other people don’t, as they work for me personally. (here’s looking at you, Light’s Hammer)
Systems:
Most of the systems aren’t bad, per say, just poorly implemented. I understand Blizzard wants the power to gradually increase, and not punish people for not playing 24 hours a day, so I don’t personally have a problem with the “timegating” on systems only. (Timegating in general is a whole 'nother can of worms)
Something that for me worked well, but not perfect, was Tower Knowledge. You have a set amount you could earn a week, and if you missed a week, you could earn that in following weeks.
However, it lacks any form of catchup, and that made me lose all interest in Torghast on my alts.
So in a perfect world, if we have another system with a “Power” we have to collect, I’d love this type of system. Set a cap you can earn each week, and each following week, if you missed it, you can get the previous week’s as well. But, make it so the grind isn’t as bad if you do it all at once. So like, every week you have stored up, you gain increased power gained, until you are at the current week, which will gain at normal rate. That way if you’re behind, you can catch up easier with grinding, but won’t have an unfair advantage to people who have been from the start.
Likewise, having catch-up items for alts like the incense of infinity or the Renown 40 item from the start would be great. AKA once you earn it on your main, it becomes easier on your alt.
Balance:
I think Blizzard needs to rely less on their in-house parsing and start looking at community parsing on warcraftlogs and such. Many specs (Feral, Survival, etc) have been at the bottom of the charts consistently for years. And although they get minor buffs here and there, it’s never enough to move them out of that bottom. And then there’s random nerfs they get on the PTR before live, like Feral just got, and Survival got a couple weeks ago. It made no sense.
I get that if the classes are played how Blizzard expects them to be played they will probably be even, but Blizzard needs to adapt to how the players play the specs. A good example of this is Final Fantasy 11. It was initially designed with 2 tank classes, Paladin and Warrior/Monk (People really dont know which one was meant to be the second tank). However, Japanese players adapted and used Warrior/Monk as a DPS. Then the first xpac came and Ninja was introduced, meant to be a 4th role, debuffer. However, players realized how it could be used, and turned it into a second tank spec.
Instead of changing the toolkits so the classes were how Square envisioned them, they rolled with what players liked, and turned Ninja into an official tank and started reinforcing the others as DPS. (This later also happened with Dancer, introduced as the second official healer, but players essentially turned it into a damager that can backup tank lol)
And yes, it’s very much okay to tune PvP and PvE differently. They went through the trouble of changing the code so it could be done, but rarely utilize it, rather opting to nerf both for the sake of PvP and it’s just confusing.