>A few points:
>
>1) (This is the major one.) You've improved your own PK
>skills over this time, and now you notice bad tactics. When
>you're new at things, you don't notice that the conjurer is
>using magic missile over dispel, or wands, etc. You're just
>wondering how bash doesn't kill the mage in two rounds, and
>why the necromancer keeps using this Energy Drain spell when
>the damage obviously sucks.

I don't know, I sucked for quite a while and I can still think of a whole ton of people better than me. What always boggled me is that usually no matter how bad we were, we could at least grasp what general set of skills/supps/spells to use in a particular situation. I posted because thinking back, i've grouped with quite a few people who are actual forces in their range, difference makers even... and I find they are unable to even get the basics down. On the contrary, i'd run around with groups of knights who clearly had only had 1 or 2 heroes before (back in the days when you just start talking about your past characters over group tells), but when it came to planning a battle they'd pretty much know what the group needed to do to win (eg. correct balance of damage and lagging). Sure, once the chaos of battle ensued we'd often panic and get smoked by a couple of shadow, but we knew what it took to win. I'm thinking cf just used to be more balanced between being a pk/roleplaying mud.


>
>2) As Angel of Death pointed out, we police permagroups and
>multi-charring a lot tougher than we used to. As one
>example, while Palan's player certainly knows what he's
>doing, he wouldn't have been as tough as he was without
>Yagar and/or Tamuera always covering his back. The reason
>you have memories of SMUG/Neosoft obliterating their ranges
>has a lot to do with the fact that they weren't playing on a
>level field.

Such is the way of the computer lab, but when I mentioned this I was thinking of a few members of each group that were notorious for running around solo and working people.... in fact, you just kicked one of them out of your cabal for doing that (subjective, I know).

>
>3) Equipment doesn't necessarily mean a person is highly
>skilled. Especially in a large cabal like Scion, they might
>have just been standing nearby when someone who is skilled
>killed someone else who is skilled.

I'm not sure what this is in response to...

>4) Lone powerhouses still exist. Go back over the
>Graveyard, and you'll see a number of characters who were
>tough as nails and largely fought solo.

I didn't say they don't exist anymore. I said that at any given time you'd see a couple different people a week that would rarely run around with groups and would just freak you out when you saw them on. This has likely gone down due to the fact that shadow and masters were obliterated. As overpowered they were, cf no longer has any sort of true niche for those like Nastavnic... which is sort of sad. I'd be delighted if some sort of cabal was developed that was sort of like shadow. Maybe an expansion of the new bounty system where only highly skilled killers are allowed in (imagine that, a maran like cabal where you actually have to be able to kill people to join) and given TRUE hoarde breaking skills... such as eye of intrigue. Of course, this sort of power would have to be limited with something like banning members from ever joining a group except for ranking purposes in addition to something like not allowing them to ever form a true alliance (anybody could be their next contract). I really liked the idea of nexus, but it didn't work out in the end. Create a limited, completely neutral construct that's enticing to the pk'rs of cf and you'll begin to see some real balance.

>
>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.

With the exception of a lich right?

>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.

I think we can all agree that particular classes are WAY too dominant over other particular classes. This may balance things overall, but it somewhat takes the fun out of things. As far as conjurers go... I think most of us agree that they're somewhat overpowered in most aspects.

> 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.

This is completely true. The classes that are most overpowered also have a ton of trouble finishing kills solo (I can think of two players that decided to combine this with force duel with more than overpowered results). Drop people one by one into a force duel arena and you're going to see prepared conjurers, paladins, and invokers come out on top. In the past couple of years i've died to a solo conjurer approximately 2-3 times, tons of times to invokers (try just about anything on a flying invoker with an arial thief and they'll kill you in about two rounds), and never once to a paladin. This also sort of reflects the number of posts i've seen bitching about each class. Just cause a class sometimes can't kill everybody, doesn't mean they aren't overpowered.