I wouldn't expect any other opinion from people who don't understand game design, and only focus on the history of the game (which has had several changes in design teams). The simple fact is that gear introduces too many variables, and makes balancing a lot harder. Blizzard's other games are well balanced. Only WoW with it's infinite combinations of gear suffers, and that's because they have enough work attempting to balance endgame (where there are more stats to play with), without having to do the same for nine other brackets.
With every player of a spec having exactly the same stats, the devs no longer need to consider what players are wearing (or may start wearing after a change) when they have to make balance decisions. The statistics they gather on the relative strengths of each spec will be far clearer, and they can work directly off those values to give each spec Time-to-Live and Time-to-Kill values within an acceptable range.
Hopefully their talk about PvP talents means a complete new set, just for PvP, with a lot of differences. That will be how you select for +damage or +survival, a lot like how the talents work in HotS. Hopefully they'll also unlock more choices the longer you play a spec, too.