There is no way to say anthing to this without sounding snarky or like I am attacking you personally. It just sounds like your list of changes are a huge rewind to 3.5 and its way of thinking.
No worries. We can disagree without being disagreeable.
I do not like the sameness (or homogenous in the main forum) argument. I don't see it, and I think it is a forest and trees problem. If you see PC's as a collection of their abilities, then they look the same. If you see them as individuals with different abilities that are built around a common framework, they are different. It is easy to say "Sorcerer and Fighter have 2 at wills, 3 encounters, and 3 dailies, they are the same!" without actually looking at what those powers *do* or considering how they interact with their class abilities and their behavior in combat.
It's a matter of game combat preference. Every single one of my players with the exception of my wife see the problem. My wife doesn't see the problem because she doesn't care. She is there to socialize and doesn't care what the rules are. So 5 players plus the DM see the problem and 1 player does not. Even the player of the Cleric who claims that she doesn't care what the rules are is very annoyed at Healing Surges because her Cleric cannot heal a PC who is out of Healing Surges. She does actually strongly (and negatively) care about some rules, even though she just wants to play the game and not care about any of the rules.
So although you do not see the issue, we do. It still makes it a valid issue for WotC to consider when designing the next version. And WotC claimed for 4E that it was taking into consideration the game elements that players had problems with, so why wouldn't they do that for 5E?
Yes, the Invoker could Daze more than most other classes in our campaign. But, both the Fighter and the Swordmage mark foes and they conflict with each other. The Bard slides characters and debuffs. The Cleric heals and buffs. The Druid nickels foes to death.
But it's almost all "roll to hit, roll damage and throw a little side effect on". The vast majority of powers.
There are very few summoning spells. There are very few illusions to fool foes. There are very few charms to beguil and control foes.
And the ones that are there are mostly damage dealing spells with the keyword illusion attached to it or keyword charm attached to it where the illusion or charm is almost nonexistent.
The entire game now revolves around doing hit point damage.
There are very few ways to fly above the battle. There are very few ways to invisibly sneak past foes.
And this is not a 3.5 way of thinking, although 3.5 had these game elements. It's a way of thinking that allows for player creativity outside of just doing damage to foes. Tricking them instead of (or alongside of) merely damaging them.
Most encounters in World of Warcraft revolve around doing damage and only doing damage in combat. Most encounters in 4E revolve around doing damage and only doing damage in combat. This does not have to be the model and 3.5 and earlier versions of the game system allowed for other models.
4E is a very narrowly focused FRPG and some people prefer a less narrow of a focus.
You might consider re-adding some of the earlier concepts as going backwards in design. I consider taking the best of both the earlier models and the new model and combining them as going forward in design and getting the best of both worlds.
Pathfinder is so successful because it takes some new "gain something at every level for all classes" concept and adds it to a tried and true older model. WotC could learn something from that.
Not all ideas are good ideas, regardless of whether WotC wrote them down in a book (as an example, Battlerage Vigor is an extremely terrible idea balance-wise, mechanically just adds more bookkeeping, and didn't take minions into account). Many of the 4E game mechanics are inferior mechanics (e.g. effects that end until the start or end of the attacker's turn are merely bookkeeping efforts).
As for the "without actually looking at what those powers *do*" argument, I find that a bit condescending. My side of the discussion does take that into account, we just find it to be a minor aspect and not the defining aspect of most powers.
What most standard action powers do is damage plus a minor effect. The fact that one minor effect is a slide and one is a buff and one is a debuff and one is a heal does add a bit of non-homogenousness. But the damage is the primary effect here. If these same powers did not have the side effect, players might still take them if the damage is high enough. If these same powers did not do any damage, most players would not take them because sliding a foe a few squares is a very minor aspect of combat.
In 4E, damage is King and that is why the minor non-homogenousness of effects still feels homogenous. The damage is homogenous. And, there is little difference between buffing an ally's to hit, debuffing a foe's defense, and sliding a foe into flank. All of these improve the chance to hit. They are merely different game mechanics to achieve more or less the same thing. Identical, no. Similar, yes.
One aspect of what was lost with the 4E model is the lack of spell casting PCs to select from a large list of spells. The homogenous aspect is that the players who enjoyed large numbers of choices now have their PC limited to the point of being crippled for that player. WotC could have a system of selecting x powers out of 5x powers for those types of players and the player would still be limited to x powers at any point in time, just like the non-spell casting PCs.
