Player Core 2 Preview: The Oracle, Remastered

Captain Morgan wrote:

Man, making battle oracle work with divine access would have been so much easier if they either gave it haste or took away sure strike.

Isn't it better to do it as Ancestor mystery? At least your revelation spells are useful then. Of course then your curse sucks. Flames?

Flames is where I keep landing, yeah. Ragethiel gives you everything you need from divine access (eventually) without redundancies with your granted spells. Bones seems like the best tank, but no Bone gods grant both sure strike and haste. Plus the granted spells are all bad. Flames has the best first level feat, one of the least severe curses, solid revelation spells, and granted spells which all have a use case if you heighten them with Gifted Power.

For what it's worth, it seems the Ashes and Time mysteries are getting remastered in the upcoming Divine Mysteries book, alongside the introduction of an entirely new Blight mystery: Reddit link

Oracle looks like the new worst class in the game. It was a niche class prior you played if you had some idea with it, now it looks mostly unplayable and not worth the headache. The Cursebound feats don't look good enough to suffer the penalties. It should have been play-tested with this many changes as I'm pretty sure the badness would have been caught. Now it is released in remaster from and I'd just let the old oracles players play the old version.

From a quick look, at worse the Oracle is a sorcerer with different focus spells, so it can't be that bad. The actual problem is that they only bothered to retain the playstyle of two of the old oracles (three if you count ancestors I guess but ancestors succckkkk) which means you are in fact mostly going to be playing a sorcerer with different focus spells. Old Tempest Oracle casts Hydraulic Torrent - new Tempest Oracle casts Divine Wrath like every other divine caster ever.

Honestly, I'm not sure why they thought ripping out the mystery benefits and making this the only class in the game where your subclass lets you choose how you want to get screwed over (as opposed to choosing how you want to specialise your build like every other class) was an improvement, myself. One of the Oracle's themes has always been finding ways to turn their curse to their advantage; even back in PF1, the curse typically came with both ups and downs. (And notably, the entire reason that curses are tied to specific mysteries now is that Haunted some curses were 99% up and 1% down.)

It's weird that they want to drop that now, especially since it's halfway through an edition that already established that Oracle curses are still a mixed bag, that can be twisted into a benefit the more you embrace the curse. They HAD to know this was going to irreconcilably break basically any character that used the original Oracle; if they were so concerned about making sure "the curse is just a curse" and not a sidegrade, why not just move the plus sides to the mystery and call them a "Divine Conflux" or something, flavoured as using the point where your divine magic meets your curse as a way to join the two into something that's neither wholly positive nor wholly negative?

Overall, it just goes to show that simplicity for simplicity's sake is a fallacy; it's essentially throwing out the baby with the bathwater for simplicity's sake, because taking the baby out of the bath first is too complex.

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Honestly, it would've been a lot better to take a look at the weak points, and provide actual fixes tailored to shoring up each mystery's specific problems.

Case in point, premaster Ancestors: Its problem is that it was the single most complex subclass in the entire game (to the point that it was widely considered a trap option because it has an entirely different playstyle than every other Oracle), due to needing to split your focus in three directions, carry some non-strike/spell/skill options to pad out turns, and know how to use everything in conjunction to work around the limitations. (E.g., if you want bless as a spell, you need to know that increasing its aura isn't a "spell", so you can cast it when you roll the spell ancestor, then use it to fill out the strike & skill ancestors' turns.) And the randomness meant that even if you know how to manage this, and know when to ramp the curse up and when to leave it be, you could still get screwed over if you needed to heal someone NOW but got two bad rolls.

Hence, an easy fix would've been to explicitly state in the mystery's description (preferably in a sidebar) that in terms of player proficiency, Oracle is an expert class and Ancestors is a master Mystery, and then give a quick rundown of how it differs from the others and/or a small example build, and then add an extra action to the mystery, maybe something like this quick mockup:

Ancestral Cooperation ◇

Frequency once per battle
Requirement Cursebound 1 or higher
----

If your next action would conflict with your predominant ancestor, you do not need to pass a flat check to perform it. Also, if you're at Cursebound 2 or higher, your next action gains the moderate or major curse benefit as appropriate, based on the ancestor whose preferred action it matches.

(Not sure how to word this. Basically, the idea is that if your next action is a Strike, Skill, or Spell, then you evaluate your next action as if you had rolled the Martial, Skillful, or Spellcasting ancestor, respectively. It essentially lets you choose your ancestor for your next action.)

