Surprise Shift Questions

I'm just wondering what the point of the Surprise Shift ability is (p. 96). It seems like it's just Change Forms but worse in every way. Every Form-Changer gets Change Forms automatically, then picks between Form Recovery and Surprise Shift; why would anyone ever take the latter? It's just Change Forms but only attack instead of any basic action and you lose Health after using it. Is the ability miswritten or is there some synergy here that I'm somehow missing? Thanks for any input.

From discussions elsewhere it would appear Surprise Shift is available to use regardless of what Form you’re in.  However, Change Form is only available when in your Base Form.  It still should be clarified further otherwise Surprise Shift does seem outright worse.  

That would be a reason for it, then. And yeah, if that’s the case, it really needs to be clarified.

I certainly wouldn't have initially thought change forms is only available in the base form from how it's written, but looking over it now that makes sense. That really needs some rewriting to clarify things.

The current wording actually makes it look like change form is standard use and form recovery and surprise shift are unique to your base form, which makes no sense at all for form recovery, nor for surprise shift being inferior to change forms. The sentence directly after them stating "these are part of your base form" needs to not be where it is as it either suggests those abilities are only available in base form (which would mean you can't ever change forms after leaving base form until you're in red, so, obviously not intended) or that everything in base form is also available through all forms.

I think for best clarity the first thing mentioned should be something stating that all abilities other than form specific ones are available in all forms alongside the box for choosing between form recovery/surprise shift. Then move on to different forms, first detailing your base form, this is where change forms is mentioned, not as the first ability as it currently is. Then go into the two other forms as is and so on from there.