I'll never agree in my life that "this is right direction", but I agree that their next logical step was to turn specializations into classes by completely cutting off from each other and at the same time prohibiting change of them altogether. I even
once mentioned, that even at the time of first Legion's announcement, friend laughed at their "new" architecture, pointing out fact, that their rules are forbidding change "classes", so what's the matter then, what's with rules' violation with this approach in design
...but then, when team driven only by design of raids'/instances' mechanic came to power, they were struck by idea that classes aren't needed at all, there are enough roles, and each spec-class began to be adjusted/cut-off solely for the sake of this "only important encounter", and then they stopped following trend of even this crippled design