If they were appeasing the forum crawlers, then spit and towers would have taken a big hit as well. They haven't been touched. Erebus's bite is clearly an issue that's been isolated as special and different. Before the information confirming the balance change was released, Erebus' bite was discussed roughly equally with these other issues.
While I would not say they nerfed it completely because of forum activity, I would say that I have been seeing Erebus threads and rage alot longer than rook tower/spit threads. In those threads, you usually have the majority agreeing that tower spam is fine and that spit is not a real threat.
