Thoughtful analysis. Good first post!
1. There will be a number of tank skills added. I'm not sure if that's sufficient to really drop the effectiveness of burst damage, but it will help. I like Shy's idea of some kind of damage cap skill that would be effective against burst damage but not several ticks of small amounts of damage.
2. I'm well along the "eliminate hard cc" bandwagon. Some CC reducing initiative is a nice, simple solution.
3. Again, I believe there will be a number of skills to help give mages more of an edge and synergize with physical damage, but there still needs to be some kind of major change. Don't know if armor allowing some damage through to health is the solution, but that might help.
4. I like the idea of certain statuses reducing the range of self-teleports. Phoenix dive going from warfare to pyro would help I think. Pyro needs more mobility and warfare has too much.
Soft taunts would be nice. I will reveal that there's going to be a fun "Challenge" skill that might behave like a soft taunt.
