According to [1], this is an expected change. Ideally, biber and texlive-bibtex-extra (biblatex) should have versioned dependencies, since as the Biber manual[2] put it:
> Biber versions are closely coupled with Biblatex versions. > You need to have the right combination of the two. [1]: http://ctan.uniminuto.edu/macros/latex/contrib/biblatex/CHANGES.org [2]: http://ctan.uniminuto.edu/biblio/biber/documentation/biber.pdf -- Braiam Peguero