I knew a lot of this stuff already (aside from blocking while using a skill, that's actually super handy to know.) but even as is the difficulty curve seems a LOT more extreme than what a Magic user goes through. And this is all stuff that Melee users have to do to play well, while Magic users can literally just run from the opponent and get basically the same amount of damage in, skills or not. It's far more passive but gets rewarded just as much for that kind of gameplay, which is admittedly lame. Bells I think are MOSTLY okay, they're very strong but they should be strong options, if very predictable and low ranged, but Staffs are just so good there's no reason you shouldn't use them.
I don't mind Melee being the way it is, because I did have fun with it. I do think the grounded heavy attack is a bit too slow and you basically have no reason to use it outside of just sweeping a large group of weak enemies you can one shot, meaning you basically just end up spamming air attacks. But even with all the block tech, I do think some aspects of the class need to be buffed up a bit, and Magic users REALLY needs some changes to make their gameplay more dynamic and less passive IMO.
For unrelated changes that could inadvertently "nerf" the class, adding some more long-ranged enemies that focus on attacking people far away from them could help, as there's only a couple ranged enemies right now and they were the only enemies that ever gave me real trouble when I was playing mage. But the skills could use a bit of a more critical look to see if they're really worth having or not. Half of them are pretty much just things Mages can do as is, and don't really provide anything special to the table compared to most other spells. And some of those are just too situational to have a real place in their arsenal, being too weak and admittedly useless in most cases compared to a simple charge shot or just spam clicking.
I'm turning around on my idea of having staffs use mana, because it is a pretty lame change when you consider it would make all their skills basically useless. How will you spend mana on your primary form of offense when you're wasting it on skills? Instead I think the staffs should be more chip damage than anything else. Charge attacks are fun to use, and considering how Melee has an alternate form of attack, I feel as though maybe Mage should have the charge shots be moved down as a skill everyone can use, not just Mystics. Make them deal a decent chunk of damage, maybe without the pierce, and it'd give Magic users a little more to chew on even with the complete rework. Perhaps instead, focusing into Mystic could give them a weak piercing move that fires a very fast projectile that pierces through enemies? I'm not entirely sure. Either way this game has been a lot of fun and I've just beaten it with Mage, so a lot of this is fresh in the mind still. Definitely going to be trying every class, maybe do an arbitrary challenge run for fun. Who knows :3