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Found the reason?

These are subtle, but very effective changes IMO, making the Acrobat a lot better in several ways, both as a caster and as a warrior. It's the best offensive Mercury caster in the game now, which is good, as the majority of dual/tri elemental mercury heavy classes are mostly healers. The caster aspect of Acrobat is pretty similar to Guru/Worldwaker/Pure Mage with better BP but no healing,no revives and no buffs, but gets the warrior part of the class in exchange. Which was previously quite unimportant, thanks to the lower attacks rarting, and all other warrior classes also had better access to secondary utility, such as healing/buffing/debuffing. Being able to deal both physical and psynergy damage is a bit redundant, because it's just plain better to have one way of attacking and secondary abilities that benefit your party (Valkyrie and Warlord can attack just as well as Acrobat but can also buff/heal when needed). The Fire Breath change gave this class a much needed benefit in this aspect, but that's probably not that important, as every warrior class can now use Fire Breath, but with at the cost of losing strong bonuses from other helmets. Acrobat is mostly on par with Jonin (the dillema here is mostly whether Frost Card or not screwed up djinni is better) as a hybrid class, but only 3 characters in the game get access to Jonin. Acrobat also gets a lot of synergy with Maces, so Piers and Mia with Alecto's mace would probably be the best users of this class.
The agility drop could be a bit too much, I also second that keeping djinni only effects djinni only opinion.
You weren't right about the Bramble and Thunder, though. Both of them are Acrobat's only venus/jupiter attacks (if we're not counting the Backstab and Sabre Rain), so they are interchangable.
Chaos Lord, Shogun and Destroyer can also now equip the Dragon Helm for dungeons and clear enemy groups and Star Magician's balls a lot more easily. Certainly an interesting change.

Yeah, I actually missed that Bramble and Thunder Card can debuff stats, emphasizing on that idea sounds like a really good idea that would make Acrobat offer something unique, making it more interesting. Thunder Card's 95 power is too small a umber in late game though, even with the resistance drop. Here's an idea. Esentially swap the PP cost, power and level of Bramble Card and Thunder Card and make Bramble Card potentially lower agility. 125 BP Thunder Card  is just good enough to be usable even lategame, and 95 BP Bramble Card with the agility drop is basically on demand spammable Mud/Vine, which would make Acrobat very unique and viable class, but hopefully not too strong. Flame Card is currently a Mad Blast clone, so giving it a defense debuff chance at the cost of a bit lower BP and higher cost accomplishes a) a new strategical option in the early game b) having a Debilitate that is both unique and deals some damage in the late game. Paralyze and Poison are currently a bit underrepresented and somewhat fit the theme of the class, but they'd probably only make the class overpowered in the early game (Djinni fights, for example, but this could be fixed by unlocking the psynergies only at higher class levels) while not providing that amazing value in the late game. A pure hybrid with access to a lot of status effects and can debuff while dealing damage sure sounds like a good niche that isn't overpowered.

Good to know, thanks for the quick answer. I finally got around to finish my TLA playthrough, and I've been thinking about the item dependent classes, more specifically about when, how and most importantly why use them. On paper they are trading off raw elemental power and slightly butchering the djinni balance for a lot of versatility, both in psynergies and characters able to use them.

Dragontamer is a warrior class with very good physical stats and low PP. It has very bad multitargeting options, but good EPAs, group healing (worst in the game, but still, group healing is big) and can revive. This alone would make it a good compromise between Paladin and Warlord (also usable by the caster characters), but Dragontamer is also the only class in the game with PP restoring psynergy, which is huge. Not gamebreakingly powerful, but very worthy of consideration.

Necromancer is a damage caster with the best PP multiplier in the game and generally fulfills the same role as Inquisitor or Heretic (it's also the only way for Mia and the warriors to get access to single target nuking psynergies). Dullahan has slightly more power than Scourge, but Necromancer won't reach the same Jupiter power, so for elemenatal offense purposes they are generally about the same. The same can also be said about Demon/Dire Inferno compared to Grand Gaia/Dragon Fume, respectively. So the trade off for the fucked up djinni balance a is the versatility of very strong psynergies of 3 elements (the only class with this high PP multiplier and comparable offensive psynergies is Heretic available only to Jenna.) and it also gets access to Drain, Revive and multitarget offense capable of inflicting Stun/Venom. Necromancer would easily be the best  offensive caster class in the game, if it weren't balanced by the drawbacks inherent to the item dependent classes.

