A great number of the players in the community don't buy your characterizations of that feature. A great number may, but it may simply be the very vocal minority that has always existed in the anti-ranged lobby.
Sounds like the vocal minority of anti-polestagger-removal lobbyers. They didn't buy that removing polestagger would leave polearms in a place to compete on par with the other melee classes. Except instead of assuming what you call a "vocal minority" is inherently wrong, foot-based polearms are the least used melee weapon on battle servers currently (that is, the least damage dealt comes from them compared to 1h and 2h).
(for the record, I was all for the removal of polestagger as a bogus, unfun and inconsistent mechanic and I didn't feel polearms particularly
needed drastic, sweeping buffs just because it was removed)
And if it does get removed, it sure as hell better not be replaced with "marginally related changes".
It would be fair to have it replaced by nothing, in all honesty. What I meant by"marginally related" was that, in your example, if people complained about ranged after it received a mechanics nerf, it would be because of a noticeable statistical change to an item or several items occurring at the same time as the removal of a game mechanic; a change that wouldn't directly be tied to the mechanics nerf except in the perspective that it was recompense for the loss of a very significant game mechanic. A buff occuring at the same time isn't necessarily
because of the loss of ranged stagger, should it happen. As mentioned before, polearms didn't get buffed at all when polestagger was removed. Only a few specific polearms have ever been buffed since then, as well, almost a year later.