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"How does skill affect dps?"
You seem as if you're arguing that once you come up with the theoretical maximum dps for you class that then you can go ahead and hit that every time. And maybe it's even possible to get close on a fight like Patchwerk. But fights aren't all like that. As soon as you're running around, dealing with adds or raid damage, running out of mana, or dealing with the rest of the encounter then skill does come into play.
I don't think it's all just the healers. Beating the enrage timer is the domain of dps, and if it was trivial then nobody would be wiping on Brutallus (pre nerf). To me, that's skill. Most players couldn't even hit the same dps on Brutallus from night to night. I've heard great players say they've had off nights, which is another way of saying they failed to achieve their maximum. The delta is skill.
All we're saying the new feature is that the difference in theoretical dps can be masked to a larger extent now by skill. Before, there was almost nothing an excellent shaman could do to beat a mediocre rogue. More of the challenge of the encounter was in stacking the right classes and buffs than the actual execution of the fight.
Now perhaps you can argue that mage rotation is simpler than some classes or that if you ignored your procs and cooldowns and just hit Fireball that your dps wouldn't suffer as much as a rogue who only spammed Sinister Strike. But it's not as if all mages achieve their maximum dps or even understand how to.
I guess it's not actually clear what you are arguing for. The theoretical and actual discrepancy in dps between mages and warlocks already existed. How does throwing paladins, druids and shamans into the mix change that? Or are you saying we should just anoint class A as the highest dps class and class B as the second-highest and make the challenge of an encounter all about learning the fight itself? As far as the accountability issue, that already existed too. We could have just said that in our tests mages can beat warlocks in Sunwell so you just need to L2P. That doesn't seem to be a feature of the new system.
We could have always taken the lazy way out and said it's just you. To some extent you're going to trust us or not largely based on whether or not you're having fun in the game. I've enjoyed plenty of games without having to have a conversation with the developer. Maybe I'm missing your point, but you guys stated it eloquently so I want to understand it. (src)
