This seems a poor change to me in terms of gameplay (which, save perhaps for horribly content-incompatible profiles, is what our primary interest should always be on in a redesign).
The change reduces interaction and control—especially in ways was previously flavorful for the spec.
I don’t want a hit-on-CD nuke AoE, especially where the enemies must live 12 seconds more to get its full value (due to the added DoT via new Merciless Blows).
I want Butchery, mostly as it was: bankable, burstable, interactive (even if that last bit was already mostly pruned with TWW pre-patch).
I like Survival feeling busy. If it would become nigh impossible to balance across AoE because of such limited time in which to fit additional rotational CDs (e.g., Butchery), leaving no time even to spend TotS stacks, or the like, I could understand trying to reduce that crunch.
But even then, that should, if anything, be through temporary reductions to the GCD and maayybbee the rare super-spender (dump 50 Focus and all TotS stacks at once or whatever, maybe as a new PL capstone synergetic with whatever, say, increased busyness it might offer over Sentinel).
- For example, Scattered Prey could cause Butchery to reduce the global cooldown incurred by your next action by 33.3%*. (Instead of, per the upcoming changes, needing 19 GCDs to pay off if it even affects all damage caused by Butchery —i.e., also the bleed—or 11 GCDs otherwise.)
That being said, most of the changes seem a net positive. I just dislike that, as usual, there’s a fair bit of athematic steps to the side or outright back spoiling the barrel.