[Micah]

The alchemy cost that you claim didn't exist in vanilla is built into the basic game economy. One pearl = 2 gems once you unlock wish, which was fairly trivial with clams. Alchemy provides the same economy in reverse, but is available from the start of the game, and thus pearls are always available for the same 2:1 rate you get later. Unless you want to argue that unlocking wish nerfs astral magic since it's then so much better to wish away all your pearls into other gems?

Having to give up other options in order to get boosters is due to the tighter gem economy in general, not anything specific to S. Previously the inefficiency in using pearls for things was eclipsed by the sheer size of the game economy, now that things are tighter it's easier to notice the true cost of different options.

Clever little bait and switch there with your question about R'lyeh. R'lyeh, being aquatic and (I believe) having W cap income is, of course, hurt by clams being removed, since they get stuck with a pile of crappy W gems at a higher rate than other nations. They might also be a more gem-dependent nation in general, and obviously have a hard time breaking into blood, none of this translates into a direct nerf to astral magic.

I don't think anyone's going to argue that W magic got stronger due to the change, so I'm not sure what you're getting at with your comment about those gems being more available. W obviously took a pretty serious hit, although its main use (being turned into S gems) remains via alchemy and the Maelstrom global.

As for your 3 points: A is specifically covered by alchemy, B is a side point, and C is the reason you're looking at this wrong. If C dictates that something is a bad investment now then it was a bad investment before, you just had enough gems to not notice...if you've got a billion dollars shelling out 20 bucks for a happy meal isn't gonna even register to you, and is probably worth it instead of haggling over the price and wasting your time, but you still got ripped off. "Strategies that require a lot of pearls" basically boils down to "strategies that are inefficient but require less micro due to using fewer bigger, but ultimately less cost effective units."

And yes, I'm not gonna go so far as to say there's absolutely zero effect, there's gonna be some residual stuff due to overhead and delays in getting to wish and various opportunity costs, so there's some effect on S magic. On the other hand having a soul slay kill an opponent's SC hurts a lot more when they have 5 and not 50 of them running around, so it's a bit hard to say which side comes out on top in that debate. I think it's certainly too close to call, and even if it took a slight hit it's too minor to warrant all this screaming about a supposed S nerf. It's simply not the case in my mind. I used a hell of a lot of alchemy in the games I've played since CBM came out though.