That is a blatant nerf, Digglez, and in no way makes the Arbalest better, nor does it help the Heavy Crossbow at all. Stop calling for nerfs and start calling for fixes. You are part of the problem.
Right now crossbows break down like this:
Hunting - poor people
Light - horse people
Crossbow - hybrids
Heavy - chumps?
Arbalest - dedicated and hybrid
Light and Crossbow are both perfect for their respective place right now. They are fine and do not need to be touched in any way. You should not nerf something that is working exactly as intended. You should leave it alone and buff the things that are not working as intended. That's the Arbalest and Heavy Crossbow.
Leave my Crossbow alone.The only difference between arbalest user and pure melee with 15/24 build is wpf, which is more or less worthless for melee classes anyway. Mace is great weapon, even pure 2hers use it from time to time, especially on siege. All in all arbalesters sacrifice only some wpf and possibilty to use most of 2h weapons. Not big deal I'd say.
Also, dunno about NA but currently on Eu1 at least 1/4 of the players use arbalests
I'm 15/24, and I don't feel weak with either my 136 crossbow or my 129 1H.