The scoundrel is pretty easy to bring to a decent output level, but it got disadvantages and I think those are not even fully revealed yet (on either of the new classes).
So far we had only two dmg classes who even could ‘compete’, dmg-wise, and there were threads full of requests to buff rangers so they can keep up, specially with the mage’s AoE abilities. There were videos about pulling large groups of mobs together, nuking them all, mages farmed at a very high rate.
Can you do same with a scoundrel? No, you are single-target and need to take em slowly, 1-by-1. Another task is to get high ranks on close mobs, at all. To consistently curve high on far-away bosses needs lots of practice; dummies are too small and close for that to even practice, so yea there’s hours and hours left to improve. But mainly it is the almost complete lack of AoEs, which is supplemented by higher dmg.
Now is shaman output so much better? The shaman-AoE on trash is great, on bosses further away or if movement is required it can drop to frightening low levels, though.
I would very much like to see mages buffed, but not mainly thinking of those who already robot-cast (those will rule the orbus-world, again; but why not after so much practice), but of those who are starting out with the mage and nearly do no dmg, at all, failing every other spell, so they will have a harder task with finding groups. Even more now with all the OG players around. Nerving other dmg classes won’t help them, likely make things worse; the dmg I logged on less skilled mages was below the tank, below the healer at times.
The great problem which no other class got is that there’s a very broad, skill- and practice-related range in dmg-output. The AoE-nerv, which, I think, occured before launch, was aimed at highly-skilled players. But the class is not really accessible if it needs hundreds hours before you are even with other classes which got so much less hours in.
PS: On a sidenote, people leveled by grinding before. That is no longer needed, it’s more convenient doing quests and events with the easiest class one got. It’s possible to never play a class, never draw one spell or learn basic mechanics, only start doing so with 30. I still think it would be better to duplicate quests and lock them to a class or to force people otherwise to at least try surviving in the overworld before the endgame.