I mean we need balance!

Witchards wall of AOE Damage Makes it so melee cant even engage most of the time. You look at classes like musa and mehwa, any melee class without a way to sprint fast in protected or  warp in and you will see the trend is you spend most of your time going around the big push and flanking  just to be relevant. Zerker in particular without  his cannon buff is a walking meme because he cant do anything. I feel bad for melee Im luckily hybrid but I see the shit they are dealing with and its just stupid. Casters break the PVP scene as it is right now. to much huge DAMAGE aoe CC and the more there are the worse it is. Wouldnt it be great if tanks were the ones starting fights? Not witchards with full protected skills going balls to the wall in whenever they want and witchards instead needing to wait for the right oportunity and positioning to go in and get off thier damage and then warp out? remove there super armors all together but lower thier cast times significantly so they do not engage unless the time is right because they are squishy. Adds risk and reward not just face roll and get out for free unless grabbed.......  in order for this to work though CCs on the class would need to be adjusted so they cant warp in and CC 10+ people with no risk because of the faster casting. They instead warp in and use  their Teams CC     ( I know crazy teamwork is a thing)     to do thier job.

Also to the Witchards this is a PVE grind buff because they can cast faster your welcome.

Thats the game I want to play I dont know about you. This would also allow for some grab nerfs which everyone wants!

They also bitch about grabs but they are the reason they need to exist as they are in the first place its the only way to counter them.........

Heres what would happen with this change:

archer/ranger = kill witchards when they warp /  put preasure on  frontline defenses

Tanks = Start the fight and try and hold the line in doing so   ( zerker gets buffed up to be a tank and not just some cannon buff ( cannon buff gets nerfed) )

Assassins = Kill backline

Casters = Go in  and nuke frontline when opportunities present themselves / Heal team

Shai = Buff and heals bongos you know your job I dont need to tell you :D

NOW THAT IS BALANCED GAMEPLAY

Witchard Changes to make this work:

Awakening Casters:

Cast times would be much shorter  ( buffs your PVE)

CC on many skills in PVP removed ( mostly the close range ones) Blizzard will still slow and your one range one that knocks down will still work.

cooldown on teleport reduced  so you can get out after going in.

Super armors on casts removed ( maybe replaced with frontal gaurds while casting but not while the ability is going off.

Succession Casters

 Keeps its more 1v1 teleports as is

CC on most skills removed ( mostly the close range ones) Blizzard will still slow and your one range one that knocks down will still work.

super armors on casts removed ( maybe replaced with frontal gaurds while casting but not when abilities go off)

Both keep thier playstyles  , grabs can start being looked at to recieved at the very least Cooldown increases, and Melee can play the game again without having to cross this open field of AOE CC and damage.

theres a class for that, and even better, its called sorceress and it has no cd iframes and anicancels.

Sorc is nothing like witchards......

She doesnt have the same size CC AOE   her damage is similar I will give you that.

The issue with Sorc isnt sorc itself its the FPS = Animation speed issue so she can warp around 10+ people popping quick attacks with high damage output while everyone is trying to hit her and cant because her cancels have no holes because of FPS.

Witchards issues have nothing to do with FPS but with thier protections with the huge AOE CC and damage and No other class has this. They are over protected for the damage that they do and if you speed up thier animations in exchange for removing some CC and protections a caster becomes what a caster should be a high damage glass cannon. This would also allow succession witchards to still be played since they would lose the protections you would be able to CC them more easily it will let them keep their playstyle and 1v1 capabilities  and they would no longer be ruining the PVP experience for everyone.

Succession on staff classes is a problem, not class itself.

Just watching succe witch/wiz on Twitch in RBF and magically PVP in BDO looks funny and interesting if you can TP in, cast protected skills and kill someone here and there, blink on opposite direction and cast another protected skill before others gets chance to react and turn their chars 180degree then blink again and finish all with low hp, get tripple kill and safely TP to your backline, heal, self buff and repeat. All that while blinking in iframe. Dont let me start on PA, E buff and other self buffs/debuffs.

I think all we need to do is wait for Global Siege. Casters are waaaaay less popular in KR and SEA in PvP and so they haven't noticed how broken they truly are. Once Global Siege happens and NA/EU facerolls the other regions with their 90% caster comps they will be nerfed pretty fast.

I agree that melee classes are finding it hard to get closer to ranged. Likely only fix to this would be to add more protected mobility skills.

Meanwhile do Warriors, Zerker, Lahn, Hash, Tamer, Striker, Mystic, over half the roster even know that Wizard and Witch have protections?  Doubtful as they are 100% useless.  Grab Win.

I do enjoy the endless montage of not a single player in groups doing any form of protection vs wizards.  Not a single one of them even bothering to FG, SA, or Block.  They pretty much deserve to get flattened by a single Wizard for playing so poorly.

So melee are supposed to trade super armor with a class that has more super armor AND more damage on those super armor skills or they are bad? There is literally no point in FG or blocking because the wizard deletes it instantly or forces you into the block animation then teleports miles away to safety instantly.

Grab is literally the only counter to certain classes right now with how broken the combat system is. Of course that's all you're going to see people do against them, because it's certain death to try anything else unless you outgear them heavily.

OP I must ask; what is your large-scale PvP experience and more specifically are you familiar with shotcalling a raid?

I ask this mostly because I think you have a few very strange misconceptions in your theory;

Zerkers as an example are already one of the primary initiatiors in group fights, through their lava piercer, giant leap and 100% pre-awk stun fields.

Regarding going around and flanking; all classes are required to do this Including casters.

Unlike popular belief, after the PA nerf no class can survive "on ping" in a large scale setting without extreme gear difference, heal backup and/or pre-engages. A witch cannot, a wizard cannot, a Musa cannot, protections do not allow for you to survive in the focus area of a competent mainraid. You will die within your second SA.

Obviously, a difference exists to the extent that musas are required to go wider than some other classes, but it is a scale rather than an absolute witchards-in-the-center musas off in Narnia.

In general regarding your "this is what would happen" and previous notes on mobility, you seem to have a very static approach to large-scale. BDO PvP is dynamic, not static. The concept of a frontline is extremely tricky to define as most classes in the game have the means to avoid specific positions relatively easily. 

A key concept to this is the power of a disengage-and-re-engage.

Many classes are reliant on single skills that allow them to engage (or disengage) from a position. In a witchard's case this is teleport (and to an extent sprinting). 

The implication of this rule-of-thumb, is that any raid that wishes to "push up", is required to burn mobility to reach the next position. Exactly as they arrive at this position, they are vulnerable as they have spent vital mobility skills that are what allows for players to stay alive.

Now of course, if the witchards are allowed to teleport into the enemy raid, that raid is in all kinds of trouble...

But if the raid is competent enough to disengage, the witchards are vulnerable and exposed, often overextended compared to their follow up classes, and with no means to avoid grabs or simple recollapse SA dmg output. Succession wizard broke this rule by gaining the ability to use his 2nd TP (usually a flow) separately, giving him both engage and immediate disengage options.

In any case though, the way you portray large-scale is extremely one-dimensional, and you should talk more with your shotcaller about these matters imho.

(That all aside, from a simple balancing pov the proposed changes would butcher the class beyond belief, reducing it to a position of a succession DK without the quasi protection, which is still better than no protection)

This only applies to group combat and Succ Wizard.  It's important to point out most players don't care at all about game balance.  They ONLY care about issues when they lose.

Thus the OP for example will never point out the ridiculous CC range of many MELEE classes.  Or how ridiculously broken grab is.  They will ONLY point out situations in where they lose.