@ splatter
Comming frome wow, played a undead priest and a orc hunter.
hunters were good soloers in WoW
Archers are decent soloers in L2, and slighly similar (basic ideas) pvp, ie shoot from ranged, able to stun from afar etc
priest in WoW is nothing like healers in L2, healers in L2 are completely unable to anything on their own, they will even struggle with the second class change quest
They have a nuke they can hit undeads with (and only undeads) but its the least mana efficient and shortest range nuke in the game
In WoW every class could solo well, some better than others
Also, ever class were roughly as good, you needed roughly as many for each raid etc
In L2 its nowhere like this, its so extreme that you might say certain classes are completely useless
You have 3 daggers for example, the ligh elf dagger is about lots of crits but low damage crits because of their low strength
These gets crit chance passives
The dark elf dagger gets less crits but more powerful crits, and crit power passives (making your crit do more than 100% extra damage)
Then you have the human dagger, who gets both types of passives, has the most stats and is generaly far more overpowered than the other 2. Most players even go as far as to consider the light elf dagger completely useless and pointless to play, as when you approach endgame they are actually ALOT weaker than their 2 counterparts
This story isnt unique in any way, the game imbalance in this game compared to WoW is borderline extreme
WoW example : Imagine if paladins could tank better than warriors, dps better than warriors AND heal better than priests, AT THE SAME TIME. That would be L2 balance
The "best" classes of each type:
Archer: hawkeye (human)
dagger: treasure hunter (human)
nuker: spellhowler (dark elf)
tank: (dark avenger or paladin, the DA is more fun)
Out of the healers/buffers : prophet gets virtually ALL the buffs, but bad healing
Shillen elder gets almost all the useful buffs, including a buff to make nukers do like 50% more damage (unique to this class) and ok healing
elven elders gets good healing, but all their buffs bar 1 is completely useless. They even lack buffs they "should" have from a roleplay point of view
bishop : the best healer, gets mass ressurect for pvp, but not many buffs at all
The orc classes are a special case, they are all extremely powerful in the VERY LATE END GAME (lvl 68+) where they have a ton of strength, hitpoints,buffs, damage output, skills, etc etc, but the road to that point is long and hard and not everyone finds the rewards waiting at 68 worth it
Also keep in mind that this game takes an EXTREME amount of time to get to max level (WoW was all about being max level for example) but you dont really need to be max level to accomplish things, mid 60s things starts to even out
Id say that getting to 60 in L2 takes as much time as getting 3 lvl 60s in wow, getting to 75 in l2 takes maybe 8 lvl 60s in wow, getting to 80 takes more time than getting to 75 in L2, so if you have a (legit) lvl 80 in L2, consider it the same as 2 entire accounts full of lvl 60s in WoW :P