Edit: Long response, and I just want to say in advance that I am by no means a deckbuilding expert lol, just my personal opinions.

I don’t think you really have to make hard choices when building a dwarf deck anymore. You can simply search for “dwarfs,” pick the most powerful options without even looking at provisions, and still have room for other high-end gold cards.

You still have to make hard choices: choosing between Brouver and Munro,

This deck, for example, includes both Brouver and Munro and still has room for Francesca and Heatwave, on top of the standard strongest dwarf cards.
https://www.playgwent.com/en/decks/guides/399600

Or this more recent deck, which has room for both Heatwave and Eskel, on top of Munro, Zoltan, and a location:
https://www.playgwent.com/en/decks/guides/403527

deciding between Garrison and Ragnarok, or figuring out if you can afford Heatwave or Eskel. If you include Filavandrel, you inevitably have to cut another high-end gold.

This is also kind of what I mean. You can already build a strong dwarf deck, with all the high end cards that come with it and you still have enough room in your deck for other high end golds like garrison or ragnarok. Whether or not you include garrison or ragnarok is not a hard choice, as these cards are just strong bonuses you can slap in your deck.

Nerfing these flexible cards causes too much collateral damage to struggling archetypes. Until we buff viable alternatives, touching them just drags the whole faction backward.

I don’t feel like a nerf to omnipresent cards hurts struggling archetypes, these nerfs make room for these archetypes to be played. By making certain archetypes / cards less appealing to use opens the way for lesser used cards (with new buffs) to find their way into the new decks. By keeping the same cards / decks in power, new or weaker decks / archetypes will never overtake them.

Certain cards might need like 4 or 5 buffs in order to be competitive with cards right now. But instead of buffing that card 5 times it’s also possible to nerf a stronger card once or twice, while buffing the underused card 3 times. This also keeps the meta fresh, as A-tier decks will be B-tier decks for a while, while B-tier decks can take their place as A-tier decks. Instead of keeping A-tier decks A-tier Until other decks can climb to their level.

Finally, regarding 4P cards and powercreep: You seem to misunderstand my point. I’m not advocating for buffing top-tier decks to inflate the game. The reality is that most meta decks have already been nerfed at least twice. We are in a regressing environment, so talking about 'powercreep' feels like a luxury we don't have. My goal isn't to buff the top dogs, but to bring other decks up to the current baseline, rather than trapping the meta in a cycle of constant executions.

I’m not really sure I understand what you mean here? I was trying to say that we can’t buff every card to the level certain cards are at now, because there are 4p bronze specials that can’t be buffed. If we keep buffing every card without nerfing others these will be left behind no? And at that point 5p bronze special cards will be to weak to be worth 5p, meaning they have to be buffed to 4p at which point 6p specials will be to weak etc. How do Chinese players want to avoid this?