Ah, yeah... it was me who didnt properly understand what you were saying. Your terminology is a bit weird to me, which might be my problem, no need to apologize.
I think they may have decided to go this particular way not to just decrease damage that way, but primarily to push people away from making pure specialist fighter classes and nudge most players into making various mixes of skills rather then sticking to any crude form of a "class" which was never really intended to be in this game.
It may be that the effect on damage is merely a secondary, side effect of this.
