Well they will, they’ll have multiple characters ready with the covenants.
I imagine the number of players who are that hard into the META will be slim though.
Purely from a collecting point of view I’m putting a pala through each covenant but I’m not gearing each one to the level of my main 
Unfortunately they have failed so often with ‘their vision’ now, I have no faith left this will ever change.
No worries, we will figure out the best for most scenarios. There is a reason icy veins has different articles per content type per spec.
Yeah, it’s looking pretty decent now, especially for alts. Now lets PRAY that they listen to the PvP community and revamp the PvP vendors and make PvP gear BiS for PvP 
Operative word here is ‘probably’. You don’t know. I don’t know.
They might not be. We just don’t know.
Yeah, but making all of WoW an autoattack borefest really isn’t a solution either.
Imo; there’s always going to be people who will want to ‘be the best’ and there will alway be the sheep who follow such people. So Blizzard isn’t going to be able to get rid of that sort of thing; what they CAN do is make live hard for those kinds of players. And I’m fine with that. It’s better than supporting those players and then having that type of behaviour trickling down. Imo.
Same, but for hunters. 
Tahra is going Night Fae.
My vulpera hunter is going kyrian.
My Mag’har is going necrolords.
My void elf is going venthyr.
At least, this is my current thinking.
If it’s really cool content my other hunters will be repeats of what I liked most.
I wholeheartedly wish this goes as they plan it to go in spite of the precedent saying otherwise. I hate those group leaders with their “have X or do not bother applying”
If it goes bad and they start major backpedaling like in the last 2 expansions, do I have permission to say “I told you so!”?
It is fighting the knowledge that there will always be a meta. They can do what they want, but there always will be one. At the cost of making the game less flexible for the non -sheep. They are creating more sheep. A system like this is backfireing.
They almost certainly will. But, not because this is a bad feature. But because there will be people who will whine and whine and whine until they get their way for really no good reason at all (much like what happened with TF). 
So what would you suggest they do then?
Give in? Just let ‘the cancer spread freely’?
I don’t think that’s a solution either.
This will still be valid “I told you so” moment about Blizzard refusing to learn from history and repeating it over and over.
Such a waste of resources to do anti flood engineering on a river that will eventually over flood anyway when the water becomes too much.
The only way to truly avoid getting your home washed off by an unexpected flood is to not have a home that intrudes in the flood plains of the river.
Or is it the players who are repeating themselves over and over?
Chicken and the egg. 
There is no cancer. It is not bad there is a meta. Give more options and players are theorycrafting everywhere. When you look at the streamers you find out nobody is running the same corruption, the same amount of secondaries, the same routes.
When you look a bit lower level people play less meta classes, play more flexibile with their talents because of other group compositions.
Class Discords are full and active on the theorycrating area with constructive and fun out of basic-builds conversations.
People overreact the problem of meta’s.
Both.
The players are not exempt from this either.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-LE0ycgkBQ
Agree to disagree.
People downplay the problem of meta’s. 
Look, i understand the solo-experience is way more meta driven. On actually way too low level where meta does not matter. I 100% agree that is something. But looking further into communities, guilds, etc, that is where everyone can basically play whatever they want. That is where everyone is making their own descisions on how to play their class.
But you will, whatever happens, always have a meta anyway.
I know.
But that doesn’t mean developers should cater to that type of thing imo.
Making it harder for there to be a meta is one way to do it. Won’t be liked by everyone and has downsides, but again; what else are they supposed to do?
I know what you say, but it is backfireing. They turn the group that is now deciding themselves how to play their class, and want to try out other non meta things, into also meta ‘sheep’. They are actively feeding the meta. they make the problem bigger instead of smaller.
I don’t see this happening honestly. Could you elaborate on how/why this would be happening?
It’s also true in guilds and friends’ groups it can leave a bad taste in the mouth to feel to be a burden to those other people you care about if you are unable to perform as well as you’d like to.
Furthermore, these communities can be quite small compared to what can be available when forming a PuG, meaning that the group composition can end up quite under-powered compared to a PuG experience.