I agree. Stopping people from helping others at any point, is taking away from the social aspect of this game, and making it harder to learn something as far as you want to learn it, is just encouraging people to learn everything, and never socialize with anyone.

This change is a move towards single player TEC for everyone.

Even if it only affects those at the end game.

All this does, in addition to the min gains removal is roll up the red carpet for new players, but it's not like that's new.

I understand this is a temporary fix, but to do the same thing but actually lower the gap is to lower the rb bonuses for higher level ranks, so that it levels the playing field. And, add some offensive and defensive skills that increase damage or armor piercing, but that only begin to work as the opponents levels get higher, so there's something for old dogs to work on with a slight (1-2rb) bonus, but which doesn't widen the gap between beginners and top tier, as the skills simply are less effective the lower the opponent's opposing (block/dodge for offensive, attack for defensive) skill rank is. Something like crit lore but for everyone. That forces old dogs to learn new tricks, makes everyone cross-train, and makes taking skills to insane levels less helpful as these would mitigate them.

Or the real solution is to just double sp gain and lower rb. This also levels the playing field instead of rolling up the red carpet behind you, gives something for people to do, and doesn't make it even harder for people to catch up. This is a big undertaking to re-balance everything, but it's been done once before, for the same reason.