So I was poking around the different purchasing options for the Harmony trinity and I saw I could upgrade my license for Animate 3 to Harmony Advanced for $273, which isn’t terrible, but I just updated to Animate 3 from Animate 2 last year, which had a huge update for me (pen pressure in pencil lines 
:D), but I am not sure what Harmony Advanced offers me?
I played around with it for an hour and I like the UI changes, and improved texture brush control, but just how different is Harmony: Advanced than Animate 3? I kind of want to upgrade because I am assuming that Toon Boom is drying to dry up their “Animate/Pro” brand and make “Harmony” their flagship software, so I would get more compatibility and support by finally owning a harmony product.
Most of my work is traditional hand drawn animation, sometimes using cut out for freelance or quick turn around clips for the internet. The morphing bones that interest me are only in Premium I believe and I am not interested enough to warrant that much of an upgrade.
So, uh, in nut shell: What exactly does Harmony Advanced have new over Animate 3?
Probably nothing other than being Harmony, except with features locked up. Having a form of Harmony 12 is only a benefit in and of itself if you plan to upgrade to a higher level. You would have the benefit of seeing and using the Harmony 12 interface. But again, it is a version that has features locked until you reach Premium.
Aside from this going from AP3 to Harmony 12 Advanced would be more of a downgrade than anything. I can no longer see the pricing since upgrading from AP3 to Premium but it was $0 FREE to crossgrade from Animate Pro 3 to Harmony 12 Advanced at least at one time and I am pretty sure even after the initial sale ended, but I am not absolutely certain about the price after the sale ended.
You would lose node base effects. Some people discount the feature believing they do not need it or care for the complexity but you can do much more with a node based system. Once you understand ow it works things are actually easier and some things are not possible to produce with layer based effects.
My advice: you should aim for Premium or stay at AP3.
I had AP3 and after testing Harmony essentials to premium, went with Premium although I liked Advanced, the upgrade cost was $500 a few months ago, overall I paid $1200 for AP3 and Harmony Premium and I was allowed to keep AP3
NOTE: I just realized the OP was describing Animate 3 not Animate PRO 3. My post applied to Animate Pro 3. If I could not move up to Premium from Animate 3 and did not think I would do so in the future I would stick with Animate 3 for as long as it ran on my hardware. By the time it was fully obsolete I would decide what to do from there as things will be different by then.
I don’t know of anything in Advanced that is not already in Animate 3.
Great, this all helps a ton! I will just stick with Animate 3 since Advanced does not really offer anything groundbreaking for me quite yet and upgrading to Premium is over $1000 haha. Thank you all for the inout!
I have Animate Pro 2, older yet!.. but nonetheless it still seems to hold up with the features boasted by Harmony Advanced.
I’d gain better drawing tools and lose nodes. As far as FX go, Animate and Harmony look pretty equal. The boost is with Premium.
I don’t know… paying $ 273 to get something that is all 'n all equal ? Hmmm…
I understand they ideally want us to make the jump to Premium, but there’s a bunch of stuff there I personally don’t need as a freelancer. So it would be a pretty dear upgrade (1000 $!)
Don’t know… I was enthusiastic yesterday, imagining I’d get a real improvement to my old Animate. Now I’m a lot less so.
“As far as FX go, Animate and Harmony look pretty equal. The boost is with Premium.”
Did you mean Animate and Advanced look pretty equal?
The curve and envelope deformers and the various effect modules are the selling points to me. Below Premium there are only a few of these. It isn’t the quantity but what some of them do. Having all of this facilitates everything.
Yes 
I meant that Animate Pro 2 looks pretty equal to Harmony Advanced in many ways but I may be completely wrong because I can’t find a comparison chart (and at the moment I don’t have my Animate Pro 2 installed so I really can’t check).
That’s why I don’t know how much of an improvement It’ll be if I upgraded to Harmony Advanced.
The upgrade from Animate Pro to Harmony Advanced is cheap but not having a side-by-side feature comparison between the two, I don’t know how far ahead I’d really be after upgrading.
I wish there were a chart to compare these old and new versions…