And then there is the Acrobat. Lo and behold, the only true hybrid class in Golden Sun: The Lost Age Reloaded. On paper it's quite similar to the other hybrid classes, namely Jonin, Fury, Valkyrie and General. Acrobat has overall similar (but very slightly worse) stats than these four, but one of them is available to every character in the game, so for Acrobat being worthy of crippling your djinni balance, it should be able to offer something the non item depentent classes can't. Sure, it gets base power psynergy of every element. Fiery Juggle and Frost Card are very strong (Frost Card is actually the strongest), psynergies, but Bramble Card is very meh and Thunder Card is just plain old bad. These Jupiter and Venus offensive insufficiencies are somewhat offset by Backstab and Sabre Rain (Sabre Rain has the best EPA multiplier in the game). Then it gets some status effects from the other Card psynergies and the Fire Breath is a complete afterthought thanks to theavailability of Fiery Juggle. Acrobat class isn't inherently bad, but the only thing you get from using it is the elemental versatility (but no actual versatility, as all it can do is attacking and no healing/buffing), and incredibly minor niches in the form of Sabre Rain and Frost Card. It could be borderline useful on account of being a true hybrid if it didn't require gimping your djinni and elemental power, but as it does, there is zero reason to use it, as any benefit is offset by the drawbacks. Acrobat brings nothing to the table, and therefore shouldn't be allowed to sit at it. And if, by some miracle, you find yourself with a class setup that specifically needs an item dependent class on somebody, Isaac, Garet, Felix and Piers are better of as Dragontamers, and Ivan,Mia Jenna and Sheba are better of as Necromancers.

TLDR: Dragontamer and Necromancers would be great if they didn't have the djinni setup restrictions, and the restrictions make them balanced. Acrobat, on the other hand, would be merely balanced even if it didn't have the restriction. Therefore, Acrobat could use a buff that would make it on par with these two and for players to have an actual reason to pick it. It's a hybrid class, so maybe something similar to Shuriken or potentially a EPA that also scales with the PP (not sure if that's even possible, but that could be a very unique niche). Sorry about the wall of text, Caledor, and if you're still with me, a lot of thanks for reading this rant/post/suggestion to the end.

Big question time. Is Fire Breath currently a multi target EPA as was stated in the thread a lot of time ago, or still a power based psynergy? It's not in the psynergy doc, and the Acrobat class would certainly benefit a lot if it were a multi target EPA.

Reaching the endgame now, just the bonus dungeons and Doom Dragon are left.
Standard random encounters are balanced perfectly, almost every enemy is a threat now, can't really say anything about that.
Mimic and Djinn fights were very painful, bot manageable, so that's cool. It gets pretty old to fight 5th or so djinn that just blasts you with 3 Pyroclasms/Spark Plasmas each turn, though.
As for bosses :
Serpent: Probably my favorite fight in the series now. The occasional Potent Cure made it a lot more intense, making the fight a damage race while stile forcing you to play somewhat defensively.

Avimander: I am not sure when you are supposed to fight it, but considering you need to have cleared Tundaria Tower for it and the tower seems to be the hardest dungeon in the Eastern sea, it seems like you should fight Avimander just before Poseidon. In that case, it's a pushover boss that just doesn't have very threating skills. Star Mine especially dealt very low damage. Are you sure it still has the HP% damage?

Poseidon: Absolute memefest. Got absolutely BTFO the first, second and the third time. After that I just used the proven Storm Lizard strategy consisting of healing and charging up djinni for summons. Ulysses summon was an absolute beast this fight. Deals damage comparable to meteor, a lot easier to charge up and uses up otherwise very weak mercury djinni. It also stunned one Poseidon's action about 35-40% of the time. I really want to like this fight a lot more, but there seems to be a bug with his Veil skill. It is supposed to recharge his force field, right? Because if I remember correctly, it did exactly that for about 2 or 3 times, and then just... stopped doing it and became just reskinned Ward. If it really reapplies the invulnerability and I wasn't tripping, then there is a bug that prevents it from working  after a few casts.  If it worked properly, though, then I'd probably have to reevaluate Serpent's #1 position.

