Gonna disagree with you jedics. I think the changes forced players to abandon 'crutches' as kryst puts it, and learn to play a little better.
GLS wasn't really OP unless combined with the raider's mobility. GLS jump made chasing way too easy.
Not hotswapping means you have to hit your target, not just cover the area hes in. 1-2 punch idea has some merit, not sure I want players who can hit their targets to be able to do that much damage that quickly tho.
I don't think you played any good sentinels. I was fairly happy with the build (I played it almost exclusively, even in roles that were traditionally filled by lighter armor). Properly handled, it can achieve nearly the same speeds as raider, but is VERY unforgiving of poor, or even moderate skiing. In duel situations you have to make decisions about when taking a hit will allow you to land a similar shot on your target, when to use iOD to surprise your opponent, gain cover/height or just go for the OD nuke, and vary your combat style depending on which loadout you have chosen. I'd say its a 'deep' class. Giving me all the specialist weapons at once would probably have been very bad (for other players, anyway), but we'll have to wait and see how the new loadout system works and what the players can do with the new weapons.
Problem with RLS was the short arm time. It made it very spammy, with similar results to hotswapping, except it just made capping impossible instead of killing you. An arm distance 2 or 3 times what was implemented would probably have let it keep some of its anti-capper utility, but would induce much more severe precision requirements and restrictions on shot frequency. Again, however, we have to see what they already have in the works for the new loadouts.
The laser rifle implementation was bad because it was way too easy to hit someone, regardless of speed, and near-infinite range was fairly ridiculous. The biggest complaint (and I assume you have the same one, you really didn't specify) I've heard about it was that it was too hard to hit someone. I'm really ok with that. Skiing a 250+ route is hard, too. We still do it.
I think you're choice of 'deleting' as a descriptor for these changes was incorrect. GLS remained intact with the sentinel armor, the sniper was still very, very effective, sentinels were required for CTF play, RLS was kind of shelved because a solution was never really found (and the behind the scenes builds were supposedly too different to really comment on, PTs would have to weigh in on that), and hotswapping was just a bug that got fixed.