Casters! Read below, these are the Caster Balancing issues you have all wondered about. Alan posted a message today from Rich Waters, the Lead Designer, on the Developer's Corner. Make sure to read about the new line of spells -- Ancient Spells. Most of you probably remember the melee balancing changes we made last year. We'll I have some information for you from the fellow that spearheaded that project, and is leading the caster balancing work. quote:

Caster Balance It's been clear for awhile now that priests and casters haven't been as well balanced as we'd all like them to be. Balance is a delicate issue and any major changes to overall class power are always researched, debated, and taken slowly. There are some really big improvements in the works now for helping out with that balance, and we expect those to be on the Test server in the near future. These changes won't all come in one huge patch, but will show up a bit at a time until casting classes are right where they should be in relative power. We are taking the needs and issues of casters seriously, and we think you'll be very happy with the results you see after we finish our caster balance effort. We hope you'll be patient just a bit longer, while we take the time to get everything implemented, balanced, and tested. Ancient Spells One specific area we are addressing for casting classes revolves around how much improvement they get from raiding and acquiring high-level items. When a melee class begins to acquire items from the hardest monsters, they experience a tremendous growth in power. A melee character sporting Vulak weapons and Temple of Veeshan loot is incredibly more powerful than player who only owns average quality items. Casting classes don't achieve nearly the same amount of increased power from raid items, and rapidly fall behind melees in relative power when they start raiding. It doesn't make sense for a wizard who has helped in slaying hundreds of dragons to be using the same spells as someone who has yet to take part in raid encounters. To address this problem, we've introduced the new "Ancient" category of spells recently. Ancient spells are rare, high-quality spells that can only be obtained from the most powerful monsters. These spells are improved versions of spells already available to each casting class. They won't give casters any brand-new, or out-of-class abilities, but are intended to make the casters better at what they already do. Much like a warrior improves himself by getting a better sword from a dragon, a wizard can now acquire more efficient spells in the same way. As you might expect, Ancient spells are going to be rare and take a certain amount of effort to obtain. We don't expect many casters to ever get all the Ancient spells for their class. This is a change from the traditional approach we've had to spells, which has allowed every caster to feel entitled to get every one of their spells. We'll continue to make core spells available to casting classes off of vendors, or as relatively frequent drops off of monsters, but we want to be clear that Ancient spells are rare and powerful items of treasure, and we intend them to be very hard to get. Only the first set of Ancient spells have been added to the game. In the coming weeks, we'll continue to add more Ancient spells to the game and expand the selection for casters and priests. It takes some time to get the spells balanced, tested, and placed on monsters - so expect to see them coming in a few sets at a time. One last thing to note about Ancient spells- the power of these spells will vary depending on what monster drops them. You can expect Vulak A'err to have more powerful Ancient spells than you might find on Trakanon, for instance. Rich Waters Lead Designer, Systems Sony Online Entertainment

Thanks for the update, Rich. Alan