>I think the point of miscommunication between players and
>staff is in what each means by "overpowered". Most of those
>who complain seem to define it as "difficult or impossible
>to take down in a straight up fight". This would certainly
>include classes like paladin, good conjurer, shifter, and
>invoker. I think the staff, however, consider a class to be
>"overpowered" if it can be used by a skilled player to
>*completely discount* opponents' skill and preparation. In
>other words, if you can use a class/race/cabal combo to bowl
>over highly competant people using an easily repeatable
>method, then that class/race/cabal combo is overpowered.


I think what is commonly meant by "overpowered" is more along
the lines of "unreasonably powerful in a way detrimental to
gameplay". For example, old school invokers like Aurien dropping
four people in two rounds with pillars.


>A good example of this would be Rituraaj and the Dale
>cemetery. When gaunted there was little chance to escape,
>even if you were carrying the key. So changes were made to
>disable this strategy. Another one is Delanan, the sylvan
>shaman with wall and insects. It's now extremely difficult
>to reproduce this combo.

This is arguable. Both of these aren't what I would call
"really" overpowered because of extenuating circumstances.
For Rituraaj, all you had to do was carry a leaf and unlock
the door. It wasn't hard. A number of people did it. For me,
all you had to do was avoid forests, because I really, really
didn't do the sit in a wall thing. When I deleted, my wall was
at 77%, my insect was at 98%. For every sylvan shaman you name,
I can probably name one who sucked at PK (no offense
cath!). With the set of gear I had at deletion, I was almost
unkillable, but I was still a lot less deadly than Leika or an
entropy whatever. My powers only helped me to keep the person
around: I still relied essentially on only class powers to win the
fight itself. Overpowered, to me, is when mediocre players
regularly beat skilled players through sheer gross imbalance in
the game (i.e. old vokers, old conjurers, etc). If I was going
to finger a class as overpowered right now, I would probably
lean towards invokers, but I haven't really seen one that epitomizes
overpowered yet, and they're not really that bad.
The real overpowered is still entropy doppel.

>Given this, I'd put at the top of the list necros, assasins,
>conjies, druids, rangers, and maybe thieves and invokers.
>
>Necros:
>Pros: Sleep + forget + curse + scourge/etc.
>Cons: Skilled people will see you coming and act
>accordingly. Also save vs. spell.

Can't hero, ragers spellbane, thieves.

>Conjies:
>Pros: Gaunts + wands + mazey cursed places.
>Cons: Skilled people will take precautions not to be
>gaunted. Furthermore, gaunting is a time-consuming and
>frustrating process.

Boring boring boring, hard to finish kills, gaunts suck
vs the people who are actually interesting to PK (i.e.
people with a clue).

>Assassins:
>Pros: Assassinate.
>Cons: Not many. Skilled or not, unless you have certain
>virtues or can see hidden there's the possibility you'll get
>taken down.

Shapeshifter forms. Perhaps you've noticed that 50% of the
game is shifters. I've only been assassinated once, and that
was two and a half years ago while naked and regearing, and
I've had some chars that assassins really wanted a piece of.
Avoiding assassination is a relatively easy matter of altering
normal habits.

>Druids:
>Pros: The Hunt. What a crock.
>Cons: Limited to a certain time of the month. Skilled
>people will avoid wildnerss like the plague during this
>time.

You suck 25% of the time, indoors, and are really easy to
kill in terms of damage reduction/tanking.

>Rangers:
>Pros: Snare + bearcharge + scroll use.
>Cons: People can *somewhat* avoid wildneress areas. Bash
>protection nullifies bearcharge.

Wilderness familiarity is the most annoying thing you'll ever
encounter. Invokers will still tool you, hard. You suck in
60% of the game territory.

>Thieves:
>Pros: Jack + steal + cheap shot + bind + scroll use. Ugly.
>Cons: Not many.

Not many? How about the fact that you've got practically no
skills at all that work vs flying opponents? Thieves at high
levels are one trick ponies, and if their trick fails they're
probably going to die in the jack lag.

>Invokers:
>Pros: Invulnerable to most lag, insane damage. Quicksand +
>earthbind.
>Cons: Hard to lag others. With utility spells this argument
>loses force.

Hard to finish PKs, but a very very strong class, especially with
the recent upgrades. Of the classes you've listed, this and
necro get my nod for the strongest. Well, properly prepped
conjurers are just as nasty, but their downtime limitations
are problematic.