People who say casters rule say 'hey I can Fod/Flesh to stone /PK everything and I rock.

People who say casters are gimped/need more mana argue that a damaging spell does no where near the damage it should compared to the inflated hit points on monsters, and the inflated damage output melees got.

Both are true statements.

The point is that in pnp D&D, casters RULED because a) They could Fod/PK stuff, AND kill things with damage, and have that damage matter.

A 10d6 fireball is good damage on a level 10 monster with 60 hit points. It might not kill it, but you can take a room of monsters down to half with one spell. A DDO fireball ....will not take a room full of monsters down to half.

In pnp a caster was limited to so many spells per day, but only had a few encounters per day essentially. A DDO caster gets a lot more encounters, and can spend mana and get more spells essentially.

But not one person saying casters rule in DDO can make a valid case that; If a caster choses to do DAMAGE over cc or save or die spells, they will be very effective. People say a caster can solo the Tor...sure...try doing it with Cone of Cold. See how fast you run out of mana and how few monsters you have killed.

Converting D&D to DDO melee roughly gained 150% damage output or more, based on more attacks, higher strength from enhancements, and overall better items available at the level, and of course the BAB progression reversal. (More to hit means more hits, means more damage)

Casters, IF they spend the enhancements for a particular element, gained about 40% max damage output. If you get a potency item you can boost that another 40-50% to a total of 80-90% increase. The thing was damage spells in D&D were not quite as good as melee, but casters had many other options too.

In DDO, monsters got inflated hitpoints and saves. So the gap not only between the boost melee got is there, but monsters got a boost, so realisticly, caster damage output is at least half of what it should be.
Not to mention that there are tons of weapon effects that can make melee a lot more powerful, but almost nothing for casters that is similar. (Hey wanna trade this effecy 6 club for your Vorpal? They are both level 10!)

Add in all the situation spells that wizards do NOT get, while I undertand some things are much harder to add than others to a game - NOT having fly/spiderclimb, protection from arrows, solid fog that stops arrows...many other protection spells or trasmutation spells - its a long list.

Bottom line, casters are not what they should be in DDO. People ignore this because 'hey I can spam Fod on monsters that are not immune to it and kill stuff'...sure! Still doesnt address the other major balance issues still sitting out there.