It is considerably more noticeable when you are tanking if you have to heal yourself at any length. What it does basically is make pummel hard to justify using. I have quite a bit of MP for a pugilist, but in a long fight I'll run low if I am using both and curing myself at all.

As for the topic I don't think we were nerfed, I think balance wise in comparison to other melee in both DD and tanking we fare better after the patch than before.