I’m with you on the basic idea that “reliable Swiftness” is a bad or at least boring concept in the first place though, Daver.
“Reliable run speed out of combat” should be a class perk. I thought it was (for Thieves, with their +25%), and I figured other specs will lose their permanent swiftness spam to promote Thieves as the most mobile class, even out of combat.
Alas, not the design goal.
Now we’re looking at 6 classes with near universal 25% or 33% run speed, though one (Engineer) needs a somewhat crude spec for it. Of the remaining two, one (the Guardian) can at least somewhat reliably boost forward.
And mind you, I don’t mind me not having that mobility.
I mind everyone else having it, and this is not the inverse in this specific case!
Why do they all need that run speed? If out of combat speed is a big deal, ok, fair, reduce all the signets to 10%, massively nerf the availability of Swiftness, buff it to 66% to make it more significant when up, and then increase base out-of-combat run speed by 33% of base speed, done. Everyone has OOC Swiftness, evenly.
That’d be a much better solution than the current buffmania.