Yeah, sure the other groupmates can flee too (assuming they don't get bashed), but do you REALLY want to play a class that has to flee every few rounds in order to be the tank? One of the major draws for playing a conjurer in the first place is that it's a tanking class. Common tanking classes are (in no particular order):

1.) Warrior
2.) Assassin
3.) Ranger
4.) Shapeshifter
5.) Conjurer

I realize that some other classes can tank too in certain situations:

Shaman (with high parry/shield block, sanc, protection, & cure critcal)
Anti-paladin (with 100% parry/shield block and mobs dying fast enough)
Necromancer (with dam reduction and vampiric touch)
Transmuter (with muscular lethargy and dam reduction)
Thief (with shield block and low carry weight)

However, with this second set, it usually requires the group to be very strong and capable of killing the mobs quickly before the makeshift tank wears down.

Conjurers are already an under played class. Pre-change, they are already one of the hardest classes in the game to play. Whenever a newbie joins the game and starts asking about starting classes on the newbie channel, I've never heard an Imm say that conjurer is anything but a very difficult class for beginners. This change just simply makes it even LESS desirable for veterans, and even HARDER for newer players. Are we really going for a STEEPER learning curve here and making a class RARER? Everything else lately has been a change to make underplayed classes more desirable, and decrease the learning curve for newbies. Yet this change has the exact OPPOSITE effect.

>Also good conjies have minimal chance of dying to servitors, particularly if they favour archons.

This is only true in a comparative sense. Good conjurers may have less chance of dying to servitors than non-goods, but every other class in the game has ZERO chance of dying to their own abilities save for shifters with an air form who run out of movement or mana in the air. Moreover, even though goodie conjies may have less chance of dying to servitors than non-goods, that doesn't mean that they're exempt from dying to their good servitors. Although rare, archons can still arrive hostile even for goodies, angels moreso. Angels still require the goodie conjurer to get busy killing evil or they'll turn on the conjurer, even with max charisma and all the available edges in the game to counter it.

Even if the goodie servitor doesn't arrive angry, there are STILL reasons for it to attack you as a goodie. If you repeatedly fail to bind the archon/angel, your circle will go away (with no echo, mind you), so unless you've already played conjurers enough to know how long it takes for your circle to go away, or enough to learn to check for the presence of the circle EVERY TIME you fail to bind before trying again (read, "anyone other than a veteran conjurer player"), then you're very likely to die to your recently conjured archon/angel even though they arrived happy.

If you throw in damage to the good-aligned servitor, the risk becomes even greater. Let archons get drawn into nearly every above-ground battle, and the risk becomes MUCH, MUCH greater, since the archon is going to take damage almost every time you flee to disengage him. This is even more the case when (getting away from ranking situations) exploring and you have to contend with mobs that hit all. Previously, these mobs have always been a major headache for conjurers since it always results in the death of their elemental and eliminates most of their offensive ability. The only redeeming grace in these situations was recognition that at least the archon would still commune offensively from time to time to finish the battle, provided that the conjurer could assist in keeping his own health high enough to give the archon the freedom to act offensively (high defenses, warp dimension, other damage reduction). With this change, those mobs will now make conjurers totally useless, since the archon will get drawn into the fight, and then be promptly killed by the "hits all" aspect of the mob, leaving the conjurer sitting there for the next 40 game hours with no servitors at all. So much for solo exploration.