I've been playing this game a long time. I'm pretty sure I started in late '95, perhaps mid. I've seen the evolution of the game through various stages. Becoming progressively harder to play and more time consuming regarding skill perfection, cabal induction, and empowerment, to becoming more newbie friendly and expansive with the different staff members, areas, classes, races, etc. I've seen different skills, supplications, spells, and combinations absolutely break the game. Character builds that were pretty much 'immortal' due to whatever part of their build, or some bug they were exploiting. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I just don't see these current changes as having anything to do with 'Game Balance.'

Sure, the Empowerment change will enable more people access to play Priests without requiring the attention of an Immortal. But to anyone actually playing the game, are you willing to take the huge reduction in build power? And in some cases, it is huge. Unempowered Druids and Healer's are not worth playing due to Herbs and E/N Healing ability. With Herbs, it's not worth it to build any kind of Herb diversity, as you just plain won't get those Herbs due to the -1 factor. With E/N Healers, they now heal others at 30% and 50% respectively. It's just not worth it.

Also taken away from these classes are Transmute Metal to Wood, the ability to Gate to non-trusting PC's, and Healer's lose the Fly supplication. I just don't understand how these abilities are game breaking. They're part of what made these classes great to play. In fact, I see the Gate modification as a huge strike against Healer RP, and I'd always thought that CF promoted RP.

But what I did see as I played Chirkaw, was an Imbalance in my PK range. Starting at rank 25 the majority of my PK range was 7-9 levels above me. I did my best to avoid these situations and moved away to out of the way places. At 28, I was Neurologically Disrupted by Jacopo (Rank 37, 9 levels my superior). At rank 35, I was Pillared to death by Zakhun (Rank 44, 9 levels my superior). And these are just two situations out of many that I encountered. At rank 42 I had almost every rank 51 in my range. Keep in mind, I'm an Arial Assassin, not a Storm Paladin, Fire AP, or Elf whatever. If the staff is striving for Game Balance, why are the PK ranges so skewed?

Just a small rant. Constructive criticism welcome.