hateless is a new development. magic and rng damage used to be the kings in the game, the trade-off being that it took at most 2 shots from the mob to have a blm or rng pushing up daisies, that was the balance, coupled with MP cost and resulting downtime or the cost of ammo for rangers. and believe me, the same screaming DDs who will not allow tanks to hold hate get now, mages and rangers were hearing it then. Now, ranger was nerfed for most of a decade when they added the "sweet spot" but mages were never nerfed. What happened is that melees were buffed, then buffed, then buffed until they surpassed both. SE recently addressed rnagers and put them back essentially where they originally were, they didn't scale the damage back up but they dramatically reduced the cost of ammo via recycle and gave them enmity tools so they can go all out. They did some of that with the equalization update for mages but it hasn't been anywhere near as effective because top damage hasn't moved, just MP cost. I mean, AM is supposed to be awesome, instead it is universally regarded as a waste of time due to casting time vs. yield, as you can do more damage by casting 3 times in the same time for less MP, and less hate spikes. I'd say OP has a reasonable point. I would also say that if SE made nukers the damage kings again the whining melee rants would drive us to the brink of suicide.