Ragers are "ready to wear" in the sense that they are always as prepared to fight as they ever will be. Unless they're damaged. There is a tremendous sense of power and exhiliration you get playing a character like that. And that sense overwhelms all the drawbacks listed below (and there are very, very many drawbacks) in terms of overall fun - even if that power and exhiliration does not ultimately skew the PK ratio heavily in the Rager's favor (i.e., Ragers tend to die a lot). Also, ragers are much less powerful now than they were during the time of Masters. The most obvious, for me, is that bloodthirst now completely hides your current hp/mana/movement/damage-taken. Imagine fighting a PK without looking at your prompt.
But on the flip side, Rager's maximum readiness falls well short of any other character's maximum readiness. Meaning, if the Rager fights a non-Rager warrior at that non-Rager's maximum preparedness, the Rager is fighting at a severe disadvantage. And then the Rager gets hurt during this fight. At that point, the Rager is at an extremely severe disadvantage. Why? Because the Rager cannot use any non-natural regeneration or transportation. So the Rager really wants to keep his fights contained and controlled. It's like running around with a hand-cannon that has a single powerful shot.
This means if you're the type of player that can take advantage of preparedness better than Rager resist/deathblow, you can overcome that initial, imposing front line and the Rager will crumble.
Now, some players, like Scrimbul will never ever be able to prepare more than a Rager more than .00001% of the time. These players will have to figure out how their class/cabal/race combo can minimize the impact of deathblow. Again, this is pretty easy. You "disarm" the skill by taking away the amount of damage it does, or the amount of times it will hit you.
Of course, some smaller set of players, again, including Scrimbul, will never ever be able to figure out how their class/race/cabal combo can "disarm" deathblow. Those "Scrimbuls" out there resort to ganking and whining about it on the OOC forums. They'll never get better at the game because they'll never approach the game as a student and own their mistakes. I do this, too, with certain things like Liches. I don't think I can solo a Lich unless the Lich sucks way more than I do.
There are also a lot of other drawbacks surrounding the "non-natural regeneration or transportation" point I made above.
(of course, I haven't played one, yet, the above discussion comes from fighting them)
OK, so all that being said, I agree with you that Evil Outlander Mages are underpowered so far as the cabal-balance goes. But they have a good shot at getting Nightreaver, and with that, insect swarm. They also have less responsibilities/rules than a lot of other cabal characters do.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2009 11:14AM by Balrahd.