Blast still glitched?

[JSL]

Reverse order: Taking it out of the game would take out a complexity/stragtegic element that always used to exist (or at least as far as I can think back)!
To know how to time your own and avoid other blasts was a key to successful groupplay.
Also the bird was more powerful on his own when encountering a group of enemies since he was able to deal some massive aoe if the skills were executed smartly, we will have much harder times now dealing with multiple enemies at once...

After evaluating the change and looking at the intended purpose of the ability it looks as if it was a definite glitch that a "chain" explosion was happening to blast shot. The ability is now working as intended.

The bug may have brought interesting side effects but it was just that; a bug. One that adds an imbalance in both PvE and PvP and changes the intended difficulty of these areas. This is especially true for PvE content.

As mentioned before, it's no different than our recently fixing the AO3 spawns. That may have been a cool place to get lots of money quickly. However, it wasn't intended and added an element to the game that shouldn't have existed.

This will have a profound effect in the ffa tournie.
Since it is indeed a bug it will be interesting to see how things play out. It will serve as a great indication of how the new change has impacted team play.
Better or worse. I know many people (especially mages) that are happy about this revamp, I however am not sure if this is a good thing. Maybe upcoming bird sets with the new cap will get something to compensate for this and the underpowered Dex sets of Mt Fang.

That's a solid way of looking at this. Something to remember; we are constantly evaluating balance and discrepancies. Let's let our evaluation of the changes be driven by the data.