I agree. Dismount is a tool of the gank. It places more power where power is not needed; they have numbers, and that is power enough. It is a tremendous disadvantage to solo players (along with bolas), and I think it very likely the nonsense, completely unnecessary, overpowered gank tools such as the dismount special and bolas, are at least partially and perhaps mostly responsible for the general decline of the solo/small group play style.
It is completely ridiculous to suggest that soloers be required to pick up a select few skills, such as stealthing/hiding ninjitsu, because of the gank. Furthermore, such skills might increase survival chance versus a gank, but that's they key word isn't it?-survival...they are for running away and do NOT allow the solo player to actually FIGHT the gank as he would be able to do with hit and run tactics if unable to be dismounted.
It is completely ridiculous to suggest the game needs dismount/bolas to remain in the game to fight cheaters who speed up their characters. First, I question the accuracy of some people's claims that dismount is an effective tool to stop speed cheaters. Second, and more importantly, cheaters and the cheats they use should be directly dealt with. Allowing the game to suffer by allowing such imbalanced crap as dismount/bolas to continue is NO solution at all to this cheating problem. I suppose if you thought making the game all purple hindered cheaters you'd think that would be a good solution too instead of addressing the real problems?
It is also completely ridiculous to suggest dismount is a requirement to defeat solo players. It may take some skill and coordination, but there's no reason a gank squad should *need,* as they often claim, dismount/bolas to fight a solo player or small group. However, they the gank squads, unfortunately being the majority, continue to prevent the replacement of dismount as a weapon special and removal of bolas from the game. I think very little of these people. They are the people who do not PvP for a good challenge. They want to win, and win only, and will ask for any imbalanced, idiotic tools that will keep the game in an imbalanced state. The ability to dismount someone is a completely unnecessary auto-win tool that adds absolutely nothing to the game and takes away from it so much.