Agreed. There's nothing wrong with giving people additional choice on what gems to use. Ultimately, EJ or another site would come up with the ultimate choice to maximize DPS... but giving people more room for experimentation is definitely a good thing in my book. :)

I agree too. The gem requirements made it interesting and not such an easy answer. If there's no gem requirements, then there's no choice, no decision. That's kinda boring.

I think Social has the right idea, and maybe (hopefully even) this hints at a future direction that they'll go.

Meta reqs are good, but only so far as the cost/benefit is desirable. As people have pointed out, giving up most of your gem slots to something other than your most desirable stat for a 3% crit chance increase makes the decision easy for many specs: don't do it. That is poor design, imo.

Blizz has been revamping the talent trees to avoid this exact situation. When one choice is such a significant benefit that only the ignorant (as well as the obstinant or outright dumb) would choose the alternative, then there really isn't a choice.

If they were to increase the value of a meta to the point that there were a theoretical disparity within the margin of error between having/gemming for the powerful meta and having a weaker meta/gemming your best stat, THEN players would have real choice. That would be good design, imo.

What do you mean "choice"? For melée dps, it was essentially a removal of choice since losing that many red gems is not worth a meta slot by a long shot. Seriously wth was blizz smoking when they made that decision.