Ability Squish
We do feel that, at least for some classes, there are a few too many buttons to keep on your action bars. It's an issue we'd ultimately like to solve, but something we have to be very, very careful with.
It's easy to look at your bar, go "LOOKIT ALL DEM BUTTONS", and decide that some of them need to go. In fact, we agree. It's much more difficult -- even dangerous -- to decide exactly which abilities to get rid of. Generally speaking, if you have an ability keybound, it's probably at least fairly important to your class. Getting rid of abilities you don't have bound doesn't really fix anything, so that means that, in most cases, we're talking about cutting the important ones.
That's not to say it can't (or won't) be done, but it does mean it's a fairly large task. Depending on the ability, there could be a lot of rebalancing or restructuring needed to make sure the class is still functional and fun to play. Again, it's something we'd like to do, it's just a very involved process.
Something you didn't really touch on is how some abilities exist as flavour for the class. The last time this kind of ability trimming occurred, a lot of things we players took for fun and playing about wound up biting the bullet because they were seen as "unnecessary" (i.e. Hunter's Eyes of the Beast).
True, and we want to avoid that. As I mentioned above, removing abilities you don't often use doesn't accomplish much. We often talk about this issue in terms of action bar space, but it's really keybind space that's the problem. One could make an argument that, say, Unending Breath could stand to be cut, but that's not something that's going to free up a keybind for the vast majority of Warlocks. (
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Patch 5.4.2 Warrior Changes
We don't feel that Warrior damage output itself is the issue. It's strong, but not out of line compared to other classes. We think the issue lies with mobility, and the Warrior's ability to keep that constant pressure going. That's why we decided to revert the 5.4 Intervene change in 5.4.2 and move the root break back to Safeguard. Once we've had a chance to see how that affects things, we'll be able to decide if any further changes are necessary. (
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)