Talent tree (spec) suggestion

[Carighan]

Things like Mitigation and/or healing will have more value in different situations and can actually be fight dependent.

Ah, that's what you meant.

Yeah, I don't think that can work either, since that just creates the problem WoW used to have with per-fight-talent-specs, but worse. If the value is actually different per spec, people will just default in their picks. Like the option with the Aurora above, there's very clearly one superior choice for each context. So for one fight you pick X, for the other you pick Y, but you just apply that like swapping a character job before joining a group.

But then you loop it back to the designers, what do they do now? Do they balance for the assumption that everyone has the superior pick, codifying the "pick superior for each fight" thing? Or do they not, making the fight easier if everyone does just go with the meta picks anyways?

There's no truly good option there. The only way out would be actually not offer any primary (and DPS is always a primary role for everyone I suppose, granted) power gain at all, but even that is something WoW (and GW2, too) tried, and neither could make it stick. GW2 actually did a bit better with it's strong focus away from traditional roles coupled with giving everyone a dedicated healing button. But even that immediately had meta picks for certain situations which were quite visibly outperforming other options.

But don't get me wrong, I love talent trees and picks and all that. I just don't see it ever working in a manner that isn't essentially the same as not having that choice in the first place. At least not in MMORPGs, it works fine in single-player games of course. More so if they're story-driven and hence most players don't get a second try at doing their talent setup anyways and have to pick while not knowing whether/how useful this'll be later.