Hey community
As a PC/eu PVE raider, these are my two cents.
I don't usually post, but as I got involved more in game recently, I thought some feedback could be helpful.

The aim of this post is to argue why AB is an extremely powerful set, explore how its state in the current test server will affect PVE trial groups and finally offer personal insights that may open avenues to further conversation.

Currently, AB is arguably the most popular set used by HM+ groups. It has been a staple one-size-fits-all for multiple builds for meta classes in trials. Changes to this set will affect indubitably game groups and trickle down to all groups from score-pushing to groups that run old trifectas and HM Progs.

AB is strong mainly because of 4 reasons:

1. It’s easy to use, as its proc conditions can be summarized in : Do damage
2. It has many use cases : any fight with more than one consistent damageable target
3. It’s vastly outperforming any other set in its use cases
4. There are no drawbacks in any of its use cases

Now let’s explore these use cases in boss encounters in DLC trials

• Halls of Fabrication (2/5 bosses)
• Asylum Sanctorium (0/1 bosses)
• Cloudrest (0/1 bosses)*
• Sunspire (1/3 bosses)*
• Kyne’s Aegis (1/3 bosses)*
• Rockgrove (1/3 bosses)
• Dreadsail Reef (2/3 bosses)
• Sanity’s Edge (2/3 bosses)
• Lucent Citadel (3/3 bosses)

*with a few groups using it in more bosses in some niche scenarios/console

Here are the main drawbacks if the changes in the test server come to fruition :

• The changes in the current test server will likely make the set not viable in most, if not all of the boss fight encounters.
• Some groups will have to come up with new strategies after feeling regression. Then refarm, retrain, reprog, while carrying the idea/feeling of “It was so much easier before and now my group feels impotent” (U35 Flashbacks?). This will highly affect the groups that are running the newer raids. A noteworthy example is the final encounter in Lucent Citadel, Knot and Xoryn which will be extremely challenging on hardmode with the amount of cleave damage required to have a smooth fight.
• Some bosses will never be able to be played with the same strategies and some fight times records may never be broken again until a new power creep is introduced.

Proposed solutions:

• Make the Blight Seed stack last shorter: This will result forcing the wearers to have at a more consistent amount of damage tics per second on the target to be able to proc the set, so that the passive usage is penalized but diligent usage is rewarded.
• Keep the damage penalty introduced in the PTS, increase the scaling for PVE: The current 60% base reduction seems fine, but the scaling is extremely low and should reach the cap way before 7 targets in PVE, 1 and 2 targets should be extremely penalized, and the scaling could grow exponentially in PVE instead of linearly to make up for it.
• Since Plaguebreak seems niche in PVP now, make it work like azureblight for players and adjust the scaling to be more effective against large groups, and keep Azureblight as a strict PVE set.
• Offer an alternative by buffing/introducing a different set that is aimed toward encounters with 2 and 3 consistent targets, but falls off when damaging more than 3 targets. Perhaps a set that does the following : Your light attacks can mark up to 3 enemies for 30 seconds, these enemies receive extra damage from all your damage sources. When you bash a marked target, you consume the mark and restore resources, you can't mark a target again for 30 seconds after regaining resources this way. You deal less damage to unmarked enemies the more marks you have active. (Kinda like spell strategist for up to 3 targets but with a dynamic twist).

Note : This is a repost from my comment on another forum discussion.