1.3 Single target vs AOE damage changes on PTS

AOE damage needed to be scaled back, so when Adam announced their plans, I was initially happy:

AdamG wrote:

Patch 1.3's major balance changes focus on the balancing of direct damage vs. area-of-effect abilities.   All careers should expect to see AoE effectiveness reduced across the board. This reduction can come in a change to damage/healing, AP cost, or effect radius, and will vary from ability to ability.

My response:

THIS IS A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION! 

This will yield lots of win in many aspects of combat in general, and for many careers. Off the top of my head: pressure on healing (particularly group healing) reduced, restored importance of melee careers, the rebirth of hybrid careers, and more meaningful and tactical combat. 

Once this patch is over, tweak CCs in 1.4 and WAR combat will be fantastic.

But after finding more info, as usual, they were overzealous and reckless (link):

Teddymonster wrote:

On top of that melee is hitting a lot harder now to where squishies are getting 2 and 3 shot.  Everyone knows that a WH can basically already do that to us out of stealth and they're going to do even more damage??  And on top of that add WLs, Slayers and WPs hitting for 2k....

I would without a doubt have to cancel my account if 1.3 even resembles what is happening on the test server right now.

My response:

This change of theirs is what boggles me. Now, on top of the lame disables and CC, they want to make it so that one person can 1-shot another person?

And that's not even taking focused-fire into account. If 1 career can 1-shot another career, in a team setting any target that is focus-fired will be instantly vaporized. 

I guess they want to make battles more like the gunslinging wild west where people die quick and people die often. If this is what combat becomes, I'm probably out too. 

They are about to do it wrong again by making too many changes at once. They scaled back AOE, AND buffed single target. The safer change would be to scale back AOE, but leave direct damage alone and this will indirectly buff DD. Meanwhile, the single-target heals/damage are balanced, and the group heals/damage are balanced. This will also be a safer change because in the worst case, damage is too low and combat becomes more tactical and require more teamwork; but they can incrementally balance this over time.

However, with the change they propose, the worst case will do the same thing the AOE + resist bullshit did since 1.1. Too much damage, meaningless combat, frustrated players, cancelled subscriptions.