The situation in fractals to be frank, has a bit more issues implemented into it, in most cases design wise. When they increased the condi damage modifier on break-bars to 100% my initial reaction was actually excitement, only to quick learn that these upcoming 9 ~ months of doing fractals are going to be the most depressing I've ever experienced in guild wars ever, mostly because of scourges negating almost every mechanic there (mostly with epidemic) and just making it a living nightmare to join groups. I won't ramble about that though.
Maybe the damage drop had some negative consequences, but this clearly points towards a fundamental issue, and I really don't think it's directly related to break-bar damage modifier. I remember some ideas being raised like, having breakbars purely to negate dangerous boss attacks and CCing the boss, rather than getting a damage increase debuff, but that's honestly a topic in itself.
About the execution thing, on power builds. This was only really true before they nerfed the breakbar damage modifier. Because now I regularly out perform pretty much every condi build, also with the No pain no gain changes (which still suck but at least they're equal across power and condi), actually made it possible to even run power damage in 100 now, but the biggest opportunities to outperform condition builds are definitely the shorter fights, such as old cms. Even on the nerfed catalyst, starting from air attunement, which if someone actually bothered to benchmark it, I can't imagine it even hitting 33K. Even that is enough to just outperform condition builds in old cms. Now I want to emphasize that arenanet's attempt at making condition viable in encounters where they are outperformed on a fundamental and design level, were awful, and they definitely partially fixed that by butchering the defiance bar damage modifier, not without consequences but still.
Also just got to get this off my chest, there's one condi damage class at the moment that, atleast in fractals just outperforms so much by exploiting mistlock singularity, which is specter with the poison prestacking. A condi build that bursts harder than soulbeast in a damage window smaller than 10 seconds, by just clicking 2 buttons pretty much. Yea I definitely think that never should have existed, but it's just one condi class that does this to such an extent. (I feel like I'm going off topic here)
I understand what you're feeling, especially that, from the sound of things, you clearly enjoy playing at peak performance while doing fractals, but the thing with the crit on potions, it's just nonsense, there are 7 billion other better ways to give power builds an edge, and that's just out of the top of my mind.
Anyway yea, for the most part I do feel you.