The point was that you first create a spec and then you balance it. In other words, balance is secondary to design and gameplay, the people saying that things like km glacial advance or woa reset are impossible to balance are straight up lying.
Preoccuping yourself with balance before you actually create a spec/ability will lead to you doing nothing.
If the devs were to always think about balance first that would lead to them always making the easy, boring choice.
I brought up the idea of hot hand, storm bringer etc to directly point out that their line of thinking could be applied to pretty much anything, and it would ruin the game.
Why make hot hand? It will be unbalanceable because they would probably have to nerf lava lash. See how the idea is just ridiculous when you bring up other examples, in reality hot hand is a completely fine ability that is fun to play with.
The elephant in the room, which I can’t believe I have to point out is that no, you can balance these effects, and it’s not even that difficult. Balance is ultimately numbers, get them right and you have a balanced spec.
What exactly did woa reset make unbalanced?
Was the spec doing poor damage or way more than anyone else? No.
Was the spec too polarized between AOE and St? Literally less than now so on that regard the spec is un ironically less balanced now.
Variance? With a 50% proc rate and the damage being good but not so high that no procs would mean no damage at all, variance was frankly not a big issue.
That they nerfed other abilities because of it? First if all that’s likely more attributed to the choice node with radiant decree. Secondly, that’s not even an issue. Do you complain about fireball being nerfed in favor of pyroblast for fire mage? Do you complain about storm strike doing little damage when you’re playing elementalist?
Ultimately the real issue here is not one of balance, it’s one of preferences. But making it about “balance” makes the argument seem more valid.
Ultimately though the argument is not good enough. And if you actually think about it you will realize why. The argument is fundamentally flawed, and disproven by things we already have in game.
And this is why I dislike this, because ultimately the people who make such arguments probably do realize it, but they still say the same thing, because the argument is not about facts. It’s about feelings. It’s about I don’t like it so I will come up with a plausible argument in order to give more validity to what is essentially a preference.