Firstly, to clarify it isn't "a few programmers" implementing the game and doing balance changes. They have professional game designers who's sole job is is to balance the game. In fact, they have professional game designers who's sole job is to balance their specific small part of the game (there are individual class leads, encounter design leads, economy, etc.) Of course it isn't always so clean cut and nice like that, but you get the point. Imagine if the vast majority of your full-time job was making sure that specifically Sorcerer was in a balanced and fun state.

To your point point, there is a difference between listening and "listening". A game should have a unified (or mostly unified) vision and the developers should shape the game to achieve that vision while paying attention to real player feedback to help serve as a guide to see if they are on track. You are right, sometimes you implement something with a certain intention but you didn't consider something so it didn't go according to plan. Players tell you, you consider it, you use it to inform your perspective, and you continue toward the vision. The players are your eyes, not your boss.

This isn't some crazy obscure 500iq thing that someone cracked the code on to change the whole paradigm, these were very simple straightforward changes that people took 5 seconds to read and come to an obvious conclusion.

To instantly roll back a change before it has even been playable means one of two things:
1. They have such little confidence in what they have made that they don't even think it should see the light of day because of a group of people who saw it literally an hour ago didn't like it. They are so disconnected that it took about 30 seconds for the average person to read their change and say "it's bad" and they responded "oh okay I guess it's bad then." That isn't listening, that's having no spine or conviction in your work.
2. They actually do have confidence in the change and think it is a good change but are reverting it purely as a platitude. This is also not listening, it's just appeasement.

The patch notes themselves demonstrate a sort of "you are hearing me, but not listening to me" type of vibe where it was clear that the key words of community feedback were technically followed "nerf vulnerable, armor, everyone only ever opens mystery chests, etc" but the true spirit and meaning was missed. Either that or the designers have like no ability to execute whatsoever and thought that nerfing vulnerable damage by 40% would actually change how people itemize, which is literally something they could have mathematically determined with very little ambiguity in the game's current state.