Special While your ancestors like meddling with you, they don't appreciate it when you meddle with them. On your next turn, you are unable to use any action that would normally require a flat check to use. Furthermore, after using this, you need to make it up to your ancestors somehow; I haven't thought this part through yet.

It is a very rough mock-up, admittedly, but the ability to essentially ignore the curse's downsides but reap all of its benefits once a battle, when you really need to use a specific skill or cast a specific spell, would make a WORLD of difference for the Mystery. And the implication that you're offending your ancestors and need to make it up to them before you can do it again both adds flavour (instead of removing flavour) and prevents it from being overpowered or breaking the mystery's theme.

If they had done something like this for each Mystery, we'd all be a lot happier. Evaluate the Mystery, find where it falters, and figure out a way to strengthen it that fits the Mystery's flavour. You don't need to rip the class' soul out and brutalise the empty husk, there are better ways to fix them!

I think people would generally be happier if they translated all the mystery benefits into cursebound feats or w.e. As it stands, many of the mysteries are just a pile of focus spells. Tempest gets hit hard because the free electric damage was part of their balance and now all your spells do less damage because screw you I guess. Likewise Lufe was balanced off their increased health which they lose because screw you too. The cursebound geats aren't bad but they sure are flavourless (whoever wrote the feat that's for Life and Bones which is negated by theor curse sure was on something). Feels like a divine sorcerer now.

Like, seriously, if they were going to give every mystery a starting cursebound feat, why didn't they just make the default curse benefit that cursebound feat instead? No need to balance, you know it works already!

Archpaladin Zousha wrote:

Captain Morgan wrote:

Foundry got it's Player Core 2 update, so I've done a rebuild of my battle oracle. I found a flames mystery build I'm pretty happy with, but it uses ancestry + champion feats to get all its battle stuff. I didn't take champion before because the armor was redundant. I moved him into a half orc so I would have some more feat options to reclaim lost abilities. (My GM is much more generous than PFS with rebuilds, evidently.) Maybe I'll try a fighter instead of a champion, see how that feels.

I'd be curious to see what it looks like when you've got it hammered out. I was initially thinking of converting my Ashes Oracle to a Champion with an Oracle dedication instead (my GM is granting us Free Archetype and Ancestral Paragon), but I'm wondering if I can still work with the Oracle chassis for an acceptably tanky Flame Oracle who can use swords, especially since the Chalice of Justice (the ORC's Remastered Holy Avenger) doesn't require you to be a Champion to use its special powers, just Holy!

You can make it work. It is much harder without free archetype, but that's true for anything which blends concepts. It is also much easier to do at high levels, but you can get weapon proficiency at first level and champion dedication at 2nd, or get both on a human.

Flames Oracle, Half Orc bandit

Ancestry feat:
1 Orc Weapon Familiarity
3 (Ancestral Paragon) Orc Ferocity
5 Natural Ambition - Whispers of Weakness
9 Multitalented, Psychic dedication. (Amped Guidance is objectively correct but I'm going to explore synergy with amped ignition and the greater revelation)

Class Feats:
2 Meddling Futures (probably bad in practice but I like it, could be replaced with fire ray through domain feat)
4 Bespell Strikes
6 Gifted Power
8 Debilitating Dichotomy
10 Basic Psychic spell casting (only if your allies are too cowardly to let you use Trial by Sky Fire)
11 Divine Access: Ragethiel for sure strike/haste
12 Greater Revelation...

Thanks, Captain Morgan! ^_^

Thanks, Captain Morgan! ^_^

No prob. I know you have wanted to make the gish flames oracle work for a long time, so I hope it helps. I'm gonna post a Remastered Divine Access thread soon which will talk a lot about gish oracles, so keep your eyes on the Advice section. One preview: if you're playing the character before level 11, ask your GM if you can take Dragon Disciple for Dragon Arcana. The dedication gets you damage resistance (including to some physical types if you look at the elemental dragons) and Dragon Arcana is only 4th level and nets true strike, haste, and a bunch of other arcane spell options. But while it was always a legal pick on any character and technically remains one, it was a funky one that is hard for your GM to understand. Becoming a legacy option that's mostly absorbed by the dragon blood versatile heritage won't make it any easier. (Luckily I got it grandfathered in.)

