Good dmg shield should have gone to Wiz.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Hindsight is always 20/20. I think Wizards were balanced this way because back on live melee classes weren't as overpowered. This is because most players had crap gear. It's the same reason why people thought pet classes were flat out overpowered on live, because in general pets did better than poorly geared players.

On P99 Wizards suck simply because every melee class has access to gear that is higher power than what was expected for the level of the mobs being killed. This means Wizards just can't keep up. If you have a group of players in Leather armor + combine weapons, you have a LOT more downtime where the Wizard has time to recover mana. That is what the developers were expecting people to have.

P99 players are also less likely to steal camps. Back on live having a Wizard for high burst damage was a nice way to prevent other people from kill stealing.

Remember that Everquest was balanced around what the developers were expecting the average player to have gear-wise, and they were building expansions for the future. The average power of people's gear on live was much lower per expansion. So in essence P99 breaks a lot of class balance simply by raising the average gear power of players. The developers had to balance the classes around the average gear level AND the power of the class during live.

I am sure the developers would balance the game differently if they planned on stopping at Velious, because they would know that item inflation would occur.