Essentially, without GC, LW is broken unless you just want a tank and don't mind slashing your offense by 1/4 through the loss of a character, not to mention the loss of versatility.
I agree.
Without LW, GC is still really good, but from experience, the 50% debuff to HP pretty much means you have to keep them far away from any of the action.
I disagree. Two-handed melee? Doesn't matter, still better with GC. You're going to be acting before the enemies every time anyway.
The way I look at it is that LW+GC is only a "combo" for people who haven't realized you can give everyone Picture of Health (or just a bunch of Constitution, that works too). Once you realize that, LW goes back to being what it was before: an underpowered talent which you should never use. Glass Cannon is the OP part of the combo.
High initiative is what makes GC so powerful.
In the battles I've fight with 2 LW/non-GC characters, when one character gets CC'd (especially at the beginning of a fight), I start to get a little nervous. When the second character gets CC'd, chances are a reload is imminent. So the solution for GC or LW/GC is to increase the probability of that happening.
As I was just saying, it's not really a LW thing... but yes, high Initiative means that life matters less and damage and/or CC matter more. Damage and/or CC happens to be precisely what GC provides.
However, I don't think there is a good argument that "lowering player Initiative balances GC." Such a change would mean that GC wouldn't be a good choice anymore for front-row characters (such as tanks), but it would still be stupidly overpowered for back-row characters who aren't likely to be early targets, even if the enemies do get some kind of initiative advantage. It wouldn't be a question of "do I want to use GC?" Of course you'd want to use it. You'd just be cynically calculating how many in the front of your formation need to not take GC in order to provide support for those who do.
