Is this some kind of "see for yourself" surprise? I've seen changes mentioned, but no-one goes into detail.
You can't drop Relic so no more solo VoG.
You can drop the relic just fine but now it resets your super and cleanse energy. Previously you could drop the relic and pick it back up without resetting your meters, as long as you were the one to pick it up. If someone else grabbed it then it would reset.
This was really smart design because it rewarded higher level play but still punished mistakes if the relic holder died. You could juggle the relic with your weapons to give extra damage on the Templar or help clear Oracles vs. Atheon, which was great for helping less experienced teams. Relic juggling was basically required in the early HM VoG days when the group was filled with Lv29s and/or scrubby players.
Now you can't drop the relic at all if a cleanse will be required soon. It's just boring now. Maybe this is the type of detail many people wouldn't care about but it seriously bugs me. I mean how many more damn nerfs are they going to add? Nerfing Xur's heavy ammo, nerfing a perfectly designed raid mechanic... blah.
These two changes plus Swordbearers now able to deflect our sword blows, all point to King's Fall mechanics.
Essentially, they aren't changing VoG and CE specifically. They're changing global behaviours that are used in the VoG and CE.
I think you['re completely spot on about this, considering how they seem to treat these things very generically (i.e. PoE mines were re-skinned VoG Oracles and reacted to Oracle Disruptor perks).
...but they need to pay more attention to this stuff!! They're damaging encounters that were previously designed to perfection. Templar especially is a master class in great boss design but they keep making it worse (Hobgoblin platform kill volumes, now this).
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T Kills