Just to chime in - this is the direct quote from ghostcrawler, on the frontpage:
can you elaborate on the "hunters have too many buttons" thing? A lot of people enjoy it.. Do you intend to remove abilities?
But overall, we think hunters have too many situational abilities and cooldowns. # of rotational abilities is generally good. (Source)
I'm curious, whats your distinction between 1) situational abilities, 2) cooldowns and 3) rotational abilities?
Deterrence - situational. BW - cooldown. Arcane Shot - rotational. (Source)
now, what this means is - don't get your hopes up for any "rotational" fixes. We're fine as-is with the amount of buttons we have to press in a combat situation.
Breaking it down:
Signature shot. (Explo, KC, Chim)
Focus builder. (Steady, Cobra).
Arcane shot.
Lvl 90 talent. (Glaive, Power, Barrage).
Signature speciality. (Black Arrow, Focus Fire, Aimed Shot).
Kill Shot.
Serpent Sting.
That's a total of seven abilities. One of those we only have to fire once, another is only aviable for about 15% of the fight (as raid dps goes up after 35% due to classes slowly activating their OWN executes). You can add dire beast to the mix, but I imagine that's one of the things that'd go under "utility/cooldown", and is probably a valid thing to want "fixed". Same goes for the tier 75 talents.
The big thing is, as he says, the many extra utility and cooldown buttons, and management of those. Lynx Rush was chosen, even though it was inferior, by almost every top hunter before the "change" that made it into "AMOC with lower damage and no focus cost", both for the burst and the relative ease at which you could use it.
The utility buttons they might change in one way or another -
Tier 75 talents.
Tier 45 talents (TOTH is passive already, but fervor/dire beast is more "situational).
Beastial Wrath (25% uptime and need to build your focus around it, along with keeping up your normal cycle = very tedious. Grant either more passive focus regen from somewhere, or cut focus costs, then slap a bigger CD on BW and make it a "real" burst cooldown, instead of the pitiful 10-20% damage modifier it has now).
Explosive Trap (having to AOE-attacks is more than most other classes, and i's such a small amount of damage that removing it to ease up on bloat would not have a big effect, as long as AOE was made up for otherwise).
Aspects has already been "removed" (people suggesting its removal, I don't get it - it's already the only aspect you'll ever want, why would you need it removed? Just don't have a button for it <.<).
I disagree with doing anything about tranq short. It's fine as it is, bar the focus cost (why do shamans get to purge two magic effects for "no" cost, as mana is infinite, while we have to pay 10% of our resource that translates directly into damage, or suffer a 10 sec CD for ONE?).
Feign death and Misdirection are both hunter tools that helps combat threat, which in this day and time, is not even an issue anymore. I could see them doing something about it, as having two of these are deffo "utility bloat". Feign serves no real purpose in fights anymore either, except for easy resetting of bosses like Spirit kings. Gone are the days where you could feign Magmatron's flamethrower, in order to completly avoid the attack.
Hunters mark has already been removed from the bloat by making it "baseline".
This is all from a PvE point of view. From a pvp point of view, I really have no idea - but I imagine making serpent sting and widow venom into one sting wouldn't hurt too much, as it is an easily dispellable (and, due to its potency, SHOULD probably be dispelled) dot.