@Mechamoose, I agree with you. The changes are going to have widespread impact that's hitting (indeed, already hitting) a lot more players now than it did after Preview. A lot of the rippling changes aren't pleasant, and at the least are going to require tweaks. I certainly don't like the changes.
@d0gr0ck, and Three Rings isn't new to releasing rocky patches and then rebalancing after the fact, which may be quite a risky approach with Spiral Knights. Whether they're going to be more cautious from now on is anybody's guess, but I'm guessing... not. "It's the Ringers," my friends said to me from day one whenever we ran into niggling bugs or strange imbalances that wouldn't get fixed. (We never ran into the duping exploit, which we would have reported. Sounds like that didn't get fixed, so we still have a chance to report.) I didn't believe them until now.
For me, the price for crafting is too much. It just hurts. But it would have hurt less had it happened earlier; and I think it would have hurt less had they eased into the changes. At least then people could prepare and batten themselves down. So perhaps announcements wouldn't be amiss at all; the rage will come sooner or later, and sooner is perhaps better in the long run.
If there is a long run. I don't know; the jury's still out for me.
With all the nagging of the last days, you really gotta stop for a moment to thank the Devs for being so considerate and reacting so quick to the players feedback. Thumbs up ThreeRings!