First off, lets ignore how boring and uninteresting half the hero talents are. Its subjective, even if we all agree, but this topic isn’t about that. (cries in druid)
Is anyone else kind of disappointed that there’s no real choice? Its either. For raid, pick A. For Mythic pick B. And outside of 2 or 3 “choice” nodes that, again, offer no real choice, you get 100% of the nodes.
Also, the vast majority of them dont seem any more special than normal talents. Minor damage boost here. A bit of defense there. That old talent from 2 expansions ago? Well now its back! etc. etc.
And finally, what happens after TWW? Do they just integrate those talents into the normal talent trees? Do we keep the Hero talents and get something else upon leveling up in Midnight?
This is kinda subjective to each class and spec. Its better and worse for some then others. For example as a prot warrior, its really not that bad either way. Thane is better overall for M+ just because of the AOe, and how it fits right into the existing rotation, but your not gonna be that much gimped if you take colossus.
When one is stronger single-target damage, that’s the raid pick.
M+ has the incredibly hot and spicy alternative of choosing between what talent is stronger aoe damage OR what has better defensive value. And if the defensive one is also strong aoe then that choice doesn’t happen.
It doesn’t matter how closely they are balanced. If something is 0.5% better at a specific niche then everyone is going to declare that as the only pick.
Take frost mage. Spellslinger is the “best”, even though it’s an incredible PITA to track and use effectively and it easily falls behind on damage if you screw that up. Doesn’t matter. It’s declared the only choice. Because players are too thick to make their own decisions, do their own practice tests, run their own sims. Ever.
Any guide worth reading will detail the drawbacks and actual performance difference when picking the ‘worse’ option but people ignore that part and insist they have to deal with Spellslinger’s BS when that’s not true.
At that point I don’t even know why the devs even bother trying to balance them. Here’s your ST, here’s your AOE, now piss off and let us only have to balance those.
Tbh, from what I’ve noticed all the guides are horribly exaggerating the “objectively better choice”. I’ve been picking whatever I think sounds more fun (Conduit Windwalker Monk or Frostfire Frost Mage, for example) and I’m still crushing everyone else on dps in dungeons
Sure maybe I would do slightly more damage with the other talents, but if I’m already miles ahead of the next highest dps anyway why should I care that much?
In my opinion, if anyone forces me to use different talents from what I’m used to or like, I just ignore them completely. I’ve even gone as far as to block someone for it. No one should tell you how to spec your class. They don’t pay your sub…
There will always be a better choice. You can’t avoid that in this sort of game.
It’s up to you to not worry about it, because you shouldn’t. Most people won’t care what spec you’re running unless it severely hinders your DPS and/or you’re pushing the upper echelons of content where the slightest percentage makes a difference (and even then, it probably doesn’t even matter all that much unless you’re the top 1%).
Play what you want, stop worrying about crunching numbers.
Sadly there was never going to be any choice. Blizzard refuses to see that people pick the best DPS instead of what’s cool. They’re stuck on this idea that people play whatever they want. Shadow priest is legit boned. There’s a talent in each tree that are part of each hero spec, and you pick one or the other. LITERALLY one build, because one spec will always be inferior.
As a Frost Mage, I said heck no to Spellslinger and even in raid I run Frostfire and I am topping charts in AoE and ST so it comes down to player and knowing your stat break points