Many of my choices were for flavor or more because they seemed interesting than optimal. And from trying to honor my old character as much as possible without mechanically shooting myself in the foot. So tweak away to fit your dwarf better. Unburdened Iron + dwarf weapon familiarity + champion deduction at 2nd + armor proficiency at 3rd will get you fully functional, but you might need to play as a long range caster until then. Luckily fire is one of the best mysteries for that. If you want to be finesse, you can all those fears and take fighter dedicatkon at 2nd and get reactive striker at 4th. But then you'll have finesse level damage, so meh.

Maybe ask your GM for Blazing Blade access too, giving it the holy tag and replacing good damage with spirit damage. Blazing armory also feels thematically appropriate since you want a craftsman and is actually pretty dang good support if you don't have enough striking runes to go around or your ally needs to switch to a range weapon or something.

I think people would generally be happier if they translated all the mystery benefits into cursebound feats or w.e. As it stands, many of the mysteries are just a pile of focus spells. Tempest gets hit hard because the free electric damage was part of their balance and now all your spells do less damage because screw you I guess. Likewise Lufe was balanced off their increased health which they lose because screw you too. The cursebound geats aren't bad but they sure are flavourless (whoever wrote the feat that's for Life and Bones which is negated by theor curse sure was on something). Feels like a divine sorcerer now.

Like, seriously, if they were going to give every mystery a starting cursebound feat, why didn't they just make the default curse benefit that cursebound feat instead? No need to balance, you know it works already!

Having finally gotten my book and looked at making an Oracle, I would say that the Mystery is now all about the cursebound feat it gives you and the curse, and not the focus spells really anymore, as you only get 1 focus spell as a starting Oracle now. You can't get a domain spell until level 2, and you only start with one focus spell. The second focus spell slot that the Oracle used to have really is your cursebound abilities, so if you don't use those, you pretty much are losing out from the pre-remastered Oracle, but at the same time, I know players who picked up archetype focus spells and never touched their curses before too. That was a massive price to pay to become a 4 slot caster. I think I am ok with it, and probably will try out an Oracle in the near future, as I am someone who likes spell slots over focus spells generally anyway.

I do think it was rather clever that the whole cursebound thing just became a secret second pool of focus-like powers and points. So if you use both your cursebound abilities and your focus spells, you secretly do recover 2 resources back with a 10 minute refocus, but only if you have used both. And since you don't have a 2nd focus point, your secretly boosted refocus ability is still pretty limited.

Having finally gotten my book and looked at making an Oracle, I would say that the Mystery is now all about the cursebound feat it gives you and the curse,

I don't quite follow. The cursebound feat at 1st level is something any mystery can pick up by spending a feat. There's only like one set of mystery specific feats at level 10 and they are all pretty skippable.

I'd what mysteries are really about are:

1. Curses, as you said. Specifically how much this curse impairs your desired play style.

2. Granted spells and divine access. Building six spells into your class progression, insteaf of 3 spells you had to opt-in too, is a significant shift in patching the divine spell list.

I do agree there is less emphasis on focus spells now. Particularly because most of the revelation spells were turned into cursebound feats.

Unicore wrote:

Having finally gotten my book and looked at making an Oracle, I would say that the Mystery is now all about the cursebound feat it gives you and the curse,

I don't quite follow. The cursebound feat at 1st level is something any mystery can pick up by spending a feat. There's only like one set of mystery specific feats at level 10 and they are all pretty skippable.

I'd what mysteries are really about are:

1. Curses, as you said. Specifically how much this curse impairs your desired play style.

2. Granted spells and divine access. Building six spells into your class progression, insteaf of 3 spells you had to opt-in too, is a significant shift in patching the divine spell list.

I do agree there is less emphasis on focus spells now. Particularly because most of the revelation spells were turned into cursebound feats.

If you hate your curse, then it’s not a good mystery for you for sure. It is true you can grab a different curse bound feat if you want, but it’s difficult to use curse bound feats more than once or twice tops an encounter. Also, I think the Oracle has always had good feats so picking up a second level 1 curse bound one is costly, especially if you want to pick up more spells known. You’d really, really, really have to hate the curse to not just pick the mystery that has the one you want. I guess it’s good for flexibility the ability is there, but the opportunity cost you pay for it is high.

If you hate your curse, then it’s not a good mystery for you for sure. It is true you can grab a different curse bound feat if you want, but it’s difficult to use curse bound feats more than once or twice tops an encounter. Also, I think the Oracle has always had good feats so picking up a second level 1 curse bound one is costly, especially if you want to pick up more spells known. You’d really, really, really have to hate the curse to not just pick the mystery that has the one you want. I guess it’s good for flexibility the ability is there, but the opportunity cost you pay for it is high.

