I'll actually quote the two posts made in that thread as I've noticed not all the fansite Blue trackers have picked these posts up yet.
The first post is by Ornyx which describes the development philosophies within Blizzard:
Game design is most definitely an art, and the artist is the one in control of their own hand.
One of Blizzard's oldest philosophies has been to build worlds and games that we ourselves love, and, only then, inviting players to join us on adventures within. This doesn't mean we don't care or listen, it just means that we do disagree at a philosophical level about some things that players may not like.
Everyone who has worked on Legion has put tons of love and sweat into building this expansion. We are most definitely working on making Legion the best expansion WoW has seen - and I think that will show over the coming months.
Ion Hazzikostas also took the time to contribute to the thread regarding class balance and some of the comments mentioned during the Q&A:
I think the big problem is the balance discussion in the QA came over a bit high handed or even a touch meanspirited.
While it is likely not exactly as it was intended, the whole 'we know yall need buffs but if you become the top spec it will upset the peole who play that spec so no love for you' impression taken from the QA was sort of crappy, especially for people playing Elemental or Frost - who also dedicated a lot of time and AP in the hopes that they would be buffed not to be better than Unholy or Enhance, but on par.
Sorry to hear that it came across that way.
Just to be clear, I was trying to explain why we sometimes may seem conservative or slow with balance changes. Frost mages were used as an example of a spec that we do feel is currently lagging behind in raid and dungeon gameplay, but not by nearly as much as data from public log sites might suggest. It seems less disruptive to buff a spec incrementally, allowing time for the results of each change to play out and repeating if needed, rather than risking overshooting the mark. (And yes, we definitely have failed in this goal at times - post-launch rogue spec balance comes to mind.)
At the heart of balance concerns is the fact that people just want to be able to feel like they have a place in the endgame as their preferred class/spec, and we entirely share that goal. Class balance is an ongoing process, with new variables coming into play all the time, as item level increases, new trinkets, legendaries, and set bonuses enter the mix, players get deeper into their respective artifact trees, theorycraft evolves, etc.
The Q&A didn't delve into specific details because the exact list of changes is and was still evolving. There will be a new 7.1 build on PTR very shortly, and patch notes to follow. That patch contains some improvements for several of the specs that currently are currently underperforming (including both flavors of Frost). Those changes should in general move things in the right direction, but we'll be continuing to watch and adjust further as needed.
