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Basically, using DME to add, remove, or alter the positioning of enemies such that they will be a reasonable challenge for the PCs is a good thing. For example, I can think of multiple encounters that are basically a ton of minions all within a 5 spread of at least 1 other minion. You might DME it so that there are less minions and more normal creatures, and/or make the minions show up in waves so they're not all there at the very start of the combat, or they come in from different directions, etc.

Just wanted to post to let everyone know that we were both right! As written it did work to allow infinite minion clearing. And, WotC did agree that it needed fixing!

Let's all walk hand-in-hand into the sunset!

Well, I mean, I would walk hand-in-hand, if I weren't holding these two rods...

I think it may have been an effect of the spellplague.

As for their rejoicing, between Hexblast (blast 5, curse, then attack), Rods of Quickcurse (curse anything as free action), plus Cursegrind and Cursebite (both attack anything cursed within burst 20), the chances that they will enjoy the changes for long are slim.

In reality, the two-rod combo is generally an effective strategy before paragon. After that, the lure of damage through better rods (Vicious, Darkspiral, etc.) is generally hard to resist and more effective than moving your curse around. If you really need to curse something, you can use Quickcurse or other possibilities (feats, paragon path features, etc.). Not damaging the minions becomes just fine, as you probably were going to take them out via another action anyway. Reaving, interestingly, is still a strong choice. You gain a pretty dependable way of boosting your damage with an off-hand rod. If you will be cursing 5 things in a combat, that's a pretty decent damage boost compared to other rod options. And, you can get the best of both worlds by starting with Reaving, get your curses out early, then swap to something else.

If a warlock lacks feats or other ways to gain flexibility in getting the curse out, then the Rod of Corruption can still be a good idea (especially at low levels). You can curse the minions, take them out with any other power (through you or an ally) and transfer your curse to gain more curses on minions and other foes. You just delay things and give others a chance to minion clear, but still can get the huge pact boon triggers if desired.

As they tweak minions (and I expect we will see a lot of new minions in later books that are big improvements on the PH ones), the impact of removing them becomes greater. Whether minions are there or gone in one of the first few cores, for example, has minimal impact. But, at later levels where you can use stronger minions in encounters, it becomes more important for game balance to give them at least some opportunity to take actions and require a to-hit roll. I suspect that was the idea they were going for and what they saw at R&D.

But, truly, I would have preferred a broad rule change to minions, since there are so many ways to take them out. Making them a little harder to kill across the board (rather than one warlock item) might have been better for the game.