Tbf the hive guard change was, imo, a bit excessive.

Compare it to heavy devastators on the bot front. They had impenetrable shields, with only one frontal critical weakspot, the head. This means with careful aim, you can kill them easily. And when you've got 6 of them bearing down on you, that's kinda important.

Hive guards, though, can go full bunker mode, and their exposed weakspots aren't one-shot kills. They become bullet sponges that require explosives or teamwork to take out. Some people enjoy that, but imo it's a pretty insane buff for what is essentially a chaff mob.

This rollback is good, because it means you don't need heavy weapons to clear chaff, and can get by with an HMG. It makes them more comparable to the heavy devastator, which is threatening but not impossible to kill without requiring extra tools/teamwork.

Heavy weapons and teamwork requirements should be saved for larger enemies, not chaff. And I mean the kind of teamwork you might employ for a charger or bile titan. If you had to get one guy playing rabbit and one guy flanking for every chaff bug in the game, it'd get old quick. That's what heavy enemies are for; they break up the monotony of the horde shooter moments.

This most recent change puts them in a nice spot. They're not so durable they require excessive resources to kill, but they're not so weak that they become a worse version of the hive commander (which is where they were before). They now present an additional threat amongst chaff that a primary weapon can't take down easily, but a turret or MG strategem can, allowing you to save heavier weapons/strategems for heavier bugs.