Not sure why that would have an effect? Your limit shouldn't matter much unless you don't have other cards with healthy limits or you're holding a balance at the max level, in which case they're right to subtract points for risk. For example, I have something like $250k in credit among my cards in total, and each is $5k to $50k. If I close a card for $20k, it's not going to have much impact.

Also not sure what can be done for the hit other than time; when you churn it impacts your total account time open variable (or so I've heard) and your inquiries.

Inquiries fixes itself pretty quickly (6 months). Not sure about the other, but even after 25+ new credit cards in the past 5 months, I've only lost 50 points on my credit...