I mean let's be real, as much as I love HU, the class itself always has been the one with the least identity (and by that I mean class-defining mechanics). Most of the HU tree literally benefits from subclassing more than mainclassing in several cases due to survivability skill stacking with the extra SP you get from not having to skill HU-only stuff, and HU as the countering/aggro-managing class has never been a thing due to an even more screwy tree than the current one in EP1, followed by the addition of BR. The "identity" of HU then shifted to its weapon mechanics, that got refined over the years (except WL, because WL is that poor kid nobody remembers). So now we have weapons with very unique feels and mechanics tied to them....but most of that uniqueness is also the reason why they're so flawed as far as damage-dealing goes....conundrum, yay.
You'll just notice that unsurprisingly, all the "losers" from the major balance changes are classes with skill tree and/or design flaws in the first place. Like BO who has been considered a support for so long, despite having been played as another classic melee class because said support skills are so niche, and SEGA still wanting to push that flawed supportive side with stuff like dodge auto-field. Or TE forever being a weaker FO, and only saved from its hole by introducing a wand you can't play without because it's so OP, but at the same time OP stick literally funnels you into one boring and repetitive playstyle, which is so ironical for a class that used to have so many unique ways of being played.
Now remember, HU is also one of the "supportive DPS" according to SEGA's view, which honestly only translates to "the classes that would actually require a lot of changes to be functional as utility classes, but we already have so much on our plate, so we'll just bandaid them and hope it holds"
TL;DR EP5 merely highlighted issues that just were present in the first place. Even back in the days of EP3 with so many different builds and strategies, HU was just "left behind" because of the same reasons it's left behind now
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