Complexity/Sensory Overload

[Lambdafish]

Faster and more reliable to Dodge AoEs by running normally.

But you didn't factor in the damage. Repelling shot is a bad skill, but it's not useless. For example, Fracture is a bad skill but has a use, the way shield swipe used to be was a useless skill (no redeeming qualities no matter how much you stretched it).

[Duelle]

I would like to also add that the problem isn't available hotbar space (some people always point out they have more space available) but rather ease of use for the player. The game in it's current form is incredibly cumbersome to play if you aren't using something like an MMO mouse or (sorta) a controller. Personally I'm not at all surprised so much of the player base has trouble playing their classes properly. I'd wager these people haven't gone out of their way to purchase extra tools to make the game playable and so they struggle.

Your average person is not going to get a gaming keyboard (which these days come loaded with neon backlighting and a bunch of stuff an average person doesn't need) or a gaming/MMO mouse just to play this game. The average person would more than likely just use a regular keyboard and mouse combo.

But you didn't factor in the damage. Repelling shot is a bad skill, but it's not useless. For example, Fracture is a bad skill but has a use, the way shield swipe used to be was a useless skill (no redeeming qualities no matter how much you stretched it).

The issue with Fracture is that it's standalone rather than offer some mechanical advantage to MRD/WAR. Shield Swipe attempted to go against the grain on revenge-style attacks (which hit hard but have a modest cooldown AND are off-GCD), which is why that eventually fell short.

I imagine the average player wouldn't care about skill bloat or the use of macros and just roll with the punches as they are thrown at them by the devs design decisions.

I disagree. The average person simply won't analyze stuff down to the involved mechanics, and instead will say "this used to be fun but they did something that makes it no longer fun".

That said, when the new expansion comes they might need to make choice between fusing existing abilities or only adding passive traits. Personally I think it should be a mixture of both. Fuse some abilities, remove the ones no one ever uses and perhaps allow less but more meaningful cross class skills. Also give a few cool new abilities and passive traits. But please do not go down the route WoW did. Their pruning was a freaking disaster and it's happening again. Some specs are unrecognizable because their defining spells don't exist anymore.

WoW took pruning overboard because they also removed side abilities that were there for the sake of concept (Divine Intervention for paladins) or for fun within context of the class (Eyes of the Beast for hunters). That doesn't make pruning inherently bad; It's just that the people involved went really overboard.