They are going to be corrected some. Too strong in beta with few journeyman - plus skills. Helaena did well testing it and discussing with devs.
I'm doubtful they will not let channeler/beastlord be the best classes on this server due to the fact that you have to pay for the classes and most of the people on the server are coming back to the game and don't have them unlocked, requiring people to shell out the $25 to play one.
Literally every game I've played with 'paid' class unlocks has this grand conspiracy and it's never true - at least for very long lol. Recent examples are Rift's Primalist class and ESO's Warden which had people freaking out pre-launch, then not long after, everyone went back to their preferred classes. Patches come and go, but on Live Beastlords were fairly gimped for much longer than they've been strong. I don't think Channelers have ever been considered OP? Dunno. The worry with them has been they won't be strong enough on FG. Best advice for anyone is to play what appeals to you, regardless of OPness, because every class is one patch away from being balanced out. I would also take BL/Channeler beta performance with a grain of salt, seeing as it was a beta test. BL was really fun though, glad to see them getting some action!
Considering that channelers are absolute garbage before level 95 -- then suddenly turn completely OP -- it is consistent with how the class plays.
Beastlords were pretty OP from like 2011-2013, and even after the GU(56) pet changes they were still pretty good. They were doing okay during ToV, they just didn't have as much max hp debuffs as assassin,brigand,ranger and they parsed as much if not a little bit more than mages assuming they were a really good player, but all of the BL's werent. All of the channelers were pretty strong, they were able to completely replace shamans due to the hard nerf of them. I mean our main tank shadowknight was able to box a shadowknight and a channeler at the same time. I'm not sure how good they were post AoM, but they were good in that xpac too; its just they decided to give shamans a 1 button win button (soul shackle) so shamans were good again and provided more utility, RoA, bolster, stampede, max hp debuff etc.
BL was good in terms of DPS on beta, but that's it. They provide nothing else but raw damage, cheap shot, and a snare. Their damage is getting tweaked though, they will likely be in line, if not less, than other top tier dps classes.
How are the pets and the heal stance? I'm not going to be main-tanking Darathar with my bear pet or some such nonsense am I?
I don't think so. As Xephane said, they are going to tweak them so that they fall more in line with other dps classes (after all of the uproar on SH initially about the op factor of summoners, I am guessing they don't want that to happen with another class). Also, the class won't have access to all of the warder quest lines initially or aa's obviously.
After level 10 ish the pet wont hold aggro worth anything unless you FORCE it to do so, but that's only when solo. The heal stance is HEAVILY underpowered, the heals do like 2-5% of hp, and the wards break in 1 or 2 hits so it isn't worth using for the most part, probably better for utility in later levels.