Documented issues with some Caster classes being OP versus Melee in some situations after the recent patch arose, was responded to by FC, and today the update notes to correct this have been released.

I think when you read through the class area, there is pretty much one common theme...

Check out the Raid and Combat area too :)

Update 1.05.3 Notes:

? forums-tl.ageofconan.com/showthread.php

Update Notes for Update 1.05.3
**These notes do not necessarily reflect the final version that will be deployed on Live**

GENERAL

• Using Path of Asura now puts Path of Comrades on cooldown, as intended.
• Old Tarantia : Lisi Rat-friend has opened a small business in Old Tarantia selling rodents she's collected to any aspiring pet owners, from little field mice to fat alley rats.
• When creating a character, a new class is now not randomly selected if you switch gender and culture (As long as the new culture is allowed to be that class).
• Ymir's Pass: Fixed some tower ladders that were impossible to climb down.
• Fixed a bug that prevented these quests from resolving properly : The Calm Before the Storm (Ymir's Pass), To Send a Message (Eiglophian Mountains), and Enslaved and Abused (Thunder River).
• Mouseturn to rotate your character will only rotate your camera while rooted.
• Autofacing target when hitting on your target is disabled while rooted.

COMBAT

• Target must be in front of you at the end of the spellcast for spells that require a target.
• Tweaked transitions between directional attacks for 2H blunt and 2h edged weapons.
• Increased the damage dealt by all combos with a damage over time effect. These combo lines now also share a cooldown. This includes: - Conqueror: Bloodbath - Assassin: Slow Death Strike - Ranger: Flesh Ripper and Bleeding Puncture - Barbarian: Jagged Cut - Bear Shaman: Internal Bleed - Herald of Xotli: Burn to Death
• Slightly reduced the damage of Demonologist and Necromancer pets.
• Characters should no longer be able to rotate (turn on the spot) while spellweaving.

CLASSES

ASSASSIN

• Increased the duration of Toxic Venom and Dread Venom effects from the Slow Death Strike combo.
• Reduced the cooldown of Slow Death Strikes to 10 seconds.
• Increased the proc rate of Lotus Weapons to 100%. 
• Increased the damage of the Lotus Weapons damage over time effect.
• Added an initial damage tick to each stack of Lotus Weapons.
• Increased the offhand chance bonus granted by Assassination. 
• Health thresholds for Assassination and Swift Ending changed to 75/65/55/45/35% instead of 50/40/30/20/10%.
• Investing feat points into Flurry of Blows now increases the duration by .5 seconds per point after the first.
• Removed the cast time from Curse of the Lotus. This ability should now activate instantly.

BARBARIAN

• Increased the duration of the Jagged Cut damage over time effect to 6 seconds.
• Reduced the cooldown of Jagged Cut to 10 seconds.

BEAR SHAMAN

• Increased the duration of the Internal Bleed damage over time effect to 6 seconds.

CONQUEROR 

• Increased the duration of the Bloodbath damage over time effect to 6 seconds.

DEMONOLOGIST

• Reduced the base damage of all spells.
• Shock Lance now consumes 4 stacks of Empowered Shock Lance (was 2).

GUARDIAN

• Overreach will no longer give the Guardian a damage reduction when used. 
• Brutal Overreach has been changed to 'Brutal Blows' and will now increase the critical hit chance of Dulling Blow in addition to its current function.
• Swift Overreach has been changed to 'Prowess' and will now be a damage increase to both Overreach and Dulling Blow instead of reducing the penalty time of Overreach.

HERALD OF XOTLI 

• Increased the duration of the Burn to Death damage over time effect to 6 seconds.

NECROMANCER

• Fixed a bug where the bonus from Despoil the Soul was being applied to pets.
• Reduced the base damage of all spells.
• The drain effect of the Blighted One pets has been rebalanced to be more in line with other player mana burn abilities.

PRIEST OF MITRA

• Immortal Spirit has been changed to 'Immortal Wrath.' Immortal Wrath is a new spell that when activated, reduces the casting time and mana cost of Smite and Mitra's Searing Eye. Rebuke and Cleansing Fire become instant cast and also cost less mana. This effect lasts for 15 seconds and has a 2 minute cooldown.
• Multiple changes have been done to the Vengeance tree to augment Mitra's Searing Eye and give it a more solid place in the vengeance priest damage rotation:
• Damage of Mitra's Searing Eye increased, and attack range increased to 20m
• Empowered Hand of Mitra now additionally increases attack range of Mitra's Searing Eye by an additional 2/5m.
• Holy Accession now reduces the mana cost of Mitra's Searing Eye
• The feats Spell - Immortal Wrath and Spell - Manifestation of Mitra now also passively increase the damage of Mitra's Searing Eye.
• Ranks 2 and 3 of Sacred Fire each add an additional second to the duration of the dot effect.
• The cone range of Cleansing Fire has been increased from 6m to 12m.
• When you have Arch-Guardian trained and cast Mitra's Searing Eye on a target affected by the dot effect from your Sacred Fire, you have a 33/66/100% (based on the number of points spent in Sacred Fire) to gain the Sacred Guardian effect. This makes your next Smite instant cast, mana free, but unable to crit and deal lower damage.

