The biggest thing about
@Dreamcycler 's ideas is that they will bring back the old feel of Herocraft that we all loved. You guys are super afraid of it, but sometimes change isn't good. Graveyards allowed players to spawn around the area and was a great reason to build around. This promoted towns to build near each other and ally or fight each other. Not allowing griefing was great because it made the landscape look good. A great looking server promotes fun. Instead of what it is now, which only promotes this gross feel. Why buy a huge map that looks awesome only to allow us to ruin it?
Allowing ports to be important used to be complained about a lot, but it promoted economy and interacting with players. It made it so that you needed a wizard and you needed a necro and a druid could be the half-way wizard/cleric it was meant to be. The scary bit is that you are afraid of the current playerbase not enjoying the older ways, but honestly, the older ways are what made Herocraft a 200+ player server.
As for class balance, I think each class is going to need an overhaul to match this new system. If that is too much to handle at this time, it might be best to revert to the spam click system. The issue is that some classes didn't take the hit as hard as others. IE: Runeblade. And now you have a balance fiasco on your hands that I don't think you have the team to handle. Especially with
@Pugglez_ calling out the balance team means you got a bad member either with a false accusation or with someone swaying balance in their favor.
First things first, pick a system. Spam or wait click. If you want to stay with this system, then remove spamy classes ability to spam or reduce their effectiveness for doing so. Example being Runeblade: Make their runes have a cooldown. They can chase and run very effectively with their blink, they can stand to last a bit longer in combat at least. So if they can only apply runes preemptively or once every 8 seconds or so, it emphasizes the idea of rogue classes being about being sneaky and striking at the right times, rather than brainless spam.
@Kainzo
TLDR: We need some of the old reasons we played back, it will help the server more than what we are currently doing.
PS: I'm not trying to doomsay, Herocraft may be underpopped, but its still alive enough to play. I only hope to have you read this Kain and maybe decide on some things.