Moapa and his homies are still a joke, Karst and Agatio felt somewhat weak, especially considering it is the only fight in the game you don't have to win to continue. That probably doesn't matter, though, because they are only a teaser for the Flame Dragons.

Flame Dragons felt like they really weren't intended to be fought before optional teleport dungeons and at level 34. They have left me a bit traumatized. The sheer unpredictability of 4 enemy actions each turn was bad enough, and random stuns/instakills/djinnfests were just an icing on the cake. I mean I managed to beat them after a while, but they are probably about 30% harder than anything the game threw at you before this point (including Deadbeard and Poseidon). Maybe don't nerf them (considering you can fight them a lot later, missing out only one Djinn), but definitely don't buff them.

My final review and opinions about bonus dungeons, classes and equipment is coming soon.

Shouldn't Minotaurs drop Tartarus Axes? Because they seem to drop Vials on my end.

Just cleared Aqua Rock in TLA, and my experience thus far has been... interesting. The whole Indra-Osenia-Gondowan part of the game felt both too hard and too easy at the same time. Felix, Jenna and Sheba are a lot more powerful and balanced party than Isaac, Garet and Felix. You get a very good physical attacker, (a lot stronger than Isaac and Garet in early TBS, mainly thanks to artifact weapons) and two mages with useful support spells and ST damage. In the early parts of TBS you could heal only with Isaac, and then you'd lose a lot of your damage, and this is no longer problem in TLA. But this is an issue that wasn't caused on your part, I just felt like mentioning it.
Some enemies could potentially deal over 80% Jenna/Sheba's max HP (Skeletons with the sword from ground and Trolls with Brute Force), and no access to revive skills until late Osenia made it that more annyoing. The bosses (King Scorpion, Briggs) also felt slightly toothless compared to Tret or Saturos, but the generic Djinni fights were absolutely brutal. And the whole Osenia felt a bit too hard earlier and a bit too easy later, but that was mostly due to the inherent non-linearity of the continent.
Things got a lot better (and harder) in Gondowan, and this trend seems to continue in the Eastern Sea as well. My only problem at this point is that I have too many forgeable items but not enough money to pay for them.
While you did an excellent job with this mod, it made the design flaws in TLA (weirdly non-linear Osenia, carrying random Mercury Djinni that don't really contribute to your classes) even more obvious, but there's really nothing to be done about that. I am still on the fence about Felix not having Cure and Sheba having Boon, Felix being free to go ham with unleashes/EPAs every single turn might be too good in the early game, but that can't really be changed, or we'd either lose all the early game healing or get rid of the difference between Isaac/Felix and Ivan/Sheba in this hack.
Oh, and one more thing. After getting Piers, it's really simple to get a class setup that gives you 3 MT heals. Not sure if this threatens the balance of pre-reunion areas, it just felt worth noting. (Yeah, I get it. Aura and Heal aren't in TBS, and only new classes they could be given to are from Jenna/Piers)
For example:
4  
4 
4 
4 

Deadbeard is probably as hard as vanilla Dullahan without summons. I suppose he could've been a bit easier if I just used some classic class combinations, but I really wanted to use tri-elemental classes, and they were probably not that optimal for this fight. If Deadbeard didn't have Break or Impact, it could have been a pretty easy fight. It's really fun when he buffs his attack, removes your buffs and then starts jumping at your team dealing 300-400 damage, possibly two times in a row. First 3 or so tries started out good, but approximately 4-5k damage later he always used Impact and Break, and then started swiping my team like he was on Tinder, KOing everybody. And then I realized he ran out of PP (not enough for Crystal Prism, but enough for a few Breaks/Impacts), and after I rebuffed and his Impacts expired, it was over.
I think it's very interesting that he is actually most dangerous for about two turns after he stops using Psynergy, because he's practically guaranteed to use only Break, Impact, Swipe and 300 damage basic attack.
10/10 experience, really looking forward to TLA superbosses.

Here's my class setup, if anybody's interested.

4 3
Samurai is very tanky, Helm Splitter deals a lot of damage.
4  3
Used mostly for spamming Protect/Impact, but also has reasonable damage. When things turn bad, using Granite morphed Garet into a White Knight, becoming a second Wish spammer.
4  3 
ALL the buffs, also a fast ST healer when needed
4 3 
Healbot, also has special secret option of using Dull and promptly causing TPK because it missed and buffed Deadbeard used Swipe twice in a row.

