Look I don't have any parses, but when I first started pre-kunark there wasn't all these jokes about rangers dying quickly. They took hits it seems to me as well as any other melee. Warriors were preferred because they had more hp's, and their gear had better stats for tanking (AC, hp's, etc.) And they held aggro much better than pallies and sk's did then.
Pallies had problems holding aggro because they couldn't dual wield, and didn't do much damage. At the time taunt worked better, but aggro was a weird thing.
Fast weapons with procs were what let you get and hold aggro.
Pallies really didn't start using spells to get aggro till Kunark. Before that most hybrids didn't use their mana much in groups. That is a statement of things as I remember it. SK's didn't do much other than toss a few taps if their hp's were low at the end, or snare if no one else could.
I'm not sure when the delay thing happened but it used to be that it spellcasting delayed a swing for hybrids, so they usually didn't cast in combat because they lost dps. They changed it later so that it kind of didn't interfere as much. (ex say your weapon was a 40 delay and you cast a 25 delay spell. Your spell time could be contained in the weapon delay time, so you didn't lose an attack.) That was just for hybrids though.
Basically until Kunark at least what separated a caster from a melee were the skills like parry, riposte, and much higher dodge caps that let them evade more hits. And higher hp's and gear that had higher ac.
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