Today I learned they removed the barrier generation from Skill 1 on the Mace.

You mean Mace Blast formerly known as Barrier Blast, i. e. the 3rd skill of the Mace autoattack chain on Mechanist which apparently was stealth-nerfed in the June 27th update?

It's changes like these that I find rather disturbing.

When Mechanist was released in EoD neither Barrier nor Alacrity have been new concepts. So I have to assume that ArenaNet wanted the autoattack chain to provide Barrier and via Mech Frame: Channeling Conduits also Alacrity.

I further have to assume that they later (June 27th update) wanted to completely remove (not just adjust) Barrier and Alacrity generation from Mace autoattacks and move it to Energizing Slam (Mace 2, Leap) which is also not mentioned in the official patch notes.

• So, which is/was wrong? The original version of the autoattack chain or the updated one?
• Why not tell your players that and for what reasons you changed your mind?
• Why not update the official patch notes, if you have forgotten to mention it?
• Or did you think nobody would notice or care?

I'm not even sure that these undocumented changes are a big nerf to Barrier/Alacrity generation but it changes what you need to do in order to maximize it, i. e. you no longer need to outwait the autoattack chain, but (only) have to use Mace 2 every 6 seconds which you probably did anyway.

The knowledge (and hence skill) gap between average and highly proficient GW2 players is already huge which is one of the main reasons that balancing is so hard. And that's why I find not (properly) communicating changes to skills so disturbing.