Evolved Skills Feedback

[Absurdity]

Eh, I'd say what they've shown so far doesn't look bad at all. Most people seem to be reacting positively to it, or at least reacting with curiousity and questions. If you think it looks bad then that's fine, to each their own, but that appears far from the general consensus.

Let me be frank, the "general consensus" is usually not the smartest tool in the shed.
The "general consensus" is doing it's usual hype cycle, where they start pogging over every single new flashy VFX, don't think for a second about the actual gameplay reality and only start complaining about obvious flaws when it's too late.

20% is huge, let's just start off with that.

As for the remaining 80%, what do they gain from lowering the skill ceiling? It does nothing for them they weren't anywhere near it to start with. Reducing the skill floor? maybe though I would argue time and time again that the game is really simple enough to play for the content that these players are doing. You don't need to align 2 minutes, you didn't need to stagger your dots (in the past before they removed them), you don't need to maintain uptime and get dps back for your heals, etc. etc. they didn't need the changes in the first place. Do they make things simpler? sure, but at the cost of upsetting your other 20%.. kinda yikes.
Next to that the much bigger elephant in the room is proper difficulty curbs to teach players. I'm glad to see they are addressing some of that but the game is still terrible at teaching you how to play (by design might I add, the obsession over not pushing the player base too hard costs them a lot here)

Claiming that 80% don't care is complete nonsense anyway. If none of the casuals cared about the combat gameplay we wouldn't have this rework.

My fear is simply that we replace the stagnant "1 minute 40 of filler ->20 seconds of burst -> repeat" with "mash these glowing buttons however YOU want".

People really are concerned about less Skill Expression, when Evolved mode allows you to take different routes in split-second choices, unlike the current system that forces you to press the same button sequence precisely every 2 min?

And did they show any of that? No? Hmm, curious...
Unless you mean the split-second choice is whether I press this blinking 800 potency GCD first or this blinking 1000 potency GCD.