#1 - Feb. 27, 2012, 11:42 p.m.
There are three arguments against the new system that I see come up the most often: that the system leads to less customization, that the system is too dumbed down, and/or that all the talents are made for PvP.
Customization
Let's be clear about this right now: cookie cutter builds have been with us since Vanilla. In fact, in their day Cataclysm's supposedly overly-restrictive talent trees offered the most customization of any of the trees in-game in most cases.
Let's take a look at the evolution of the shaman, for example.
http://www.wowprovider.com/Old.aspx?talent=11215875_7
http://www.wowprovider.com/Old.aspx?talent=2438606_7
http://www.wowprovider.com/Old.aspx?talent=3139947_7
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/tool/talent-calculator#reset
What do these trees all have in common? The vast majority of the talents they contain are either numerical increases to something desirable like healing/damage output or mana regeneration, or numerical reductions to something undesirable like mana cost or threat output. Any active talents available were also purely for doing more of that desirable output with the exception of Shamanistic Rage, which had a dual function as a defensive ability. So what does this mean for customization?
It means it didn't exist. There was never any golden age in which a Warcraft player could choose any configuration of talents they liked and be taken seriously, let alone perform adequately. When bizarre setups like the oft toted SL/SL warlock of Burning Crusade came along, they merely became the new cookie cutter until Blizzard got around to breaking that build, often by moving a key talent that made that build work deeper in its tree (which also meant that the earlier tiers of the talent trees were generally full of very dull talents so as to prevent this exact sort of thing from happening, which is the big reason for the Cata trees locking us into one spec for the long haul, but that's a slightly different topic).
Why is this? Because of math. More broadly, because the talent trees we've had before Mists did not involve choice; they were made up of calculations. Before I go any further, let's clarify what I mean by "choice" and "calculation": a choice is a decision based upon personal preference, while a calculation is a decision based upon reason. What this means is that calculations have clear-cut correct and incorrect answers. Choices do not.
For example, let's say two guys offer to sell you the same video game, but one guy is offering it for $20 less than the other. The obvious answer to this dilemma is to buy the cheaper game. This is a calculation.
Now let's say those two guys are both offering you a game for the same price, but one guy is offering you a first person shooter while other is offering you a real time strategy game. In this case, the decision comes strictly down to which game you personally prefer. This is a choice.
What this means for the talent trees up until Mists is that there has been very little choice involved in making a talent build. What choice there has historically been essentially comes down to "would I rather be unique, or be right," which isn't really a choice when everyone from that random pug to the design team is operating under the assumption that you're going to be using the "right" build. Overwhelmingly, the history of the talent trees is a history of cold, hard calculations, typically carried out by a handful of theorycrafters and then disseminated through the internet. When the choice is between being right and being wrong, there is no choice; only calculation.
http://www.wowprovider.com/?talent=11215875_7_8p5o0550340513553151
http://www.wowprovider.com/?talent=2438606_7_7u5021202o55034051055310510321
http://www.wowprovider.com/?talent=3139947_7_6zc505003v50203331335310501122331251
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/tool/talent-calculator#Wc02!!gjb!VkgbVTYdVT
In this sense, the Cataclysm trees were relatively successful, as evidenced by my last three points remaining unspent in the above Cataclysm calculator (and for that matter, the term "calculator" should be evidence enough that what we'd been dealing with all those years hasn't been choice). There were some choices to be made in the Cataclysm trees, albeit not as many as either players or the designers were hoping for, but still more than we've had in most of the previous iterations. As a Cataclysm PvE resto shaman, I had choices between taking less damage while casting, healing players when I dispelled them for less mana, regaining mana from one of my offensive spells, and scoring critical effects more often. That's four desirable talents out of which I could chose only two, but two choices out of four is still two more than I got to make in any previous talent tree.
That brings us to the Mist talent system, and you may notice that I'm not using the term "tree" anymore, because it doesn't apply anymore. Talent trees were a failed experiment in customization, even with Cataclysm's baby steps forward, but they taught Blizzard some important lessons that are reflected in the Mist system. Most importantly, that the only way to make us choose utility abilities is to make us choose them against other utility abilities; as long as utility is presented next to raw output increase, utility loses nine times out of ten. This is what's at the heart of the Mist talent system: by removing output increases from the equation, or at least relegating them to their own tier independent of all the others, Blizzard forces us to choose between utilities, and other utilities with a similar purpose. This is where real choice happens, and thus where real customization happens. And last time I checked, six choices was more customization than two.
Dumbing Down
Let's be totally frank, it's not like there was a ton to dumb down as things stood. Most players didn't actually sit down and work their way through the talent tree with a pencil and graphing calculator in hand and work out the ideal talent spread, they just copied it from somewhere else, whether it be elitistjerks.com, their class forum's stickies, or from their guild's resident expert. You can't get much dumber than blindly copy/pasting your spec from someone else.
The main line of thought to this argument is that because there is no best talent, it doesn't matter which talents you pick. Let me be clear: this is true, to an extent. This is a necessary component to real choice and customization versus calculation. Real choice inherently means that there is no right answer for all or even the vast majority of people and situations. However, what it doesn't mean is that talent choice doesn't matter at all. On the contrary, because the Mist system cannot be dumbed down into cookie cutter builds due to the nature of utility vs utility choices never having a universally correct answer if they're balanced well, the Mist system actually makes talents more intelligent because players are forced to consider how each talent functions in relation to their own preferred playstyle in order to determine which one is best for them personally.
Yes, it will be possible to blindly click on six random talents and suffer no detriment to your target dummy recount. But players who take that approach won't get even half as much out of their talents as the players who take the time to think about them. Just because there's no right or wrong in one set of choices doesn't mean you can't fail spectacularly to get the most out of what you chose. Skill in the Mists system is judged by how well you use your talents; not which website you copied them from.
PvP Talents
This one has fallen by the wayside of late, but it was a common complaint before Mists went live, so if you still think this, then I'm just going to say it: you're a mediocre player, and you're scrap/ing by with the bare minimum of your role's requirements. There is more to performing a role in this game than what shows up on Recount. For example, take dps:
A decent dps does damage.
A good dps does lots of damage.
A great dps does lots of damage, AND is in the right place at the right time. A great dps does lots of damage AND uses defensive abilities to reduce the healers' burden. A great dps does lots of damage AND controls mobs to take pressure off the tank. A great dps deals lots of damage AND supports the other members of his group, and that support is achieved through utility. Utility offered by the Mist talent system.
This goes for tanks and healers as well. A great healer can do a little add control and a great tank can help minimize unavoidable damage.
The Mist talents aren't about Recount; they're about something you can't put a tidy number on. They're about taking your personal game to a higher level.
Stop being good; start being great.
Edited for tense.