>5) Class balance is a lot tighter than it used to be. Nowadays, I feel very comfortable in saying that there is no dominant class. The playerbase certainly doesn't agree on one- you'll see posts claiming conjurers, invokers, assassins, necromancers, paladins, shifters, etc. are all ruling the roost. (These complaints tend to wax and wane regardless of an absence of changes to the class, as well...) The changes I'd personally like to see at hero are all pretty small in those regards. I'd also bet that if we tracked PKs at level 42+ for a while, the most deadly classes aren't the ones most often complained about.

I'd disagree with you here, champ. I can pretty much site a definitive hierarchy to cf classes. Can you remember the last really scary ranger? Or the last Orc that ruled the school? How about a thief that terrorized the populace? An arcane transmuter that was more than a one trick pony? And when you compare these classes to classes such as conjurors and transmuters that can feasibly be dynamos with only minimal practice...someone high up must like playing 'em, because if game "balance" is what you're aiming for...

I don't play thieves for the firepower, I play them because I like being the underdog (and underdogs they are). I can steal. I can annoy. I am quite a capable killer...but John Q Average Cf'er can be five times the killer I am by choosing air/offense as his next shifter form (not to mention an instant built in cloaking device just by typing "fly"). I would imagine not too many immortals watch me, not being in a cabal and all, but I wish someone was trailing me the time I tripped and killed Shilite, landing every cheapshot, and almost dying myself just to his shield. If he had cast a spell--even one--it woulda been coitans.