IO subsystem in EAP requires reload when increasing size of io-threads or task-max-threads.
Open source competition like Payara doesn't require server reload when tuning thread pools. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyq4vcEB6oc#t=9m21

EAP 7 should at least allow increasing the size without reload, decreasing can be a bit complicated but worth exploring so to say.

Customer use case: application in production, administrator detects increased load, wants to mitigate it a bit. Option would be to increase number of workers as the HW allows that, but can't do that as it requires reload and current clients would be in trouble.

CLI example:

[standalone@localhost:9990 /] /subsystem=io/worker=default:write-attribute(name=io-threads, value=40)
{
    "outcome" => "success",
    "response-headers" => {
        "operation-requires-reload" => true,
        "process-state" => "reload-required"
    }
}

[standalone@localhost:9990 /] /subsystem=io/worker=default:write-attribute(name=task-max-threads, value=140)
{
    "outcome" => "success",
    "response-headers" => {
        "operation-requires-reload" => true,
        "process-state" => "reload-required"
    }
}