Renown 2.0 and Talents 4.0 (?) in Dragonflight

Ion Hazzikostas on Renown 2.0 in Dragonflight, from an interview with Hazelnutty, via summary by Wowhead: “…if you’re that outdoor world player who doesn’t do Mythic+, who doesn’t do progression raiding, all those players still want, deserve, and need gear progression of their own, and I think this is a more streamlined and elegant way to have those goals that you can work towards on your own pace…”
That player is me, and I am glad to be acknowledged and validated!
Having been so far behind the curve in Shadowlands that I was always riding the catch-up mechanics for Renown, I haven’t had the frustrations with it that others have expressed. If anything, I felt like it was a bit clumsy having both Covenant-agnostic zone faction Reputation and Covenant-specific Renown that both had to be ratcheted up. It was good that, in catch-up mode, Callings could contribute to both. From what little I’ve read, it seems like maybe the Renown iteration in Dragonflight is an iteration of both Renown and Reputation and might serve both purposes?
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Which iteration of Talents are we on by now?
Let’s see, there was the Classic/BC version, and then I think there were some modifications to the tree for the Wrath/Cata version, and then we got the Mists rows which have persisted until now; and then there have been the Talent-like systems of Artifacts, Azerite Armor, and Soulbinds+Conduits.
From the information shared in this post and this post and this post, I am feeling cautiously optimistic about the new Talent system. It’ll be good to not have to choose anymore between a utility option and a throughput option in the same Talent row.
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After we just had Venthyr, really Blizzard really Dracthyr???
I’m bound to roll a Dracthyr Evoker eventually to play with how the Class plays and to play with the racial customization options. She’s going to be named Kamalisaura and she’ll probably end up having a “phase” of her Draconic and Visage forms for each of the five Classic Dragonflight colors. I think I’ll probably look for versions of the scales (I keep wanting to call it “carapace” a la the Singers in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive…) that look less tiger-stripey and more lizardy.