Or you play a Human and pay a much, much lower cost.

The curses are so wildly imbalanced in terms of how much problem they cause you that if you just really want that particular cursebound ability, spending the feat to get it is better than dealing with a curse that causes you to not want to actually USE it.

It is still a steep cost though. Picking up a second focus spell through a feat also gives you additional focus point. At the pint you already have 3 focus points, taking additional focus spells through feats is also a losing investment, and you’d try to trade some of those out if you could.

The curse bound feats never increase your pool. Again, flexibility is valuable in PF2, and I like that the option is there, I’d just try to avoid any build that had to do it.

Flames and Cosmos are the two curses that seem playable.
As a Cosmos Oracle, the curse doesn't suck and the granted test is good.
What does Flames access to get that Cosmos doesn't?

I think people would generally be happier if they translated all the mystery benefits into cursebound feats or w.e. As it stands, many of the mysteries are just a pile of focus spells. Tempest gets hit hard because the free electric damage was part of their balance and now all your spells do less damage because screw you I guess. Likewise Lufe was balanced off their increased health which they lose because screw you too. The cursebound geats aren't bad but they sure are flavourless (whoever wrote the feat that's for Life and Bones which is negated by theor curse sure was on something). Feels like a divine sorcerer now.

Like, seriously, if they were going to give every mystery a starting cursebound feat, why didn't they just make the default curse benefit that cursebound feat instead? No need to balance, you know it works already!

Honestly... if they translated the benefits the same way they translated the more unusual curses, that might've arguably made things worse (if that's even possible). Looking at the few unique curses that got preserved as feats... they seem to have been made worse somehow.

Case in point, Ancestors: The most thematically interesting Mystery, but also the one that best illustrates the class' issues. Their original curse was unique, in that it made you roll a favoured action type (out of Strike, Spell, or Skill) each turn, with a 50% chance of getting what you want; using the other two types was a risk, but the favoured type would get a bonus once the curse hit moderate or higher. (Actions that don't fit those three categories were "safe" to use, and having a good selection of safe actions was the key to making Ancestors work.) This was preserved as the Meddling Futures feat, except... worse in literally every way.

1. It only applies to one action, BUT it halves the chance of getting a favourable option by turning one of the previously "safe" action types into a liability (replacing the "your choice" option with a new movement-based one, that notably doesn't allow you to Step).
2. You have to use it every turn if you want to preserve the original curse's flavour, BUT using it increases your Cursebound status (which, since you're an Ancestors Oracle, is quite literally suicidal); you explicitly can't use it every turn if the encounter is more than a couple of turns, and need to take about half an hour to Refocus after every encounter just to do what the original curse did by default. (And importantly, the original curse didn't automatically increase when you rolled your ancestor, which means this is a strict downgrade.)
3. And most cripplingly, if you take it on an Ancestors Oracle (which you would expect to do to recreate the original Ancestors Oracle), then using it actively makes you worse at using it, thanks to the lack of heavy armour incentivising Dex builds (which in turn die to Clumsy):
⠀⠀3a) The Strike ancestor is most obvious, since the to-hit bonus is actually a lie; it cancels out Cursebound 1 for a net zero, but at Cursebound 2 or higher the Clumsy debuff outweighs the measly pittance +1, turning it into "kill your chance of hitting to do more damage, no, wait, you missed"...
⠀⠀3b) But the Wanderer ancestor is a sneaky trap because you can't Step, and thus are forced to eat an AoO if you were trying to get the Warrior or Adept instead... which will probably crit & killed you because rolling debuffs your AC...
⠀⠀3c) And the Adept one will explicitly never improve Dex skills, plain and simple. You need to be Clumsy 1 or 2 to get the +1, or Clumsy 3 or 4 to get the +2, so the +1 will only break even at best, and the +2 will explicitly always be overpowered by your Clumsy value. And considering that you're probably not going to be running many Str skills... yeah. Only real use is for mental skills, which you pobably won't want to be locked into if you were hoping for a different ancestor.
⠀⠀3d) Thus, by elimination, the only one that's actually usable if you're trying to be a real Ancestors Oracle is the Sage ancestor. And that just gives you a bonus equal to the spell's rank, plus a whopping +3 if you're so clumsy you'll die the instant a newborn infant sneezes on you! Hooray!