I think it was mostly me being underleveled. The fight itself wasn't THAT challenging, but if the damn gecko decided to use two AoE moves in one turn (basically 75% of the time), I took more damage than I could heal by casting Wish 2 times. And as I didn't want to run past or to grind, I used the wall djinni to setup resistance buffs, and it was just simply healing and cycling djinni to cast Meteor and Judgment from then. Well, except that one time it used Tempest two times in a row at the end of the turn, then the agility debuff expired, and proceeded to KO both my healers next turn, cause Mia couldn't heal in time. But as I said, it was most likely me being overleveled. Only feasible nerf to it I could imagine would be lowering it's PP by a half or so to slightly lower the damage and giving it passive PP regen, or just lowering the chance of using the multi target moves in favor of something single target move like some enhanced attack or Judgment. But it's probably fine as it is.
Can't really compare it to the Crossbone fights yet, I really hate running through Suhalla desert 3 times in a single playthrough 

On what level you are supposed go through Suhalla desert? Cause I was on 21/22, and Storm Lizard was... hard. It basically required two dedicated Wish healers just to survive the Tempest/Wing Stroke onslaught, and even then it just proceeded to eat through all my PP and promptly TPK me afterwards. I finally managed to beat it somewhat easily with Isaac and Garet in base classes using Granite,Flash,Ground etc. (you can easily cats resist on Granite/Flash turns) to help surviving and charge summons, while Ivan and Mia spammed Wish. Ember's PP recovery was the MVP of the whole fight.
Is this the intended experience or am I just underleveled?
Also, the Colosso fights were a bit anticlimactic, just basic vanilla experience. Maybe give those gladiators some monster skills like Brute Force/Berserk/War Cry to spice things up a bit?

Nvm I think I got it. They are actually the same, you only swapped the elements while keeping the general power level and type of the psynergies the same, right?

Yeah, I've finally noticed that those ninja sandals etc. are rare drops now.
Thanks for the clarifications. And If I understand it right, Meltdown/Waterspout are unique to Piers/Jenna, because the other mars/mercury based tri-elemental classes either either have group heals and you didn't want those to have access to the strongest EPAs, or in the Samurai's case, already have one on exactly same power level. That is actually very smart.
And for the (hopefully) final question, this time about dual-elemental classes for Piers/Jenna. Jenna's Guru/Inquisitor and Piers' Protector/Radiant classes have same names and stat percentages as their same element equivalents for Mia/Ivan,Sheba and Isaac,Felix/Garet, but completely different psynergies. Why's that? 

Hi! First of all, I'd like to say that I really appreciate all the effort you've put into this mod/hack/rework. I am only in Kalay now, so I can't give you a proper review (it's not like another one was needed at this point), but I am  having almost as much fun as when I played the game for the first time!
The difficulty seems pretty hard (especially bosses), but still fair at the same time. I actually got a game over during the prologue part with kid Isaac and Garet, so congratulations for that! Otherwise, things got really bad only with Tret, had to beat him with Isaac and Garet poisoned. (that spider moveset change was incredibly evil)
I'd also like to ask about/point out some things about item/psynergy distributions, but it's mostly nitpicking.
1. How can you obtain the new boots/rings/shirts? Just by playing the classic slot minigame in Contigo?
2. If you compare basic mono-elemental classses, you have Garet with pretty shallow psynergy pool at one side (Blast, Nova and EPA at base level, Guard/Volcano later) and Sheba, who gets a lot more off the bat (Whirlwind, Slash, Punishment, Boon, and some buffs/debuffs later). I get that Garet is supposed to be the worst spellcaster and Sheba the best one, but to me it feels like Sheba should unlock one of these psynergy lines at a bit higher class level. Or maybe the early game in TLA is so hard that would make it imbalanced, who knows?
3. Why did you replace Piers' Cool line with Prism? Did you need the slots for some of the new stuff?
4. And finally, I'd like you to elaborate a bit more about your reasoning behind the newly introduced EPAs for tri-elemental classes. Like, Meltdown, the strongest fire EPA is unique to Piers, a mercury adept, and Waterspout, the strongest water EPA is unique to Jenna, a mars adept. I mean, they're cool and everything, but why?