Yes, there are more berserkers most of the time, but how many berserkers in the village at one time are probably truly kicking ass and not running 1-1 or losing ratios? I have to think really it's no more than 3 anyway. Usually less.

To me, I don't see the merit in saying you start as scout or defender then switching at some point like 20 mage kills. Frankly, I think more berserkers would actually want to change to scout defender once they've been around a while and experienced the drawbacks of the berserker and realize that DB & thirst won't net you kills easily against a lot of people.

DB thirst and trophy are not 100% obviously greater powers, in my opinion, then critical/discern/evasion or poultice/bandage/field dress, and that is how there is balance I suppose. Defenders give great survivability (which in the right hands translates to offensive ability), scouts give a mix of survivability and killing ability. Berserkers get pure killing potential in exchange for far greater likelihood of dying than any other path. To me it's an equal trade off and generally newer players that take berserker end up doing pretty poorly because DB really is not a win button. Most builds have a path best suited to them, and it's not always the obvious one.

But, since this was about tiered structures, how about this?
If anything, go applicant, then blooded villagers all get resist, truesight and spellbane. At five mage kills you choose a path and get 1 skill of the path. Ten mage kills total means 2, fifteen mage kills unlocks the last power.

So at 5
Scouts get discern
Defenders get poultice
Berserkers get trophy.

10
Scouts get evasion
Defengers get field dress
Berserkers get DB

15
Scouts get critical
Defenders get bandage
Berserkers get thirst

Or you get two skills at 5 mage kills and at ten mage kills you unlock the last skill.

Given I don't think the cabal skills are that truly powerful, and that the intent is to really just cut back on rampant berserkers stomping ass, especially pre level 40 (which really I have never seen as a rampant problem anyway- rank sitting assassins are far more common) I don't think a high bar to all the powers really would be needed. I almost always see ragers in general ranking quick as they can. And lots of turnover in the cabal since people die so much in it.

Honestly, I'm fine with ragers getting all their powers on induction, but for discussion's sake thought I would throw out an idea. To me, the best pkers are deadliest when not playing villagers. Sure, a berserker may pull out a miracle win sometimes with DB or thirst, but for every one of those logs there are ten logs of berserkers getting stomped with nothing they can do about it but stand and walk back to their corpse. It is sort of telling that I'm not a great pker and yet Allysia PKed villagers somewhat effectively (in large % berserkers more so than any other). Yeah, power build against them, but still, generally speaking I was killing people with far more PK experience/skill than me and almost never dying to them.

Yeah, was bored since we can't log in so wrote a bit here.