Shattered Kingdoms

I don't think that removing those three skills will make a light armor fighter with no real skillset stand up to heavy armor fighters with a vast arrangement of tricks up their sleeves.

Agreed. Not to mention that casters also tend to be much higher utility.

Melee has such little utility compared to other classes. It also requires much more time to reach your potential as a melee character, and you have to invest in more consumables and enchanting in order to be effective. Melee characters also take all the risks in pvp. Saying something like "a fully enchanted and equipped merc will win a 1v1 against a caster the majority of the time and therefore we need to nerf melee" is just stupid because you are missing the point.

Also, casters are very versatile in pvp and don't need to be buffed. They can be very effective, even against good opponents.

I don't recall asking for casters to get buffed. I simply don't think swashbucklers need a new skill, since the arms race that started with specialize and fury has led us to this point. Adding more skill(s)for swashbucklers will likely renew the cycle. The best solution, in my opinion, is to "tweak" specialize and fury or remove them altogether.

Utility is over rated, since it directly equates to a time sink. You get that utility at the expense of spending hours and hours enchanting, brewing, etc. Frankly, if I were to ever play Shattered Kingdoms again, I would pick a class that benefits from another player's time/utility while I reap the benefits of it with little to no time investment required.

Just sayin'.

Well, good luck getting someone else to invest hours of prep work into your character. I always felt bad when people would do this for me, but to each, his own.

I don't think buffing swashbucklers would renew an arms race if the goal is to just bring them closer to barbs/mercs, but maybe I'm wrong.

You agree with me then? I don't see "utility" as that great of a perk, since what it really means is "time sink" for the classes that have it. However, it is always used in a comparison of classes, with little to no regard given to the downside of said utility.

You can always refuse to enchant/brew for people. I much prefer playing utility classes because they can come up with something to do when the player counts are low or when you don't have many allies around.

To each his own, though.

If I need an enchanted weapon as a sorc, I can locate it, gate to it, kill it with my charm, and then enchant it, all very quickly.

If I need an enchanted weapon as a merc, I have to find someone to locate it, go walk or get a gate to it, and then get it enchanted.

Take that times thirteen and you also have done the same for armor and jewelry.

It's more a time-sink to play classes that don't have utility, not less, unless you're just assuming that you're always going to do whatever anyone asks you.

As a melee class, you have to do this one time initially while you gear up. If you die, I guess you have to do it multiple times. However, I can count on one hand the number times I have lost my gear in the last 15+ years and that was usually due to final strike shenanigans. In my opinion, the value of utility is inversely proportional to skill level and frequency of PK-related deaths.

If you play a utility class, like sorcerer or priest, you are going to get a metric shit-ton of requests from other characters in your religion, cabal, tribunal, etc. Unless, of course, you are unwilling or refuse to enchant/brew for anyone other than yourself, which only serves to reduce the importance and value of having said utility.

My point still stands. Utility = time sink. It is valuable, but only if you are willing to invest the time. I don't disagree with it being used in class vs class comparisons, but the downside is never mentioned.

Your point stands: magic / utility = time-sink. But Edoras's point also stands: playing a melee class now sinks at least as much time into two characters as opposed to one, and the probability of motivating another person is much lower.