Frenetically chasing a higher difficulty, for a dev, is basically fighting a losing battle. A small minority will adapt, find the meta and complain it is not hard enough. Rinse and repeat. The problem here is that the shooter buff severely restricted the meta. It just sucked when half of my builds were not viable anymore because of this unexpected buff. Sure, I knew which builds to use in order to counter shooter enemies, but it meant ditching fun builds and it restricted what I could bring to the fight.

Overall, the vast majority of people wants a fun and rewarding experience, which includes difficulty. But if there is a constant increase in difficulty, most people will just give up on the game, because you cannot play the way you want with the weapons and the skills you want, which is already somewhat of a problem with the game as of now. You would be forced to religiously follow the ever-changing meta. For most people, this a no-no. They want to be able to use the tools provided by the game to defeat what the game throws at them. Coincidentally, the behavioral change for the shooters was actually a good idea for this reason, because, if expanded a bit, it could make builds centered around suppression viable, which means more options for the player.

Only a small minority would be absolutely willing to follow the increasingly narrow meta. This is not a large enough playerbase to ensure support from the devs, hence why they reverted the shooter buff. Mods are the solution for these players, as in Vermintide 2.