Anima powers in mythic + is another example of it might look good on paper but it doesn’t work out in the actual game. What I mean by this is I’m sure blizzard was thinking that people will enjoy having many “options” to choose from when doing their run and can customize their choice depending on the key and what their group is doing.
The reality like everything else is that people have discovered their “meta” build and only choose those powers and nothing else. Why choose a power that’s worse than the other one? And people know that.
there is even already a popular weak aura made that auto chooses your powers for you. Not saying the system is bad or anything just saying that I don’t think it worked out the way blizzard was thinking because you really don’t have a “choice” of powers unless you want to completely gimp yourself and be weaker for your team.
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They need to provide a greater variety of options and not have the same ones drop each time - more like Torghast. Granted, this would also require that all of the powers be actually useful, so that it doesn’t feel bad to get, like, 3 crappy options off one of the bosses.
The problem with Blizzard is they’re incapable of making all the choices competitive.
There’s always something that is either so good that you can’t not pick it or so bad that it’s a death sentence if you do pick it
Talents are the same way.
“This one is so far ahead that it’s the only option”
“This one is so bad you never want to take it ever”
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Necrotic dagger on tyr weeks is $$
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I don’t know if there’s been brain-drain at Blizzard but they seem to struggle to balance asymmetrically. Look at a game like Starcraft, and how for a long time that game had a form of balance between the three factions that were wildly different, yet the World of Warcraft team can’t figure out how to make a choice for anima powers compelling?
As a tank, the only choice of powers I make is Fifth Skull vs Crumbling Bulwark. The real “choice” in this season is “Do I even bother fighting these guys?” Big Boi is definitely skippable on a number of dungeons, Fire Bro can also be healed through although I think it is worth taking him down for the most part, and Ice Grill can also be ignored for certain boss fights. Executioner boss is sadly mandatory though, 50% healing debuff is just too much for a healer on anything except the most trivial keys.
Problem if they add more choices (and randomized choices) is that it would take time for people to look at them, and time is the key thing in keys.
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I’m pretty sure you have to tell the weakaura what powers you want to pick and it just quickly picks them for you while you’re racing against the clock.
I think Ion’s said that the talent that is harder to use ie active vs passive should do better.
This isn’t what OP means by choices. OP means “There should be merits to all three options”. Currently there isn’t. The choice is fight or flight for the most part, and even then that only applies to 3 of the 4 bosses and it only applies very situationally.
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One one side, yeah they’re pretty boring and unimpactful.
On the other, getting to run the dungeons normally is a fun chance of pace after the last 2 seasonal affixes, so not really complaining.
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I’d rather just be able to pick the same 4 powers instead of having to pray RNG is nice to me and gives me good powers
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Might need some retweeking, but I like it, of course there will be a meta as always, the choices might varie depending on the afflixes like necro for tyran, leech for grievious, etc.
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Blizzard being known for their excellent balancing skills. 
I honestly don’t get it. They have all these designers designing systems, but then they spend like zero time tuning? It’s just bizarre. It feels like marketing-driven systems design - create a “choice” of powers, and you can market that you have this choice-driven seasonal affix even when it reality you don’t.
I don’t want to be gloom and doom about it, because I do like this affix, but it hasn’t reached even half of its potential. The mini-boss design and choice of whether to face them or not is interesting, but the anima powers are just not working at all. I find myself whiffle-waffling on powers far more on Terragrue (and that boss is a meme fiesta) than I actually do in the instances. Pretty obvious as well with respect to the hotfixes etc that Blizzard’s primary focus is on the raid. Oh well; it is what it is.
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Anything with a choice and math has an optimal choice.
That’s pretty much the end.
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Remember before Shadowlands launched when all those people were defending covenant locks and conduit energy? And the reason they gave was that they wanted it to be painful for people to play well, because otherwise “people will force me to play well and I don’t want to”.
Maybe Blizzard keeps putting bad options everywhere because they want to protect the ability of players who want to play poorly.
I can’t think of another explanation. /shrug
Yet another reason the timers suck. 
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Fifth Skull vs Crumbling Bulwark has pros and cons. Bulwark is going to give more boss DPS, but Fifth Skull is rewarding if you can combine enough pulls to activate the effect consistently. Even within the same dungeon I will likely change this week to week based on Tyrannical vs Fortified depending on the dungeon, or on lower keys or easier sets of affixes take Fifth Skull if I think I can go big more often. It isn’t simply one is “strictly better” than the other.
The problem is that most “choices” are like “This gives you some stats” vs “This does a ton of damage and constantly interrupts casts”. Or like “Heal a small amount of HP if you stand still” vs “Have infinite mana” where one is always better than the other.
They’re non-choices simply from Blizzard failing to tune them whatsoever. This is not an “impossible to balance” situation, this is a “they didn’t make an effort” situation. Stygian Barbs outDPS’s Siegebreaker’s Stand with absolutely zero conditionals, that’s just stupid.
this is always going to happen in a game based on math
and this is what S2 is going to boil down to
Agreed, but even if they are closer the meta will pick out which is best.
Even if it’s at all times or under a certain criteria it ends up basically the same.
They should buff some of the weaker ones though.
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