They changed it because once people upgraded to novus they could never farm alexandrite again. Why is this important? It is an important change because they now let us go back and change the stats on our novus with a new sphere scroll. If they had kept it like before, we would be "screwed" and need another animus to farm alexandrite (fate wise) to get them to drop.

Realistically, we are just going to do speed runs, hunts, expert daily for alex. However a fate inbetween nexus grind Q(s) is nice.