Devs: "We're having a hard time coming up with new, distinct abilities for each spec each expansion." (near-direct quote.)

Devs: "We're now removing a ton of abilities, shifting others around, and restricting you from doing anything outside your spec. Distinctness achieved."

You seem to confuse "make the system better" with "rip-out the system endlessly."

Cookie-cutter specs will always exist. No matter what. Removing the talent points from 30 down to 6 will not stop that. Until talents exist at the point where one literally does not do more damage, helps healing, or gives another benefit over another, one will always be better than another in a specific area. And at that point, you might as well call talents useless.

Always going after the removal of cookie-cutter specs with the current system will never work. Taking two abilities, slapping them in a talent level, and going "Ah ha!" does not remove the cooker-cutterness. Making a class choose between two abilities they used to have does not make them happy, nor does it make them interesting. Taking an ability you get at level 12, and another you got at level 25, sticking them in the talent tree, and now forcing that class to choose one or another is not fixing the problem. That's taking the easy way out.

I don't view this as progress like you would like to think of it as. I see it as the devs basically giving up on the "three different, but distinct specs via talent trees because it adds and enhances abilities", and more of a "three specs, distinct because it's the only way to unlock those abilities, period."

I am not against progress in the system. I do see where it is flawed. I also see where they are trying to chase after a goal which cannot be achieved in the current or presented system, and the players have to suffer redesign after redesign which wrecks how the game is played, and the designers don't seem to realize until they make talents essentially neutral, they won't achieve the neutral feel they are going for. And at that time, talents might as well not exist.