I don't see why anyone dislikes this as it gives the edge to attackers at last. In 1.8 attackers had the edge because of how little damage bows did, but 1.9 kind of messed that up. And for anyone that says to use a shield, that will only make the problem worse. A shield makes you vulnerable to a surprise melee attack or a surprise spleef.
If I need to, and ONLY if I need to, I grab 22 diamonds out of mid and buy a diamond sword and 2 pieces of iron. Usually, I try to take out all the other eggs first however.
I'll explain a game that occurred recently. It was on the map treehouse and I was team orange. I swept through blue and yellow without building to mid. I then tried to attack purple, who lacked any iron gear but had enough defense to kill me. I went for green, who I eliminated all but one of, and then was able to flank purple through the back, but I only managed to kill one of the four members. As you would expect, purple went for our egg. I was able to kill two of the remaining three. but one of them was too strong and eliminated our egg. He killed all of my teammates, so I ran on the bridge and used knockback control to get rid of the full iron guy. The other teams left were the one green guy without an egg and team red who has been untouched the entire game, but kept their bridge to mid. In order for them not to spot me, I built over from the top of mid to the diamond generator and killed the person on it. I went down, killing two of the other three members. The last person went to mid and refused to attack. They kept coming up, so I kept killing them. When I had the chance, I broke through the obsidian and eliminated their egg and killed all of them, of which 2 hackusated me :D . I know that doesn't perfectly explain it, but going to mid or using another island isn't all that difficult, and in my opinion it's actually the better choice.