Originally Posted by
Callei
No, with a small side helping of yes. I never found talents an engaging gameplay mechanic--I looked up the cookie cutter on EJ so I wouldn't lose 30% of my DPS for clicking the wrong buttons, clicked the right buttons, and forgot they existed until I leveled an alt or a patch hit and a new cookie-cutter came up. Didn't follow the cookie cutter? Either you posted your better build on EJ and it became the new cookie cutter, or you had fun sucking. I like that the talents as they are now are more about choices between playstyle with the same end result, in theory (they do need work in practice for several tiers in several classes).
On the flip side, they offered a regular stream of progression as you leveled where the impact was usually notable as soon as you locked the choices in. That was always pretty nifty, and I think Blizz could cater to both demographics by putting in a talent system like the old one based off of passive stat buffs/ability buffs and roll the current talents into a new Feat system (every 10-15 levels, you get a passive skill that either provides a buff or an active skill that either adds utility, replaces an existing ability, functions as a DPS/heal/mitigation cooldown, or some combination of the three).