I see a lot of announcements about simplifying the gameplay, but I think the main problem stems from the talent tree, which is far too complex and, above all, incredibly messy.
Having 5,000 passives/modifiers is the real cause of all the problems.
And I haven’t seen any announcements to fix it; in fact, it’s worse—they’re adding more. (apex talent ..)
The Mists of Pandaria talent tree was very good; it just needed maybe 1/2 a line more, but it was very clear and intuitive.
Talent tree is not the problem, it gives options. And they are making many previously active spells into passives and modifiers to curate the game to console and new players. Having a talent tree with options is a good thing and what is an even better thing is having good choices in the tree which is what they are working on right now I guess. Pandaria talent tree kills the options and makes you not thinking about anything related to playstyle and gameplay of your character. Try learning options your character has and explore them more 
I thought the “choose between these 3 things every 15 levels” was boring and gave very little flexibility or ways to build.
I know we still establish a “meta” but build sites used to have 1-2 builds per spec, now they have 4-6 per spec. Mainly thanks to Hero Talents.
You’re right, most of bloat from temp buffs, reactives and stuff do come from there but they don’t need to and they are getting reworked and more simplified in Midnight. Whether or not they do it “enough” in the end is something we’ll have to wait and see.
https://imgur.com/a/t4sOAr0
In one image you can understand the problem with the talent tree
Too many modifiers, too many passives = it’s incredibly messy, bad and complex (for no reason)
If you think that meager talent tree “complex”… May I show you this?
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fv9hxcm3t54md1.png
THAT is complex.
WoW is incredibly children friendly compared to that.
And it’s incredibly bad, it’s fake difficulty, and for a game like WoW, it’s even worse.
Having 5000 passives and modifiers makes the gameplay bad; indeed, a child could understand that. You’re right to point that out.
Jesse, what the hell you talking about? 
A talent tree isn’t difficulty. It’s character progression. Those are 2 entirely different aspects of the gameplay experience.
And WoW isn’t even remotely close to the talent trees Path of Exile 2 has.
Well, you’re right to mention PO2, because it’s one of the worst examples of talent development.
(and wow is not a hack and slash)
I suggest you look at my screenshot again to understand why it’s bad.
If you’re good at WoW, you’ll understand that it’s bad because too many passives/modifiers make the gameplay messy, and it’s even the opposite of skill-based, because too much RNG/passive makes the skill cap unbalanced.
But anyway, I’m sure you’re one of the 99% of players who just copy and paste without even understanding.
And? We had talent tree back in tbc and wrath and yet we disn’t had all these passives.
The problem is the passives and blizzard can fix it but sadly they don’t care.
I don’t need to look at the screenshot to know it’s bad. I’m not even denying that. Merely arguing the claim that WoWs talent tree is the problem.
It’s the amount of buffs/debuffs, which is irrelevant towards the overall talent tree design.
As a matter of fact, most of the time my darn eyes are stuck on my action bars, not the actual action going on on the screen.
Well, you are 100% wrong because I’m no idiot who needs guides to understand the game where necessary. Every talent update I read the talent tree ingame and make choices manually in the game. You know, like a RPG is supposed to be played…
Brother looking at the buffs in top right of your screen can be hidden and then you dont even see them if that is your problem. You screenshotted 4 buffs from roll the bones, tabard trinket all cooldowns, events, weapon enchants, legion timewalking, capsule from dragonflight. Yes that thing up top could be organised differently but not a single thing of all of those has anything related to talents at all
how is a display of buff/debuff bloat related to the talent tree?
Sure some of them come from the talent tree, but the shape of the tree doesn’t matter if the design philosophy is add a bunch of buff/debuff bloat, because if thats the design philosophy we will get that with or without a talent tree being present in the game.
If blizzard wants you to track 50000 debuffs and buffs but didn’t have a talent tree to force it on you, they’d just bake it into the abilities.
Its like blaming a car accident on the car instead of the driver.
The problem with the talent tree is it doesn’t solve the problem it was trying to solve. There’s still only one or two good builds.
A lot of the tree are passives.
Yeah, most people just open a guide for their class and spec in new season and copy the talent string and import it in the game. So much for the options it gives…
The Tree redesign was a complete waste of Development Time.
All they have done was remove 90% of Baseline Active and Passive abilites from all the Classes, put them back into the Tree, giving people the illusion of “Freedom” while either locking necesarry talents for your Class/Spec behind a bad Path or tune stuff so badly you wouldn’t even consider going for a certain talent.
But one thing the Talent Tree is not at fault is the modifier bloat that Blizzard has been doing for years, RNG Trinkets, Enchants, Belts, Cloaks, Rings, Embalishments, Sets, Buffs, all of this has been a problem befor the Talent Tree changes, hell i would say it was even worse with stuff like Artefact Traits, Legendarys thrown into the Mix and in BfA with the Azerite Traits.
This is probably also the Reason why this game had all these Performance Issues, if the game has to permanently calculate IF things procc and how it effects every ability, specially in a Raid or Open world setting where it has to do these calculations for multiple people multiple times every second.
The talent tree was always an illusion of choice. The MoP talent tree was the best, because it was easy to understand.
Right now we have an overly confusing talent tree with so many % stat increases or % more dmg / healing, mandatory utility and mobility in the talent tree.
The old havoc mastery (bonus movementspeed) is since Dragonflight a talent that you dont even talent into.
Darkness got nerfed to a 5min cd.
Eyebeam lost its baseline 100% crit chance because its a talent.
I dont even want to know what other specs / classes have lost as a baseline because of the talent tree.
And ultimately the new talent tree fixed NOTHING. Its the same BS with the same illusion of choice only more complicated.
I disagree. For me, a talent tree like we have in WoW is standard in proper RPGs
I find Baldurs Gate 3 talents tbh a bit more confusing. And they don’t use percentages at all but dice roll numbers.
Yet that game won Game of the Year…
Really, really not.
That is not true. You probably have a scaffold of points for single target DPS, cleave, AoE etc but there are always quite a few points you can change according to what you are playing. More defensives / less defensives, more CC / less CC etc.
Furthermore, I e.g. have an Open World build that focusses mostly on speed, you can have special builds for things like the Delve bosses, mage tower or whatever other challenge you do.
So in total, the trees do offer quite a bit of flexibility, even if not every player makes use of that.
Illusion of choice is better than the illusion of no choice at all.
There is also a thing called “illusion of progress”. How much of the Mythic Raid progression can be attributed to gear upgrades, the % buffs via reputation, and/or Blizzard nerfs?
But it WORKS. It keeps people playing, and happy. Which is what matters.
In the end, it’s all pixel ponies you know…