I’d say personally say 16 and over is too many.
I use a 17 button (12 on the side mouse) using reg, shift and rarely CTRL modifiers. There are some buttons that are easier to reach than others. For example I try and make all my alts use similar buttons, like a type of stun, silence, etc is 5, my trinket is 8… So I have some stuff like my mount as CTRL-12, and a map macro at CTRL-10 to assist with some locations…
But practically ALL the high level arena players have three macros for one spell on many of the critical spells all keybound… I don’t do this, and don’t know how they manage other than foregoing a lot of spells that I don’t. I don’t think most of the top 0.3% percentile arena players actually visit the forum, but if they did it’d be nice to get their input…
I actually don’t mind spell bloat. Its the pacing of combat that irritates me.
You wanted some kind of unanimously agreed upon number?
I assumed this was just you broadly soliciting opinions. Some working figure to ground the rather vague criticism “too many buttons.”, so it can actually be discussed.
If you want some kind of authoritative answer to the question “what is too many?” that probably has to come from some kind of higher position. Like a Dev or something speaking about the design principals or creative goals for WoW.
Its just people jumping on the topic of the month and running with it. Button bloat is an issue now apparently and that’s just ridiculous. Every class has a build that can minimise buttons and rely on the passive talents. Is it as effective as the higher rotational build? No, nor should it be its the trade off. But looking at the people in this thread complaining about button bloat then looking at the build they run (funnily enough an outdated wowhead build) they have the option to reduce said bloat but don’t.
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The dev is apparently very insistent in a “class fantasy” where rogues much do a pre-fight “ritual” before every pull and then weave in all the different forms of roguery in every rotation.
Like most “good idea faries,” this one should have been killed.
Blizzards button bloat reminds me of the chimpanzees they do tests on who can memorize so many more buttons than humans can because of their decreased intellect enables their simple animal minds to run patterns. You can see it in the responses as well the way it is defended. Bring back the humanity 
I do actually feel like they are going too far in a path of exile direction where they are borderline making it impossible for new players to get into the game. I tried getting a few buddies into it at the start of Dragonflight and both of them bailed almost immediately due to how complicated it was
the button bloat is atrocious right now i wanna play affliction lock without needing 10 extra things from the talent tree. and if war within is putting us to 80? It seems were getting More abilities when we need less?
Hero talents are all passives.
It sounds like a skill issue. Stop taking my buttons away. I like knowing that I have abilities for Different situations.
Sock puppets and trolls are out in numbers today
One that apparently can’t use a keyboard properly. Button bloat is not an issue IMO, and I have a character of every class. In fact, I have never had an issue with button bloat, but then I haven’t spent years playing console games where there’s only 4-6 buttons to use either. Should we make allowances for those people by reducing the number of useful abilities? No, no we should not.
Semper Fi! 
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talent yourself for more passives. you dont need to have a cutting edge sim build for 90% of the content in this game.
The only thing to do in this game is mythic and raid and i dont even want to after seeing this mess of a hotbar. if i try to make a talent set up that i actually want to use. i end up at the bottom of the dps meter by miles
Where do you get 4-6 buttons Jarhead? I have 27 keybinds and have been playing WoW since 2008. Things are getting out of hand and Im going to have to buy foot pedals to go with my razer naga. Ive been raiding as druid, pally, shammy, rogue and hunter for 15 years. I want to be immersed in the game, not my keyboard. Ive never played a console and don’t understand why so many people use that term when it is obvious that we are using over four times as many buttons. I remember the days when we had so much fun raiding and no one had a mouse with 12 side buttons like I do today, the naga wasnt even invented yet. We basically went from 8 buttons to 27 since ive been playing and the player base has been shrinking the whole time. I personally want around 20 keybinds to keep a game fun. But instead the only help we get from other players is “go play a BM hunter” or get called a “console player”. Semper Fidelis
I would LOVE to know how people are getting more than 15 buttons for a class. Seriously, y’all know you don’t have to use every single button they give you, or that you take from talent trees right? It’s like none of the people complaining about this made up button bloat never played a game with more than 6 buttons ever.
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I’m glad you said this but some players like the bloat (not me).
You do realize every class has a ton of non-throughput buttons?
My Sin rogue does have 14 buttons related to damage though. I have another 16 that aren’t DPS related.
If I were to be cheeky and say damage pot and my trinket were DPS related, that could be 16 buttons, but luckily those things can be macro’d in the majority of cases.
a new class has different abilities tho
