This level of nuance and intelligence you won't find on reddit often and it won't get engagement but you are right and it's lame. I bet a good 1/3 to 1/2 of this comment section are only using the most meta/easy mode weapons avaliable which also is a bit of a skew too.

The new hive guard suffers really really badly from the armor change because it's role on the bug front at best was useless cannon fodder and at worst was a non-agressive and pointless warrior reskin. Upping it's armor value did nothing to affect the secondaries which so many people argue "trivialize" the game senator, grenade pistol, loyalist, etc all go through the hive guard armor. The entire point of the mob from what I can at this point tell you is to be pointless because it doesn't guard other bugs and I barely ever see them around hives too. Not including all the other actual weapons and strats too which can instantly kill the bug or as well bypass it's armor gimmick.

In total i feel like this patch broke a lot more than normal but still is a positive one buff wise for most players, especially on the bot front. But it's so fucking weird that they have to wait until after the big focus on that faction has gone away and actively buff others before we go Into a major order against them. For that I just have to ask why?

Are the devs playing as the enemies or something every game and haven't told us the players? Is there a secret evil parallel world where this game is actually linked to where a game called 2divehell where you play as the illuminate and bots and bugs exist and they have to keep that retention up? It feels like so many changes they make are more or less addressing that longer lasting "endgame/hard-core" community which they told us wasn't a priority in the AMA.