Quote Originally Posted by soulthunder View Post
I read the first 5 pages of this thread before going cross-eyed, but this entire discussion is missing one important element in it's discussion. You are speaking of capped lvl 14 casters who aren't worried about xp, xp debt, re-entering penalties, or anything else that comes with a cap on the content.

I remember a time when casters had pk.....that was it for insta death....scorching ray was a single ray and still wasn't very powerful...CK and solid fog where godly and the only time a caster was allowed to use them without irritating the entire party(due to graphic design) was if it was faster than letting the 4 melee in the party destroy the room...and 80% of a casters spellbook was toilet paper for the melee in the party who only waited for haste. I remember a lot of other stuff too, but moving right along...

Suggesting that changes need to be enacted for balance between classes when we have been at the current lvl cap for months on end just doesn't seem prudent to me. I don't recall people running into GoP or Vol immediately after mod 5 launched with 4 sorcs and 2 clerics. I'm not saying sorcerers and wizards aren't powerful, I am saying that many of them aren't playing as they would if there were an unknown lurking around the corner. Mod 5 was especially harder on the melee classes given that it is consisting mostly of undead and they are immune to critical hits and are for the most part vulnerable to fire which happens to be the bread and butter of most damage dealing casters. Given that, this entire discussion is skewed from a vantage point of complacency in our current surroundings that gives the illusion that casters are superior to all other classes for damage and effectiveness.

If you want to stop some of the power casting classes exhibit, lets try to find out where 10 stacks of 100 major mneumonics came from on the AH and how someone is able to sell them for 200k plat each...hmmm. Casters may have unlimited power at present, but let the devils and demons of mod 6 descend upon us and let's get a little further into the progression of the game before we cry foul for melee.
You know, I can agree with the bolded part.

Also, maybe I am in the minority, but...I like having some melee's around when I play my wizard. If I form a group, I typically try to get one melee, one caster, one healer (not necessarily a cleric), and one person to deal with traps (this person may also fill one of the previous roles, too). Once I have that, I pretty much accept whoever else requests to join, unless I know that a particular quest will really need extra melee-power, or casting-power, or whatever.

If I am doing a quest that I know is particularly easy...I pretty much disregard the above and take whoever wants to come along.