Want my opinion? Sure, it just happens that Ion agrees with me in many things.
In an rpg you build a character and gravitate to a build, when people dont do that and jump to cookie cutter build they clearly show no interest in RPG elements and these players should be ignored as they are not here for the RPG part of the game.
No 3 hunters should ever be the same outside of rare occasion, the more choices and more systems that cannot be changed the better because it reduces the chance of them being the same.
Like Ion said, there will ALWAYS be a mathematically optimal build for each fight, dungeon, encounter, that’s just how mmorpgs work, if someone says otherwise they are simply ignorant, therefore ultra tryhards will try to do that and must be stopped not only because no 3 hunters should ever be the same, but because encounters and the game isnt balanced around all dps being optimal, raids and dungeons are balaned around balanced healthy comps where people arent even ultra optimal, so people who minmax like crazy including minmax their comp trivialize encounters often by stacking OP/fotm meta specs which reduces the difficulty SEVERELY.
And lastly, WoW has a very toxic tryhard community, we ve seen it before we master looter, we know also from reports others try to force people to change to meta build even if they hate it by saying they ll bench them or demanding them to change for an invite first, pugs are a whole different level of toxicity.
Locking covenants and conduits is the right choice, because it disrupts the toxic behavior by never allowing them to be optimal for everything unless they level and more importantly gear 4 of each, and most tryhards arent gonna be doing that, especially with the new 1 gear per m+ in shadowlands