I assume you all have seen the damage decrease in the PTS patch notes. However I want to address this more widely. We might end up with more damage then before when the DLC goes live, but that is besides the point.

A lot of PvE content in this game is designed around a certain amount of damage, otherwise it falls apart. We have been seeing this for a long time with some of the once hardest bosses being literally target dummies because with enough DPS you can skip close to all mechanics. Nothing new. I personally don’t like it, but that’s what you have to do to stay competitive. In terms of group compositions, this kind of encounter design leads to a very clear meta and especially class stacking. What is meta will eventually be nerfed and replaced by something new and the wheel continues. None of the countless reworks we have seen has changed the actual system, it only ever changed what is on top.
The real problem with all of this is that instead of changing this system, content was built around it. Content is so much balanced around a flawed system that numerical changes lead to huge problems. So far we only saw what power creep does, but with the planned changes we might for the first time see what a damage decrease does and that it is not going to fix problems that are simply not numerical.

Currently three groups (that I know of) have achieved “Godslayer” (veteran Sunspire hardmode, no death, speedrun). All three groups have finished in around 27 minutes, which is not a lot under the time limit of 30 minutes. Each of those three groups did run between 6-8 stamina Necromancers, with other classes being primarily in support roles. Elsweyr has introduced a meta that is dominated by a class that is not only strong on it’s own but directly benefits by being stacked. Stamina Necromancer not only does some of the highest damage but also increases the damage of everyone else, including other Necromancers, with major vulnerability. This composition builds up a massive lead towards other compositions, more so than any class stack meta before. But the real problem here is that, while this issue was already known on the Elsweyr PTS, it was not addressed and we got a trial that is basically balanced around this meta performance. As I said, the three groups mentioned above each had about three minutes left, but you would be mistaken to think that without stacking Necromancers you maybe take 29 minutes and still finish in time. I am currently leading a group working towards godslayer and so have dealt with the matter a lot. The time required does not behave linear as the content is literally designed in a way that a under 30 minute clear requires a group to not play mechanics regularly, because it would take too much time. Most of those tactics (not exploits) revolve around not focusing, not killing or not even spawning adds and have very high internal requirements to even pull off. So there currently is no smooth progression. Either you fully commit and pull it off or you are not even getting close.

Stamina Necromancer is clearly over performing and nerfs are in general absolutely justified. However current content is so much balanced around this broken meta that nerfs lead to massive problems, that go far beyond the often quoted “adjust and move on.” A damage nerf like currently planned, can make a hardmode speedrun in Sunspire literally impossible. With the constant massive balance changes we need to see content adjustments at some point and that does not mean tweaking a few numbers, but significant changes to PvE mechanics and mechanical relevance and difficulty.

I have read quite few posts stating that damage nerfs are good, because old content is to easy. And I think this holds some truth, but you can not balance damage around PvE content if said content does not have a consistent basis to begin with. Balancing damage for vMOL, that was introduced when damage was not even half the current norm is not going to work if we have content being balanced on the same scale that requires todays damage. PvE content itself needs to be adjusted to a level where all of it can function within the same spectrum of damage numbers.