The following is pretty long, but there are some good points if you have the time to read it.
The original idea of stacking does not take away the affects. It only makes it a bit more harder to get applied to full affect.
Do you realize exactly how nasty the drained affect it? For -any- class to be able to put that on you, for a considerable amount of time, it quickly becomes in their favor.
This idea for stacking allows them to keep their nasty abilities, but, make them have to work for it. Blademasters are shamans with nasty melee power. This melee power is far unbalanced with their shaman-like prowess.
Allow them to keep the melee power, as they are masters of the blade, however, make them have to work to be shamans. They keep their affects, yet have to "stack" the lengths. The drained/caltrap combo is a 100% failsafe in almost all cases. Winning? Make it damned near impossible for them to run through more than 3-4 areas, 2-3 if it's all mountain. If they are losing and recall from a good distance, they are perfectly safe from the person they were fighting. Or even if they just have a good run for about 4 areas, they are perfectly safe.
Another option would be to allow temple healers to cure the drained affect. However, since blademasters can put drained on for so long, this is nearly worthless, as it would quickly run anyone out of money and usually open up bad melee scenarios for almost everyone when they barely make it two areas back into the city and get temple lagged to cure drained while the blademaster runs right up on you and lashes out for 4+ rounds with caltraps and drained again.
Cutting down the melee power is an option to balance them out with their shaman powers, but in my opinion, I think what's going on is that blademasters are highly offensive characters with way too much maledective power. It's not so much the mals they have, its the length. To take away their melee power would balance it, but it just defeats the overall "rp" if you will, of the class.
So really, in my mind at least, it seems the only way to really get a good "balance" is to look at completely altering the status affect lengths of the class entirely. Or, keeping the lengths, just making it a bit different to get to "full power" on a mal.
Putting a very short hour cap on it, and making it have to stack to reach full hours would go like this:
Crit strike hits first time: apply mal for 1 hour (shown as Mal: 0 hours)
stack crit strike for 1 additional hour to cap at 3 hours (shown as Mal: 2 hours)
This allows the blademaster to keep a long timer on you, as if he crits on the hour of every hour, your mal will never leave.
How I foresee this balancing things is because if you are winning and he is now on the defensive, you are not sitting there with 6 hours of drained on you, while he runs off into the sunset. It's no longer a failsafe for them. It's definetly to their advantage if they are winning (and still a decent advantage if they are losing). But if they are losing, they can't just rely on this.
And if he IS winning, well, you still have a chance to escape, but it is still kinda hard, the way it is supposed to be vs a blademaster (assuming this well played blademaster has timed his critical strikes for max affect) and now you have to get down and dirty with your wits to survive, since you were getting beaten.
And really, the only combo of mals that blademaster have that are so severe is this drained/caltrap combo. Most of you I don't really think understand how nasty an affect that drained is. I'd probably put as either the worst, or the second worst affect in the game. Plague/pioson/blind all that can be temple healed and consumable healed. However, drained pretty much completely halts your regen and messes your moves pretty quickly. Allowing someone to apply the drained affect for more than 3 ticks is absurd. I can run from Val to Miruvhor in well under 2 ticks. I'm nothing special so I'm sure lots of other people can too. If I drain you in center val, you WILL be out of moves by the time you get to the eastern end of Rheydin. Then you are absolutely screwed for the next FIVE HOURS.
If you really think about that, not just disagree and get all huffy puffy and start writing your reply, you will realize how absurd it is. To be totally owning someone, have them flee from middle of val, and bee-line to Miruvhor...then leave you stranded in Rheydin with zero moves and pretty much ZERO regen for, again, FIVE HOURS....it's crazy lol. Regen/caltrap combo is all that is wrong with blademasters that I've seen. And it's simply because of the lengths and the inability to cure it/be immune to it.
Forgot about those pesky skills.