I mostly agree, but I should point out that spells across the board are almost entirely focused on CC to the extent that Damage is a distant memory. Until you get meteor storm and hail attack, a mage's damage is completely in the toilet and since you can get your CC from a ranger for generally less AP while keeping up the damage potential, mages are basically worthless until the end of the game.
The other problem is that low chance doesn't make the fights more tactical, it makes them more random. You either need options that can MAKE your CCs reliable, without being too overpowered themselves, or else the CCs should just be incidental bonus effects on some other kind of attack that you would be using even without the CC. Playing around with wet/cold and adding similar effects for knockdown/charm (charm could be HP based) would be one way to make CC more tactical instead of random.
As for the nutjob suggesting level scaling; the MAIN problem with level scaling is that enemies are always two steps behind the player and you can NEVER find a challenge. With unscaled, players have the opportunity to go into an area early if they've been finding the game easy, which they cannot do in a scaled game. Of course, it's a fairly moot point if there is no overleveled area you can reasonably get to, but scaling only makes it worse.
