I might give them another try after the PvE buff. But I'm not sure they will be worth the risk even then. They might be more useful if they received a bonus against shields or something. Then it might be worth it to have one player rush a shielded enemy and drop the shield for a a teammate to finish them off from distance.

Yeah... but hey let's see how it falls down!

Agreed. I've liked most if not all of the balancing changes that they've made so far. I appreciate that they continue to tweak things in order give us more options for how we play.