As far as customization goes, I'm not a huge fan of talents, I would like to augment skills though, like you have a strike that you can level up in different ways, add a bleed to it, or a stun, you choose the more xp the skill gets the more you use it.
As for the class, I like my idea for bard, first it's a pet class, you get a small monkey wearing a fez hat that plays the cymbals or drums. You can either attack or play music, and your monkey can either attackor play music too, so you can have tons of song power, tons of melee power or a nice mix. For songs you get song points, the higher level the more points you get, and you use those points to make songs, have 5 points you can have 5 parts to the song, youcan mix that with haste, melee power, spell power run speed or stack them for like a really powerful haste song, however you see fit, and you can make different songs in your songbook to use at different times.
Your resource is swagger, songs take up a set amount of swagger, so like if you ahve 100 swagger and your song is worth 20 you play your song and then that amount is unusable but you have 80 left for your attacks and shouts and what not.