- I think the answer is no, having fought tons of mages with Aura, Barrier, and Shield going. If there's some warrior player out there with better PK numbers than mine who says warriors have a really good chance against Aura/Barrier/Shield mages 1v1, I MIGHT be swayed from my opinion.
There are a few standout characters where I'd say a/s/b are necessary. At the moment, Glurgick is a good example. Or the amped up paladin flavor of the day, which would be Dupmasione. But they're not the norm. Also there are some builds that under circumstances can go toe-to-toe with an a/s/b mage, depending on the type of mage. I think Mizfara beat some dire wolf once who had full a/s/b. But I was tranced, had protection, maybe stoneskin, and it was still moderately close.
- I think if Aura and Barrier were easily available to every mage the balance would be stupidly out of whack at Hero level with regard to melee vs. mages, worse than it already is. I think the only way to balance that would be to give melee classes access to those protections, as well.
The thing that makes it out of whack to me is that it's feast or famine. If you make it so all mages have a/s/b all the time, then they're going to roll most everyone. If they don't have it at all, then they will get rolled by most people. If you take away the ability to "gather" protection and just give them something "built-in" that's halfway between "nothing" and "full a/s/b" then there will be some characters they'll just never beat, and others they'll beat almost all the time. (I'm mostly thinking of shifters here).
> As far as solutions, depending on the collective answer to Question #1, you could just stick non-lim AB wands on a single mob.
People would camp at that mob.
But yeah. Generally I agree with you.