The first is shifters, who don't wear armor and so can't make use of any sort of deflection.

Offensive-oriented shifters tend to have crazy high hitrolls and are difficult to tank. Shifters in general are a difficult case for this, though I don't think anything dire has happened to them with it. We'll probably revisit which forms should get Evade-like utilities and the like some time soon.

Since I'm not sure which classes get those skills, I can't specify the members of this set. I would suppose that classes like bard, shaman, etc. are included.

Web page should be updated now, except healers. Small glitch there.

The hard-core melee guys (warriors, orcs, etc.) get skills (aim, precision aim, opp. strike) that to a large degree negate the armor bonuses their opponents just received.

I wouldn't use "negate" there. Not sure where you're getting that.

The heavily melee classes profit more, but they also rely on melee more. Mages get a little extra melee defense (non-zero chance to deflect), and lose some melee offense (against PCs and humanoid NPCs who are wearing armor, at least, they'll get blocked), but that may be a favorable trade for them.

It wasn't entirely obvious from running sample numbers during the testing process if that trade is favorable or not. A lot of variables can come into play there, and I'm not sure how you're drawing conclusions this early.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com