Especially since they made monsters in post-HW dungeons immune to sleep for whatever reason.
The dropped subs is not usually associated with pruning. I think it's more to do with long content droughts and garrisons etc.
The nice thing about having simpler rotations is that the dev team can make more mechanically interesting fights.
Personally, I really dislike a lot of the complicated stuff they added in Heavensward. I went from loving BRD, BLM, PLD, WHM, SCH, SMN, NIN, DRG in 2.x to playing SMN/SCH only in 3.x. Conversely, in WoW, Demon Hunter is amazingly fun and it's incredibly simple in it's mechanics.
Back in the 2.0 days people would sleep stuff and kill only the stuff that would open gates and skip the rest of the trash, so now everything is immune to sleep.
Wanderer's Palace was one of the biggest offenders, skipping tons of trash mobs by sleeping stuff specifically pulling the entire first hallway from the beginning, killing the tonberry that opens the door and locking all the trash out with the boss seal.
Oh gosh but I love featherfoot and not just for fishing for a haymaker. I keep it on my WAR bar at all times and remember quite gleefully giggling as Titan flipped a table at me to see DODGE. Nice try, buddy. Nice try.
Ehhhh, that depends in what way it is complex. Lengthy combos are a system of difficulty mechanics that have to exist in tandem with DPS checks. You look at fights like A11 and possibly A12 where re-positioning and dodging all the things becomes a detriment to those combos; you could say those fights are so light on gear checking because they rely far more on evasion tactics while maintaining damage. Likewise, just having a 1-2-3 output for a full potency rotation would make dps checks laughable. So it really falls under what a fight focuses on. Currently we are looking to be getting more fights that are more mechanically active and not nearly as sever DPS checks, so pruning may have to be necessary to adapt to the changes. In time, DPS checks will resurface more and we'll find them creating a system that supports both on an equal level.
I could not agree more with this honestly, it's why I left WoW too, glad I'm not alone. WoW classes felt so complex and fun in Pandaria, now they all have 3 button rotations and are immensely shallow for the most part. I went back recently to try legion and it's just so boring in comparison to FFXIV.
I was so sad when they removed hunter's Eye of the Beast, it was a useless spell but I loved being able to take control of my pet and run around as a snake, wolf or cat for a minute, lol. And then shaman had that totem that let you see what it sees, so I would drop it somewhere and just go hide, able to lie in wait for some unsuspecting passer-by to wander into my trap, lol.
I'm not really sure I like the thought of having certain skills being completely removed. :x pointless skills like Sleep and Repose make sense, but I do actually like having Featherfoot and Haymaker. Then again though my biggest wish is for Dismantle/Rend Mind to be buffed. 5% is so smol a percentage...
People they say spells like Sleep don't have any use whatsoever don't play BLM in all content where sleep in lower dungeons can save lives. Or completely shut down adds in boss fights. Removing stuff like that turns your job class to only perform one function and make it boring real quick and real fast.