Arelith

The halved PM AC was nice and all, everyone can agree that Pale Masters had too much AC and the nerf was welcome! However DEX and CHA based Pale Masters (not the most common variants around) were nerfed even further when the Pale Master AC was turned into Dodge AC.

As an example, a character that has pursued the CHA path for the free feats that are given to Pale Masters with 20 charisma, which translates to 11 Dodge AC bonus from Divine Shield if the player has also acquired the feat, can easily reach their Dodge cap by popping EMA on and drinking a haste pot. In this situation the new Pale Master AC is irrelevant and useless, was it the goal of this nerf to make it so?

It probably wasn't. But is anyone other than PM players complaining? I doubt it.

To be honest, good. You don't need 80+ AC anyway.

Time to just roll a rogue and get 70+ AC, amazing utility, 70+ damage per hit (on sneaks) with 7 APR, stealth capabilities, skill points galore, epic dodge...

What was so good about palemaster again? I thought it was always pretty obvious melee palemaster was a meme. Epic summons and ridiculous AC, but nothing else. Also those summons are incredibly easy to kill if you know anything about UMD.

Roll a rogue and die to fort saves.

Roll a palemaster and die to reflex saves...

Completely overrated build as far as I'm concerned. I imagine it's just trash now. I recommend rolling a spellsword with the absurd buffs they just received (+4 AB, blackstaff lasts turns, truestrike buff, imbue buffs). Until they revert the change or nerf it some other way.

Or maybe just stick to wild mage wizard... or 30 druid... I'm pretty sure those builds had more than enough toys to make palemasters look laughable even before this change. But only palemasters were being played in enough abundance for the problem to be perceivable by the general community.

It is what happens with any mechanical adjustment. You set out trying to correct or improve a class's features and it will eventually need a retweak. Using whataboutisms to argue against the PM change isn't a compelling argument. Palemasters have too much AC. There's no room in disputing this.

YCE & the build team have done a phenomenal job rebalancing a lot of classes and creating new content for this 15+ year old game. If you disagree with a change they made, they've shown before that with valid critiques and arguments those changes have been reversed. Let's not get sensational about -5AC when PMs reach between high 60s and low 80s.