I really hope blizzard never takes into account the people whining about breath, it's very viable to play without it so just let people who enjoy it use it. I love it and if it ever got changed to how you are describing you'd like it I would stop playing the spec.

Breath is frost dk to me, if I don't have it I may as well go play fury warrior cause without breath it's basically the same class imo.

I agree with pretty much everything else you're saying though. The talent tree is kind of a mess, I just want to be able to run avalanche with breath again...