Is button bloat an issue for death knights? I think so. The developers say that this "button bloat" is defined by having abilities you rarely use but are still keybound somewhere on your bars for the off chance you might need it. But what can we really get rid of without sacrificing the class we know and love?
From a dps point of view, things like death strike, chains of ice, death grip and such all have places on my bars but rarely get used. Death strike shouldn't be used in place of a dps attack normally so it really doesn't have a place on our bars EXCEPT for the fact that in has saved my life multiple times. Glyph of dark succor makes it even more useful BUT only if the fight includes ads that need to be killed. And even then what are the chances of you needing a heal within 15 seconds of killing said add? But if we remove death strike from the dps specs then death knights lose a very important signature of their class: a damaging heal. Death knights have always been cool to me because they had these offensive heals and I really liked that. While this ability is extremely important for our class identity, it only causes more of a problem for the button bloat issue. Chains of ice has only been used so far on Tortos this tier and even then I just HB with chillblains. Doesn't seem as awesome as an epic chain of ice... but when you can have the same cost (1 frost rune) BUT have it tied into an attack it makes the ability seem silly. Death grip has great use but little if the fights have no adds to be pulled.
I don't have much in the ways of ideas for fixing any of these except death grip. Death grip wouldn't feel as bad if they added something to it. First off, tranquil grip should be baseline for all dps specs. We hardly have any reason to taunt stuff anyway. Secondly, on raid bosses and other things that are permanently immune to it's pulling effect we should be able to pull ourselves to the target. Now this only works on PERMANENT immunity. Temporary immunity such as pillar of frost would not have this effect so it wouldn't have any impact on PvP. I know dks have been asking for more mobility but the issue with that has been the fact that we do have good "mobility" but it revolves around pulling stuff to us. With this change, death grip will feel like an extremely useful tool in a raiding environment and still be balanced in PvP.
Any other suggestions or abilities you feel should be removed/changed?