It's unlikely that you will see any more changes on that game warping scale, most strategies deviced with the current CBM should remain viable.
Also, most of the discussion and work on CBM and most other mods is done in the dom3mods forum:
http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?act=idx
Earth is not necessarily weaker because of the hammer removal. It's a matter of opinion, but consider that you HAD to make hammers before to compete. That used up a lot of your earth gems, now you can spend them on other nice things like crystal shields, earth boots, summons and battlemagic...
A lot of items were also made cheaper to balance the hammer removal, so construction is still a good path.
But yes, keeping up with CBM changes can be frustrating. Hopefully we are about to reach the point where only small adjustments will be needed.