Shattered Kingdoms

The problem is that sk is all about eq. A person playing a third row sorc/priest/necro who then goes and plays a warrior is going to find themselves dieing 2x as much as the warrior. I mean who dies first when feces goes wrong in big group pk? The warriors all die, and the casters word/go ethereal. When you can fight and land kills from the third row as opposed to the first row, you inherently have a massive advantage. The weakness of being a third row person should be backstab or arrows, but really it's not much of a weakness. And yea charm and willpower spells in general seem to be like 4x as hard to resist as fort spells and ref spells get beat by magic protection. I mean you shouldn't even be able to charm pc's it's too strong.... I mean an increase in casting time isn't really the issue. The issue is that its 5x as easy to land charm person than it is to land petrify or finger of death.

Honestly, what's in SK for player use other than equipment and characters? The tactics of group combat vary highly depending on what the groups are actually containing. Enemy rogue? Your priest is getting circle stabbed. Enemy sorcerer? Expect something meaty and disposable in the way. Paladin? Hope you're not a poorly equipped drow. Equipment is the variance factor that keeps things from becoming more predictable than they already are, and allows for people to put in work before they get a kill to make it easier. I wouldn't ridicule the equipment, but I would ridicule the fact that a small playerbase means there's going to be more effect felt from the outliers who know how to efficiently pour significant chunks of time into their setup.

I don't see how that came out of a discussion on sorcerers, though. Ardith has it best of anyone: what makes sorcerers overpowered is that they can tap into pretty much anything. They can harvest nearly any type of power creep that pops up in the game. Why play the tank when you could charm it for free? At least now, hopefully, this will begin to not be such an obvious tautology.

I've always campaigned for sorcs to be nerfed, and have had some moderate success over the last year or so. For the first time since I started playing the game, it actually is appealing to play something that isn't a sorc. That's a good sign. Let's not campaign for any further nerfs until we have a better idea of exactly what impact the recent nerfs had.