Well, at least we moved on from it NOT being a P2W game, i believe we can now admit it is.. now we need to work on it being a problem.. let's get the fact that your answer for this is a strawman (stick skills/ strategies) and actually talk about the severity of the issue. To do that we need to decide the perspective of the issue. Do we want this game to focus on top players, bottom players, or all players? If we want this game to be inviting to all players why would we only take the perspective of top players, beyond that if these forums are a smaller sample of the community as you often cite, how do you know all top players have no issue with this? Do all top players report to you? Based on a typical bell curve we should probably assume most players are average.. if most of these players fall within a narrow skill gap how much of a difference can this build make? I have no answer for this, I have no stats or anything because there is no way to filter player stats by archetype, so all we are able to do is speculate. Because of this, you and Kid will no doubt come to the conclusion that there must be no issue because it can't be proven.. another fallacy fallacy but I digress.
If we are able to discuss the actual implications of these builds, how much better (or not much better, if you ACTUALLY believe that) they are, how much better they will get.. that would be great! If we're just gonna keep copy/paste replying "top players" then I think it's a shame we don't have a community manager willing to speak to the customer base about the game in a more mature way. Saying it's not an issue because you have no issue is a problem.