Now that Haste has been changed and removed from the hands of the handful of non-mages that had been using it....and some tweaks were made to village powers....

1) Will this address the need for a mage to have to use ABS just to stand toe to toe with most semi-prepped or village warriors?

Concern there being I have never liked to have to use three 'hard to find' preps just to bring myself up to the level to hold my own agaisnt most foes. It seems that mage preps were designed to make a mage more balanced but alot of the preps available to warrior types makes them overboard. ie) Picture a ABS non-water shifter using protection from alignment, frenzy, and shifter spells. Now compare to an elven bard or warrior using aura,shield, haste, stoneskin, frenzy, and protection from alignment. Its not even a close fight. The non-mage will dominate. If these changes were made to level it out a bit for mages, im all for it. Since most villagers just call bloodthirst, isnt this just going to create more problems now that mages and non-village warriors are weakened signifigantly?

What are you guys trying to accomplish?

If it isn't giving away BIG secrets, what are your goals and reasons for this change? Is this addressing an imbalance, shifting the game in a slightly different direction, paving the way for other changes, an effort in keeping casual players, a paradigm shift of the implementers, all of the above, something I'm not even thinking about?

My questions aren't aimed at criticizing this change, more an effort in trying to see down the road. I've never been a change fearer here and generally try to see how things work out before making up my mind on things. I think this will probably be both good and bad for me, hopefully leaning towards the more good side, considering my playing times are one-fourth what they used to be.

I'd say the goal is to take the game a step towards fights being less influenced by preps; to leave more time for other things and allow a lesser level of preparation to be viable, if still disadvantaged.

For all the stories of one guy defending a raid from three with a haste... having watched a lot of fights, one or more of the three guys was at least as likely to be hasted as the one.

Obviously there's still a huge pile of prep items in the game and they're not going anywhere soon. A warrior who's taking half the damage of his opponent still obviously has a huge edge. It's just all somewhat less than it was.