I seriously doubt a few people stiffing them now and then will
seriously cut into their profits. And if it is a big problem, then
perhaps going out and actually earning the plat will be advisable to
them...

Fo7 more good for players than a pure mana regen?

HP 544
STR 75
DEX 75

No mana regen at all.

Versus

250 mana pool
14 mana per tic
25 int
25 wis

For a warrior, monk, or rogue Fo7 is clearly better.  These people only
buy KEI when doing trade skills, though.

For a pure caster, though, HP matter little, STR and DEX even less; how
often do you see necromancers, mages, enchanters, or wizards hitting
things with weapons over level 10 or so?  Only the HP part is at all
interesting

For shaman, the stats are nice, HP translates to a bigger mana pool in a
way (although note that KEI also gives bigger mana pool), and they
sometimes do bother hitting things with weapons, although there's rarely
any real point.  For a cleric, that Dex can really mean something, in
terms of getting their hammers to proc, which is really what cleric
melee post 56 is about, the damage they do from actual melee is as low
as you might expect, but a high proc rate can generate some decent
numbers.  For a druid... maybe the str would help them carry more loot home?

Hybrids might benefit more from Fo7 than from KEI... but perhaps still
not; knights who are playing MT actually use a fair amount of mana
(small amounts but spent constantly), often out of quite tiny pools, and
are rarely accorded any med time at all, Beastlords have it worse as
they have useful high level spells to blow mana on, if the mana is
available.

That leaves bards.  Bards get only the mana pool and int increase
benefits from KEI, on the other hand they don't spend a lot of time
getting hit (HP part) or hitting things with proccing weapons (dex part)
either.

So far, there's already a slight edge to KEI, its the more useful of the
pair to more classes.

But there's a deal breaker: Fo7, like Focus and HOS and the HP talisman
line, overwrite a series of self buffs; for pure casters, the Shielding
line, for clerics, the Blessed Armor of the Risen line.  Hybrids, I
don't know, perhaps not.  At any rate, this means that Fo7 trades me 544
hp plus useless 75 str and 75 dex for (at the high end of the line) a
350 hp, 39 AC (admittedly useless) an 40 MR buff; top end casters only
gain 194 hp and lose 40 MR from getting Fo7

Clerics suffer most of all though, as their buff is 450 hp, 36 AC (a
stat they may actually use) and 8 mana per tic (lesser version at 58 is
6 mana per tic)... Fo7 instead of KEI means 94 extra HP, 75 extra dex,
at the cost of 250 mana, 25 wis (quite often clerics wear gear that is
25 wis short of the cap, since they normally have KEI on, and there are
plenty of other stats they can pursue, such as Dex gear and HP gear and
STA gear and clicky gear) and a whopping 22 mana per tic in regen,
between losing KEI and Armor of the Zealot both.

Fun eh?

Splendid

i love my shammy...but then i am married to him <grin>
aru

Mostly no, they didn't manage, they quit and ran other classes.  The few
who did manage found niches, such as soloers or burst damage dealers,
or, as you suggest "pity" or friendship grouping.  There was also a
larger tendancy to pull, med break, pull, med break, as other classes
had similar problems.  This wastes the available DPS of the melee
classes (including pets) though.

Changes to the game balance have redressed this problem to a large
extent, but a -lot- of that change comes down to KEI and focus items
(and a mount, outdoors) making it possible for a wizard to do more than
drop one nuke, then sit till the next mob comes along

No, a level 49 wizard without focus items and KEI and POTC is hardly any
more effective than one from before those things were commonly
available, same for a 59 wizard.. admittedly a 64 wizard is more
effective than 64 wizards predating those tools.. but only because there
was no such thing as a 64 wizard back then.

Thats precisely the point I was trying to make, the people a wizard is
competing with are now much more effective, so he too has to be much
more effective than he used to be.

Splendid