Playing a shaman was a lot more fun on live when not everybody knew how ridiculously overpowered they were, and they weren't being mass-produced off the shaman assembly line, epic in hand. But that's the social experiment that is P99 for ya.

Ideal P99 server:

-Slightly longer timeline (maybe 1 year per expansion, I always thought each era could use more time to breath)
-No recharging
-No epic MQ's (other MQ's still okay)
-No corpsing lore items

This would literally be the best combination of classic EQ with necessary stipulations to maintain classic SPIRIT. I will continue dreaming, but hey..

I dont expect hybrids to pick up much. Knights especially were still really bad in Velious. Luckily the patch adding knight one handers and buffing two handers across the board helped, and the addition of tunare sword was massive, it is by FAR the best weapon available, nothing else is even a contender, except for Vulak two hander which, like all Vulak weapons, was comically rare. It was around one weapon per month, that being 8+ kills. No bueno. However, knight/2h/tunare&vulak were things that happened around a year into the xpac.

As tanks, nothing ever changed, it was a frustrating time to be a shadowknight. The prevailing thought is that knights are better group tanks, but sadly this is not at all the case, aside from exp groups. Evey group boss fights are long, and disc defensive is just an unstoppable force. Monks will continue to be the second tank choice, as they gain massive AC from items, actually remaining the best undisc'd tank.

The fact that "exp penalty removal" is being heralded as the best change for hybrids, says a lot about what they gain in velious.

I was likely one of the better geared SKs in the game at the end of Velious, and it was a frustrating experience. They do gain some nice things, but other classes get amazing things. I remember feeling very left out. I still loved being an SK and would never have changed it.

To be fair, Willsapper and Tunare sword in particular make a knight dramatically better, and paladins become solid group healers, and SKs will be valuable pullers if sneak is ever fixed. Both retain their presence in exp groups and for easier content, but warriors catch up in aggro thanks to many readily available huge aggro weapons.

But, this is not live, and things may be dramatically different here, which I certainly hope is the case.