No there is a very big unblance between Mages and Warriors... On average any Mage class can kill any warrior class quite well at the same lvls... only when the warrior has alot more lvls then the mage can he hope to win.
Hmm - it kind of depends on tactics as well. My mage would have been toast before say 3rd level. Now I that I have more spells I can hold my own against others, though probably not destroy a fighter of my level very easily.
depends on tactics. a mage is vulnerable to sneaky meleers until he learns true sight (or if he doesnt have it up). a mage with horrible HP could go down to a pair of archers on one round. a lot of races have innate (and increasing) spell resistance now, so that factors in.
as of right now, if things stay the way they are with the low magic items and no resting restrictions, mages will probably end up dominating at higher levels (not factoring party vs party PvP, just 1 on 1 or something similar).
Of course there are the cloak and dagger spell changes. about half of the spells i cast brings up a server message saying the spell has been changed for NS4, but im cluless as to what changed...duration, saves, AoE, max damage dice, etc.
its still in tweak mode, so i wouldnt get too tweaked out about it yet. six months from now, NS4 will be the place for balance and fun.
PvP class balance will never be attained in D&D. Game isn't made for pvp. Some classes are better than others.
I notice most of the hard core pvp players seem to be fighter/rogues and mages. Some spells are tough like finger of death for fighters. All a fighter needs to do is land one knockdown and the mage is pretty much dead. Like the guy said above archers need one critical hit and a mage can pretty much be dead.
I think the developers tried to reduce the gap by giving weapons lots of bonus damage. You can buy arrows that give a bonus 1d8 damage.
How many times do you have 1 on 1 pvp with characters of the same level? Almost never. There is so many factors in PvP battles. Numbers, Surprise, levels, equipment, tactics, rest state. I wouldn't worry too much about a same level mage and fighter meeting for a duel who would win. Ive yet to see that match up.
I haven't reached high enough level to get the spells like finger of death etc, but I fought a 'challenging' fighter, unloaded a full complement of offensive spells on him with my lvl 6 sorc, and that plus familiar and summons beating on him was unable to kill him because he just kept chugging potions, he couldn't hit me either thru my defensive buffs though, so eventually we just called it quits...though I guess if we kept at it awhile longer and my buffs wore off I would have died.
I'd say TC fighters have a large advantage over mages. We get improved invis items(3 per item) off mobs, and this will allow you to sneak up to virtually anyone. Unfortunately it's been changed as well and doesn't have the concealement bonus
if a tank with KD gets close to a caster the caster is dead, period
the hard part is to get close ofcource
I don’t really see much point in intelligence anyway, even at very high levels of intelligence, wizards still don’t realize it would have been smarter to be a sorcerer.
My barbarian has been knocking mages down and chopping them to pieces. The only way they stop me is with stun/paralyze. Otherwise they're toast.
And I believe True Seeing has been modified to not detect stealthed characters, which is apparently how it's supposed to work in PnP. You'll need spot/listen for that.
I've seen a lot of really powerful arcane casting going on in general. I think that in the long run, it may be necessary to institute resting restrictions to bring the caster abilities more into line with the power of the melee classes.
After all, the idea is for *nobody* to be able to solo til uber and/or farm other factions' guards for XP. As it is, an arcane caster can spam their spells, step outside the area, rest and return very, very quickly. It might not be a bad idea to address this issue.
Lowering the ILR of items will just return us to the "Twinkers' Heaven" that was NS_3.
Depends on the amount of time. 1 or 2 mins between rests would be fine. Some people have suggested 15 mins. I think thats too long. I think adding any mundane downtime to the game is a bad idea. Game is supposed to be non stop action and fun. Sitting around for 10-15 minutes is not fun.
If your in a party it would suck to have to wait for the cleric or mage to rest.