I don't know how I feel about class balance right now. Sure, anyone can use any armor. But I feel that that just allows for more diversity. I don't see much problem with a mage wearing scale mail. If he/she wants physical armor for some reason, then that's his/her prerogative, and I don't see much of a reason that they should have to invest in strength or finesse just to be able to use an entire armor type. That would be far too limiting if being a mage meant absolutely no physical armor. As far as mages being overpowered... They can't crit on their spells without Savage Sortilege, meaning no rage benefits for them, they do less damage on their strongest spells than a warrior does in a single click (including Savage Sortilege), and they don't have as much range (or damage potential, for that matter) as a huntsman/marksman. Sure, they have CC. But they have to go through magic armor to do it, and in my experience, that's a lot harder than going through normal armor. Hail Strike, with maxed intelligence and intelligence giving items, with all strikes hitting, is definitely the highest damage skill mages have, and is undoubtedly broken. But it is the only one I can think of, barring source skills. And even then, it only hits for around 400 with rage+savage sortilege+flesh sacrifice and maxed intelligence. With the rage and Savage Sortilege setup, in order to match that you would need impalement+fireball+fossil strike, and that's using 3 memory slots, 6 AP and 3 cooldowns, so you can't even do it with any consistency. I've seen warriors do 50% more than that, in 2 AP, without any special talents, using a single cooldown and rage+flesh sacrifice. The only thing that mages have going for them is that their CC is truly broken right now, once they do get through; Winter Blast has a 2 turn duration and a 2 turn cooldown, is AoE, and cannot friendly fire. But compare that to whatever they want to CC being already dead if they had instead been a warrior (rage + crippling blow), or a ranger (guerilla + snipe), or a rogue (guerilla + backstabber + vault, probably the most balanced in terms of investment and return). Mages simply cannot compete in soloing capability because no build you can give them has the firepower, and they lack the mobility skills (Phoenix Dive/Cloak and Dagger/Tactical Retreat) to tactically position themselves and keep themselves alive. That's not to say that a mage cannot solo the game in its current state. But I have beaten Act I with a warrior solo, a scoundrel solo, a huntsman solo, and a mage solo, and I can say with utter certainty, that the rogue solo was by far the easiest (stealth is broken right now, will hopefully be fixed), the warrior solo was next (cannot die, cannot not kill whatever it touches), the ranger was third (actually had to try, used items, loaded a few fights and did them over, died a bit), and the mage was leaps and bounds harder than the others, to the point where I had to resort to items, cheese strategies, and even splashing into hunstman/scoundrel/warrior for self teleport abilities (and Battle Stomp). If anyone has had a differing experience, or has a different perspective on this, then please, do chime in. But as of now, I think it is very safe to say that with cooldowns limiting what little a mage can do, and AP being so abundant due to Warlord/Flesh Sacrifice/Adrenaline being in the meta, mages are simply overshadowed by the damage and mobility potential of the other classes. There are exceptions, such as one of the final bosses being easier, but the other one was exponentially harder due to my limited damage potential.
