[greatdane]

Warriors: the "king of tanking" thing had very little to do with the fact that warriors have slightly better tanking skills and HP. There's not much of a difference stat-wise between a warrior and a knight in equivalent gear. It all boiled down to the defensive discipline which was absolutely necessary for any kind of raiding that you didn't vastly out-gear. Velious brings mobs like AoW and Vindi that can hit for thousands per round and/or are unslowable, and you just couldn't tank that without warrior discs. There were mobs that hybrids could never tank, and to tank even the easier raid targets required the hybrid to be far beyond it in gear.

Paladins/shadowknights: since Velious is almost purely an endgame expansion and the hybrid tanks only shine while leveling, they lose much of their appeal and serve mostly as off-tanks for the uncommon occasions where this is necessary. Not exactly useless like druids, but with an endgame-centric min-maxer playerbase like ours and the likelihood that Velious will be the final frontier for a very long time, it doesn't seem like knights will be in very high demand. They'd still be the best non-raid tanks due to their easy aggro, but I imagine most people will be done leveling by then.

Rangers: this class will get progressively stronger with each of the first half-dozen expansions, but they don't become truly good until Luclin. In Velious, rangers are alright DPS with some alright utility, and their saving grace is the weaponshield discipline which can be used to great effect on raids. Due to its very long duration, a ranger would aggro the mob and pop the disc, tanking it safely for 18 seconds while the main tank generates as much aggro as he can manage in that time. You then either let the ranger die when the duration runs out or the warrior does his best to take aggro just before it's too late. Gives the warrior a nice headstart on aggro because nobody had to heal anybody or slow the mob for the duration of weaponshield. This is only crucial for progression raiding, you don't need to do it once you have a firm grasp on whatever content it is you've reached.

Clerics: required for the CH chain and HP buffs. Their lesser heals were useful in non-raid situations, but for raids, your place was in the chain and you simply didn't have room to do other things. As with anything else, this could change if your raid was so far beyond the content that it was trivial, so it doesn't bear mentioning.

Druids: always a pretty pitiful class for any high-end gameplay. I'm pretty sure Circle of Seasons is a Luclin or PoP spell, and Circle of Summer/Winter were barely better than Resist Fire/Cold. Glades is a decent buff and druids could patch-heal well enough, but it was never required and a shaman could do just as well while providing much more valuable buffs/debuffs. Throughout the entire early history of EQ, this class has no real role and is more of a convenient casual player class.

Shaman: as before and after, shamans were a core class in Velious. You needed them for slows, Malo and stat buffs. Well, the latter becomes irrelevant in the very endgame when all classes max all their stats through gear alone, but only one guild will ever get there and it'll take a long time. Probably the strongest single class to have in a non-raid group at 60, as well as godlike soloers with the right gear. Widely regarded as overpowered by that point in time.

Enchanters: the buffs were necessary, but enchanters never had very much to do during the actual fights. There were few if any encounters that had adds you couldn't clear before engaging, and you didn't have to do any crowd control once you were done with the trash.

Magicians: pretty weak by then, lacking spells that can land reliably on raid targets. Pets don't get better at all from Kunark to Velious, and while magicians retain a purpose with modrods and CotH, they're not exactly a well-defined class.

Necromancers: they can land spells on raid mobs and have all the same group utility that made them useful in Original/Kunark, but they don't really scale up at all from Kunark to Velious (like most casters, unimpressive itemization and a lack of meaningful growth between these two expansions is kind of a problem). They don't get much worse in Velious, but they don't get better, either. Still great soloers, still not particularly critical for raiding, especially if you don't wipe much.

Wizards: the only nuker class that really thrives, and still I wouldn't call them great. Lure spells will land on raid mobs, but they have horrible mana efficiency and wizards bring literally nothing but damage. Melee still out-shines them, raid mobs get so many HP that you can't burn them down, and there isn't enough flowing thought gear in the game until Luclin/PoP for a wizard to really be able to provide sustained damage throughout the entire fight. There were still places where coordinated burst damage has value, and it's nice to avoid AoEs, but casters weren't truly on par with melee until AAs.

Rogues: best DPS, though if you can't get one of the very high-end daggers from Vulak, Tunare etc., you don't actually get much better between Kunark and Velious. Goes to show how insane of a boost 51-60 and Ragebringer was for rogues. You should have max str/dex without Avatar anyway.

Monks: insane class until the nerf hits, which isn't until Luclin/PoP. The vast amounts of 100HP/20+AC items in Velious makes this class absurdly strong, able to tank much better than a DPS class should while doing great DPS and retaining the critical role of best puller. They lose all of that in later expansions which probably made Furor jizz his pants, but in Velious, raid-geared monks are just too good.

Bards: still a fine class, and crucial on raids for their resist songs, but many of their songs lose value as people easily hit caps with the wide variety of 41% haste items and +20ish stats/resist gear in Velious. I personally think this class goes downhill after Kunark and descends from superb to good. It's only because songs are limited to your group that they don't end up at the enchanter status of "just need one or two for the buffs". They also don't benefit much from gear, lacking the incentive to optimize melee DPS and having no use for the flowing thought items that appear in Velious. Can do silly things solo, but a lot of mobs start summoning by then.