Yeah, thats the problem, they do not add anything. Pick your poison is the problem.Personally I don't like shaman 90 talents so I'll leave it at that. I don't know hunters that well. I do however think priest/paladin talents blow the mage ones out of the fucking ocean.
This is the difference I see:
The priest and paladin 90 talents (DPS spec) both provide means to handle situations: patchwerk, spread AoE, stacked AoE for instance.
The mage 90 talents make situations more difficult to handle: they either make you hard-cast, hold you in place, or require you to take damage.
As a comparison with a pure class, the lock talents (which I think are far from the best talents) are still of the first category: They give you means to handle taking damage (note, this is different than requiring damage to be taken), movement, or AoE.
The rogue talents (which have had to have numerous fixes) are also of the first category: They give means to handle lack of melee uptime, fast target switching, and patchwerk.
No other class has a 90 row that make situations more difficult to handle. Right now it looks like mages have to choose between the least of 3 evils, not the best of 3 boons.