The end result is that the memes have become true. Old Ancestors Oracle had a reputation for being a trap, when it was really just super-fiddly and unique. But the Re-Messed-Up version of the old Ancestors curse, Meddling Futures, is an actual trap option, in the sense that taking it on an Ancestors Oracle (the very mystery it's intended to emulate) explicitly makes you worse at being an Ancestors Oracle (and will probably kill you when you try to use it). I do hope this was a mistake, and that it "merely" indicates that the [Cursebound] feats were made without accounting for the actual curses themselves (which is still bad, but at least understandable with how rushed the Remaster was)... but if not, then it's a true trap option in the 3e sense, an option designed to look neat but be bad, so you can feel good about yourself for being enough of a "pro" to know not to take it.

A bit of an extreme example, but the fact that it even exists in its current state honestly says a lot about how the Oracle was remade. They put a lot of time and thought into it, but it really does come across as making it simple for simplicity's sake, then punishing you for wanting to get some of the old complexity back. It's... honestly, it's the only class I would consider to be a victim of the Remaster.

Ryangwy wrote:

I think people would generally be happier if they translated all the mystery benefits into cursebound feats or w.e. As it stands, many of the mysteries are just a pile of focus spells. Tempest gets hit hard because the free electric damage was part of their balance and now all your spells do less damage because screw you I guess. Likewise Lufe was balanced off their increased health which they lose because screw you too. The cursebound geats aren't bad but they sure are flavourless (whoever wrote the feat that's for Life and Bones which is negated by theor curse sure was on something). Feels like a divine sorcerer now.

Like, seriously, if they were going to give every mystery a starting cursebound feat, why didn't they just make the default curse benefit that cursebound feat instead? No need to balance, you know it works already!

Honestly... if they translated the benefits the same way they translated the more unusual curses, that might've arguably made things worse (if that's even possible). Looking at the few unique curses that got preserved as feats... they seem to have been made worse somehow.

Case in point, Ancestors: The most thematically interesting Mystery, but also the one that best illustrates the class' issues. Their original curse was unique, in that it made you roll a favoured action type (out of Strike, Spell, or Skill) each turn, with a 50% chance of getting what you want; using the other two types was a risk, but the favoured type would get a bonus once the curse hit moderate or higher. (Actions that don't fit those three categories were "safe" to use, and having a good selection of safe actions was the key to making Ancestors work.) This was preserved as the Meddling Futures feat, except... worse in literally every way.

1. It only applies to one action, BUT it halves the chance of getting a favourable option by turning one of the previously "safe" action types into a liability (replacing the "your choice" option with a new movement-based one,...

What's even worse is, while the old Ancestors oracle could spend all 3 actions setting up an effective usage of their curse based on what they rolled last turn, this new cursebound action requires your VERY NEXT action to be the preferred one!

Wanna stride into melee? Use reach spell? Feint? Use an activity with a subordinate skill action? Tough luck! Fail chance and you lose any benefits!

So somehow you need to be in a position where you can immediately reap the benefits from any of these rolls with a 25% chance to go "gotta dash" and run away. Real splendid stuff

Flames and Cosmos are the two curses that seem playable.

As a Cosmos Oracle, the curse doesn't suck and the granted test is good.
What does Flames access to get that Cosmos doesn't?

Easy access to fireball and more offensively focused focus spells. If you want to be blasting, it's got more to offer.

The end result is that the memes have become true. Old Ancestors Oracle had a reputation for being a trap, when it was really just super-fiddly and unique. But the Re-Messed-Up version of the old Ancestors curse, Meddling Futures, is an actual trap option, in the sense that taking it on an Ancestors Oracle (the very mystery it's intended to emulate) explicitly makes you worse at being an Ancestors Oracle (and will probably kill you when you try to use it). I do hope this was a mistake, and that it "merely" indicates that the [Cursebound] feats were made without accounting for the actual curses themselves (which is still bad, but at least understandable with how rushed the Remaster was)... but if not, then it's a true trap option in the 3e sense, an option designed to look neat but be bad, so you can feel good about yourself for being enough of a "pro" to know not to take it.

Ancestors itself feels like a trap now. Clumsy is REALLY bad if you want to live, and there's few Cursebound abilities that are worth the price of a feat and imposing that. If every curse was similarly bad then it would be one thing, but Cosmos and Flames exist where you can just spam Cursebound actions with little issue.

A bit of an extreme example, but the fact that it even exists in its current state honestly says a lot about how the Oracle was remade. They put a lot of time and thought into it, but it really does come across as making it simple for simplicity's sake, then punishing you for wanting to get some of the old complexity back. It's... honestly, it's the only class I would consider to be a victim of the Remaster.

