I reached my character limit on my last post, but the core of what I want to say is that each button should FEEL different.
If I press 1 and do damage, with nothing else, no animations locks, no buffs, debuffs or cooldowns. That feels very different from pressing 2 and dealing damage and getting animation locked or pressing 3 and doing damage while being locked out of that ability with a 20s cooldown. There are to many combo's right now in game that don't FEEL different but at the same time are making sure we don't get new buttons because of the bloat they cause.
My earlier 8 button example would require 15 buttons in the current system. That's practically half a console player's buttons, which is absurd as it would only do 8 things. But in the new system you would have a lot of space filled for gameplay and would only be using 30% of a console player's buttons. And as I've shown before, it doesn't make it any easier to use.
EDIT: Simple example of why I want consolidation:
Think of the DRK how it currently is, and consolidate Hard Slash, Syphon Strike and Soul Eater into a single button combo chain. This would leave you with 2 buttons:
1. Spinning Slash > Reprisal > Power Slash combo chain. Executing Power Slash grants a resource stack (3), and you are locked out of this combo until this resource is depleted.
2. Scourge, now a short duration DoT that requires 1 stack of the resource from the former button. But has a 20 second cooldown.
By consolidating a combo chain, brought back 4 abilities that got deleted and linked them to a new mechanic to manage. Making the class both harder to use, but giving it extra options without require additional buttons to use and without taking away anything else.
Consolidate Unleash and Stalwart Soul and you regain an additional button, which could be used for another combo. Maybe one with an animation lock or a casting bar.