Long story short, I was a hardcore raider until 2005 when I got burned out, largely due to the fact that my top-of-the-server raid guild druid was very stressful to heal for some xp camps where group-geared clerics were rolling through without difficulty. My roommate had actually rage-quit some months before after trying to tank Gates of Discord single group trials on his paladin. I know asking class balance questions is like tossing a burning torch into a gnomish fireworks factory, but have these things gotten better? I've seen some comments, but I haven't seen many specifics. Is there any "high end" single group content that knights find difficult to tank, or shm/dru find difficult to heal? Could a sk serve as MT for a guild that's a couple tiers below cutting edge? And--out of curiousity--if these things have gotten better, what were the changes that brought things closer together?
All group content is doable with any tank and any healer. A lot of it is tankable by non tank classes and healable by mercs. Sham/druids pick up in utility what they lack in healing compared to clerics. Both are great classes. SK/Paladin are usually stronger than warriors in group content tanking b/c of all the self healing and additional utility. As for raids, there are uses for everyone but you'll only find warriors tanking the biggest hitting raid bosses due to their mitigation discs.
Hybrids are doing good. Rangers and Beastlords are considered very strong in alot of aspects. SK's are very strong and can tank just as good as Warriors and Paladins. The big thing is you also have several great utlities that people like. And for now untill they tone it down you still have swarm capabitity.... but that is being reduced a bit.
Balance is far better than it was in GoD. Groups of group geared characters can do all group content, with any tank tanking and any priest healing, and a choice of several strategies and classes for pulling/crowd control. Thanks to mercs, a partial group can even do most group content. The obvious outstanding issues (to me): some classes can get fast exp by swarming (nerf incoming, this is arguably a good thing), some classes (especially hybrids) require many more AAs than others to be effective, and tank classes need near max AAs and best gear/augs to be effective at their level.