Agreed. I don't know what happened here, but avoiding trap options was AFAIK a design goal of PF2 and they really failed with that one. It feels like they ran out of time and the "you have 4 spell slots now" was a last minute reaction when they realized the state of things. I don't even consider this an "extreme" example, since its not like its some rare option in the back of an AP. This is a level 2, core feat, specifically there to try to recreate a feature the class lost... and they somehow made it worse.

It's a damn shame. I'd hope they would do another pass on the class to fix this, but no class has gotten that kind of attention except for Alchemist and its multiple major errata updates over the years. I'm not feeling super confident right now, given there wasn't even a day 0 errata to clarify how many spells we're actually supposed to have.

Honestly... if they translated the benefits the same way they translated the more unusual curses, that might've arguably made things worse (if that's even possible). Looking at the few unique curses that got preserved as feats... they seem to have been made worse somehow.

They made the old Cosmos unique stuff now require two feats, but instead of giving you things like Cloud Jump and being lighter/levitating, the second is just "you fly if Cursebound". I don't really know what to think of that.

Flames and Cosmos are the two curses that seem playable.

As a Cosmos Oracle, the curse doesn't suck and the granted test is good.
What does Flames access to get that Cosmos doesn't?

It's really weird that the two least punishing curses, and also the ones least defined by their curse benefits, were the ones who got said curse benefits translated into cursebound feats. If that was the case they should just have pulled a wizard and printed just those two curses.

The saddest thing is that there's no turning back now. For wizard, you can wait and hope they print a school that gives you what you want. But because they used the mystery names directly, they will never be able to print a Tempest curse that gets lightning damage, or a Battle curse with full martial proficiency, or a Life curse with extra HP. They'll just be strictly worse than Cosmos and Flames forever.

Having read the class, I think that "making it unambiguous whether increasing your curse was good or bad" was a good decision, but I really don't like how you don't actually get a thing from your mystery besides a cursebound feat. So color me confused as to why the static bonus from the mystery (like the ancestors mystery getting extra ancestry feats) was removed.

This was probably a smaller power bump than "an extra spell per level" but even "ribbon" abilities are fun to have.

I don’t understand that part either. Like, the abilities were already written. I don’t think any of them were game breaking. I’d just as soon the class get those back and go back to the old Spellcasting chart. I really don’t think anyone expected or was asking for Oracle to have 4 spell slots/level.

The only mystery that would've needed a completely new mystery benefit is Bones. Everything else was completely unique and sorely missed.

Oh and then maybe Lore keeps the extra spell slots since their benefit was one extra spell known per rank.

Having read the class, I think that "making it unambiguous whether increasing your curse was good or bad" was a good decision, but I really don't like how you don't actually get a thing from your mystery besides a cursebound feat. So color me confused as to why the static bonus from the mystery (like the ancestors mystery getting extra ancestry feats) was removed.

This was probably a smaller power bump than "an extra spell per level" but even "ribbon" abilities are fun to have.

Of course, several Cursebound feats themselves fly in the face of this and get better as your curse goes up. So its more like "its strictly bad if my curse goes up, except I get more damage, water walking, flying, and a flying speed boost for it."

So they have a stated design goal and then immediately publish a bunch of feats that don't follow it. Just another way this is such a weird redesign.

I don’t understand that part either. Like, the abilities were already written. I don’t think any of them were game breaking. I’d just as soon the class get those back and go back to the old Spellcasting chart. I really don’t think anyone expected or was asking for Oracle to have 4 spell slots/level.

Agreed. That came out of left field. I feel like it was a band-aid after they picked this direction on the other stuff and realized the class was in a bad spot, so they made that change last minute (which is why the text didn't get updated).

Removing Oracles unique stuff and then giving it one of Sorcerer's unique things to compensate really isn't what I was hoping for, here.

It's very conspiracy theorist, but I get the vibe remaster Wizard and remaster Oracle were done on the same logic - there's a very good reason to remove something (schools, curses) but what to replace it with is up in the air. For whatever reasons, they only really test out translating two subclasses (I'm guessing Illusion and Transmutation for Wizard, obviously Cosmos and Flames for Oracle), then run out of time or energy and copy-paste whatever they did onto the remaining stuff without any effort to check. After all, how distinctive could the playstyle be besides focus spells anyway (very different, as it happens).