They already barely existed. There were some weapons that felt particularly poor against them (I did not enjoy fighting 10+ with TH) but they fixed them spawning in nutty numbers which satisfies my primary complaint about them. Changing how they interact with BTL is just about the only other issue which is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.
The decision making is just confusing. Introduce Plasma Gunners which do big damage and apply a debuff limiting toughness regen: nerf them so significantly that it’s genuinely shocking to even ever get hit by these guys. Introduce vanguards and reduce bulwarks to allow them to fill out more slots in horde combat and reduce effectiveness of cleave: nerf them until they die faster than a bruiser and repeatedly shrink the shield.
The mid-cycle balance patch read at the time like a lot of fan service for this game’s most involved players. Combined with the bulwark reduction, the game has never been more mindless. They did achieve their stated goal of improving loadout effective range, just equip any melee with almost any ranged in some semblance of a build and you can shift-w to the end of auric levels. It’s a very esoteric reading of that blog to take away that massive power rebalancing is on the horizon especially when paired with their actual design decisions and changes since then.