[Snagglepuss]

I think the nuking classes, i.e., mage and wizard, do pretty well in vanilla with respect to damage as others have mentioned. I think people forget how poorly itemized many pure melee classes are in that era. (Hello rogues with Gloom Poon and Polished Steel Dirk). The nuke classes didn't scale as well as the pure melee did in the next two expansions, especially given that wizards didn't really have a viable clicky nuke outside of VP until Velious.

On a side note, I liked how Vanguard essentially combined the mage class with the druid class. Druids now have elemental pets and better elemental nukes.