[Lerrbear]

well true perception of balance differs from person to person. its more that in aos each class has strengths and weaknesses, but the game itself is designed around that, for instance i used to play a swordsman and knew him inside out, it wasnt rock paper scissors as its commonly referred to because by the time i knew my character i could kill anything without too much difficulty, even groups of 5-10 i could have alot of fun with. the problem with sphere is that its inherently flawed, your character has a wider range of skills at his disposal however the pvp follows the same general pattern, until someone changes it by developing a new tactic, for instance paralyse spamming on IN1, which everyone then copied. the process goes on and on until its well and truly broken and everyone buggers off to either IN2 or WoW (Talking about in1, obviously).

not to say your general experience is wrong, its not, i've found that to be the case as well, aos servers with insurance have people with rediculously powerful kit bumming people or big groups to compensate. pre aos seems to be mage heaven. however in2's aos insurance offered the best of both by disabling insurance and the mind boggles as to why nobody has tried to do it since phantasya.

unfortunately yes the mechanics are a big deal, if they werent we would have never needed to merge with xuo, in1 would still be up and running with a playerbase of 200 and i would be way, way better off for cash because i wouldnt have felt the need to waste lots of money on the hundreds of games which have been released and dissappointing over the past five years ;/