QuoteA very good definition of a bad or poorly designed talent is one that everyone takes or one that nobody takes. It's either too good or too bad.
I don't think Blizzard would agree with that. If nobody ever takes the talent, then yes, there is probably something wrong with it. But I don't know that we would ever want to see say an Arms warrior build that didn't take Mortal Strike. We don't want to make attractive alternatives to Mortal Strike. We pretty much want you to take Mortal Strike. The same is true of Titan's Grip for Fury and Toughness for Protection.
You can come up with examples for classes too. Omen of Clarity is near mandatory for all druids. Ruin is something every PvE warlock wants.
I can understand how logically someone would approach the task of talent design with the goal of making every talent choice optional and equal. But talent tree design turns out to be more complicated than that one simple rule. To consider just a few factors:
-- The cost of a talent often has as much to do with its prereqs or talents in above tiers than in the talent cost itself.
-- The value of a talent has a lot to do with the other talents you choose.
-- We spend a lot of time playing games about what a spec gives up in order to get a particular talent.
-- Bigger numbers (damage or healing) tend to trump utility abilities for PvE and the opposite is true for PvP.
-- The exact same talent may be just fine for one class but overpowered for another.
-- Above all, ask yourself what else you would spend those points on. We don't want to see just a ton of 0 / 0 / 71 specs. We haven't really given Holy or Shadow much reason to sub-spec into each other. Maybe sub-specing into Disc isn't so bad if there is something really juicy there for you.
Just more rationalization why Meditation is a mandatory talent for all pve priests. There is a difference between a talent you _want_ and a talent you _have to have_ to function as the encounters are tuned for it.
If a talent isn't mandatory, then they should not tune any encounter to require it....
Equating Mortal Strike to Arms and Titan's Grip to Fury isn't the same as the required 14 points in Disc that all pve priests regardless of spec pretty much must take in order to function as the encounter is tuned (unless the raid massively outgears it).
Omen of Clarity is pretty much the same for druids as mentioned. I don't think making some talents so good that they become mandatory to take for all specs is a good thing.... in fact, I think that it is a pretty bad thing in that there is even less diversity in specs.