Guild Wars 2

I only found topics on town clothing being useless outside towns, but I wan’t to keep this on tonics mainly.

About 3 months ago, I saw someone in WvW who changed his appearance into an Ascalonian Mage. After some investigation, I found that tonic on the wiki (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Potion_of_Ascalonian_Mages) and saw “Usable in WvW.” because your skills were not changed to nothing but “Return to your old appearance.”
However, I haven’t used it for a while, crafted it two days ago and now your Heal and Utility skills are replaced by some locked skill symbol and the elite skill slot is changed to something like “Quit your disguise and get the full tonic back.”. However, if you want to quit earlier than the 30 minutes and use that skill you do not get the tonic back or whatever is suggested by it; you just lose your look and the tonic.

In Guild Wars 1, you have been able to get tonics that changed your appearance and use them while outside towns/ in combats as they did not replace your skills and gave you a full new set of animations. As many people, if not most people, used them I don’t get why we are not allowed to go into combat with tonics (and actually with town clothing).
At first, I thought the recent Ascalonian Mage tonic change, which was done arround February according to the wiki article history, could be an error because I have found nothing in the Update notes. However, as the elite skill slot is replaced by a skill I have never seen before, all points to a tonic and town clothing policy that favors costume brawl and the use of tonics and clothing in towns rather than in combats. And to be honest, I did not join costume brawl since the day of its introduction and I guess most only do it because of the daily achievement.

I am pretty disappointed about this development and would love to see the “old” tonics and endless tonics from GW1 make its return.

What do you think about this? (I am pretty sure that the Ascalonian Mage tonic was not widely known but such a use of tonics in general should be something that you have several thoughts on.)