The answer is probably "no," but...Follow

...does the new patch sound like an ominous last-minute fix before the open beta release to anyone else? One can always hope...

I read 'em all right, didn't see anything regarding it. But, oh well.

Open beta won't happen before paladin and hunter talents are added.

Didn't sound like that to me at all. Seems more like they're progressing like they think they should be. They're still adding things, not just covering their tracks. Gosh, with the addition of more content and open beta closing in why are people freaking out so often? This is when you should be getting more and more excited! (I know I am.) People are too negative. This is gonna be great.

JAEFo, for someone who just looks at the thread titles and skimms on this is a really random on to comment on.

Besides, its not the money sink that is the problem with decay, its that every other day you have to have it repaired, its a big pain in the ***. i wouldnt be surprised if people had multiple sets of armour so they dont have to keep repairing it.

btw, yes it does take 1-2 days for the durability to be lost, blizzard oficially stated it.

Umm, its not the cost, its the effects on going out to anywhere in a far off place. The way its decaying is too quick.

I myself love the idea of it, I just dont like the idea of having to run back to town every 30 mins to an hour.

"i wouldnt be surprised if people had multiple sets of armour so they dont have to keep repairing it."

That's funny! When I originally read the patch notes and Blizzard's official reasoning for the change, what you just said was one of the things that occurred to me.
One of the reasons Blizzard made the change was "to decrease inflation, particularly at higher levels". In other words, they wanted there to be more of a market for high-end stuff, particularly crafted goods. The question players have to ask themselves is, if they don't want to keep coming back to town, do they farm the instance to get the same armor/weapon/etc. drop they currently have, or do they get someone to make them something of roughly the same quality "just in case"? After all, is it really worth the trouble of instance farming for something you might not ever use? I think that's the sort of decision Blizzard is trying to get people to make. And if people just come back to the cities, well, Blizzard's been trying to encourage that, too. Blizzard wins.
Anyway, the system is still subject to revision and isn't even completely implemented yet. Remember, Blizzard explicitly mentioned that the way tradeskills interact with durability is NYI, so we'll just have to see how it turns out, won't we?