TEMPEST OF SET

• Reduced the base damage of all spells.
• Resonance damage can now also be triggered from Vital Shock, Lightning Sparks (once per cast) and from your Cyclones of Set.

MOUNTS

• The Mammoth Sweep and Rhino Sweep abilities should now be working again.

NPCS

• Mobs in the Border Range should now respawn faster.
• Some mobs have grown tired of running, and are now moving around at a more relaxed pace.
• All normal group monsters and minions (but not bosses) below level 65 have had a reduction to their damage.
• Monsters of level higher than 80 will now do less damage and take more damage. This is especially apparent for level 83 monsters.
• Xibaluku: Iziel-Al'zeep's Divine Mirror will now correctly reflect characters below level 80.
• Xibaluku: The Martyr of Votantha encounter has had an exploit fixed, as well as the overall difficulty reduced.
• Ymirs Pass : Old Buck should not ignore his trap anymore.

PLAYER CITIES

• The whore dialogue now consistently asks for 15 silver, the correct price for her services.
• Gate banners should now no longer linger after upgrading the gate building.
• Purple Lotus Swamp: The stairs of the central temple will no longer become swarmed with snakes.
• All guild city tier 2 tradeposts now support a tradeskill supply vendor.

PVP

• Capture the skull: Players should now get properly interrupted if they get hit while trying to pickup the skull. Slightly increased the time required to pickup the skull.

RAIDS

• Players should always end up in the same raid instance now.
• Vistrix will now drop Tier 1 belts in addition to previous drops.
• All Tier 1 bosses will now drop Tier 1 weapons.
• Raid Tier 1 trash will now have a small chance of dropping Tier 1 belts, gloves, wrists, shoulders and boots.
• Chatha the Demon Lord and Leviathus will now drop one extra Tier 2 weapon.
• Sabazios the Insane will now drop Tier 2 shoulders in addition to existing drops.
• Raid Tier 2 trash will now have a small chance of dropping Tier 2 belts, gloves, wrists, shoulders and boots.
• The mobs in the Chatha encounter should be less likely to fall through the floor.
• Ahazu-Zagam : Reduced the damage of the Ahazu-Verin.

TRADESKILLS

• Increased stack size of dropped alchemist resources.
• Some crafted bows had more range than intended. This has been corrected.
• Shard of the Exiled God now stacks.

When is this coming to the live servers? No official word apart from 'Very Soon'. Test server forums indicate that Guardian players will like this and majority of posts indicate good big step in right direction from what I can see.

I was hoping that they would go the other way balancing casters vs melee (aka as giving melee more magical protection). Caster dps in raids may be hurting after this.

Hmm a double nerf whack to the mages .

I hope this isnt too drastic and that demos are still able to pull top damage in raids.  Seeing as we now take damage easyer and use mp much much more than before.

I got no problems with a challange, but i still want to be usefull in a raid or pvp other than a few cc's.

mages are suppose to do the most damage, and die the easyest.  They should make us die faster over nerfing damage....not like we were running around one-shotting people, although its happend to me a few times.

 Lets see how it goes. I doubt it will help much since the main problem is how the different game mechanics affect PvP (as the devs themselves have admitted).

In PvE there really isnt a problem. But reducing caster damage also in PvE could pose a problem in the long run.

The real problem is that its much easier for the casters to reach their full damage potential in PvP compared to other classes. The damage itself follow what it should but its too hard for non-casters to deliver their damage compared to casters because of the combo system.

The only way to really fix this would be to change spells into combos too but that would be an enormous change to a system that have already been turned upside-down.

So lets see how it goes, but I dont believe it will fix anything. Glad I play on a PvE server.

Ye, let's hope this improves the balancing issues since 1.05

Not happy to see ToSgetting reduced base spell dmg, tho. Prolly the least lethal (bar poms) of all casters since da big patch.

Yo, AA, You know how much base damaged has been reduced for the different caster-classes?

Win for whining PVP players. Lost for quiet PvE players.

Damn... I should have leveled my demo instead of guardian....

Raids are so easy that DPS isnt that important in most raids. Casters or magic based classes are usefull for their AoE damage and elemental damage. So if you think lower DPS will ruin raids, try to do one before saying that.I beleive many people (including us) that have almost every boss on farm status would be happy if there will be changes in raids, but this IS NOT IT!

And to latest patch notes, I love especially indirect nerf like target have to be in sight, no rotate on spellweaving... thats the way to go imo.

Also I would like to see my suggestion to "limited friendly fire" implemented too ;)