I agree with all thieves having shield block. Some of their specialization got a little overly intrusive.

I'm less about jumping on the 'Stop the Assassins' bandwagon and more about help those in obvious need.

Lighten the beat down on rangers. Let them herb while blind. As it stands now, assassins can bind wounds, etc. or at least come up with an edge called Blind Tactician or some such that throws rangers a bone when blinded. As it is, they're toast if they can't remove it. (In most cases.)

Silence all the hubbub with an edge called Physical Prowess. Make it expensive, but let it be an evade bonus or the like to basic things like bash, trip and throw, with a side helping of a better chance to avoid cheapshots and ground control. Make it expensive if need be. In lieu of loosening item limits to promote more risk out there in the fields, make the likelihood of being completely command locked less likely. Everyone dies, but sitting there typing flee once or twice and having it never go through, even if you panicked and didn't escape is a will-breaker.

Like others I'm less worried about an assassin killing me in combat than I am via assassination.

Follow the basic premise of PK. If you didn't pick the fight, don't stay in the fight. Odds are they're prepped to the gills and you're not. Commonsense. Flipside is that there are ways to nullify the chance for assassins to go Martial Trance.

I would be for removing the option to prevent a foe from fleeing via stalks + martial trance + engaging, because that's a whole lot of freebie with no risk in most cases. Unless you throw out an edge that grants people a better shot at avoiding those pesky trips, bashes and throws.

But for the most part, with a few glaring exceptions, CF is pretty well-balanced. And as is the case with most things your mileage may vary with any class/specialization.

For god's sake throw conjurer's a little bone. So much sleeping, and so many angry servitors, those guys are masochists! Maybe a more choice based few random variable elements for shifters, because they can get monotonous in a hurry. There are some things that can be done to further improve CF because that's simply the way any evolving system should be to avoid its own extinction but there is still very much a good reason why we all still play the game. It's fun regardless.