Blizzard artists in charge of Hunter tiers, I'm going to give you the most brilliant idea on the planet. And I think some of you knew about it, but I guess you fired those.
Base your tiers on what the Hunter is killing in that tier.
You are a HUNTER. You should be skinning the bosses and turning it into a suit! Tier 16, what the fuck is that supposed to be? When did I kill a giant cyclops dressed like a candy bar wrapper? Why is the tier from Heart of Fear Yaungol based? What the fuck do the Yaungol have to do with this Mantid? I should be dressed like a Mantid.
I feel like that's one thing Cataclysm got right. The hunter tiers LOOK like hunter tiers. The only Hunter tier in Pandaria that looks like a Hunter tier is the Saurok Stalker(which is from a raid with a single Saurok boss in it)
To be fair, T16 is pretty weird for a lot of classes.
DKs look like Doombots, Hunters look like a Cyclops Robot, and I'm still not entirely sure what Warriors are supposed to be since it's standard armor with some spikes and lights.
My opinions:
T14: Yeah, having the set Yaungol-based was kinda weird. Mantid prolly would've been more appropriate like you mentioned.
But frankly, the set is just subpar at best. The only things that stand out are the shoulders and helm, and that's not saying much.
T15: Pretty good looking set. The Saruok theme is pretty nice, but it's not that weird given their presence on the Isle of Thunder.
But it's probably the only real Tier set that's true to the whole Hunter theme of wearing your enemy.
T16: Eh...it's not really a bad set, but it totally goes against the typical theme of Hunter sets. Then again, most of the T16 sets are pretty weird.
Put it this way: it's a good-looking armor set, but hardly looks like it belongs to a Hunter.