Sorcerer has the only AoE attack ratio buff in the game (not considering CD reductors like Circling and JP’s attribute, as those are active skills and don’t have 100% uptime) and honestly, +5 AoE Attack Ratio is not something easy to achieve through gears, even level 290+ gears barely give 2 or 3 AoE attack Ratio.
That is good utility for both Swordman and Archer, which are very strong at R8, making each of their skills hit +1~5 mobs. There is a mergen skill for example that hits 9 times each target if it hits all targets, this means for this buff only they get ~45 hits on this single skill (don’t remember which one but might have CD, the one with a lightning effect probably).
Necromancer also goes into that category since it applies decays to improve Archer’s damage.
Those are reasons those 2 classes can still be used later on at least if you have circles of Linker, damage is going to grow a lot because of bigger base damages and AWESOME new gear + transcendence.
All of us know what Wizards are about. We experienced it at Rank 7 when nothing but Wiz 3 could handle the game. In a 10 rank based game we are going to have most likely 4 last circles for DPS skills. Necromancers got good DPS filler (saying filler because of 20s CD and you pay for it, not that it’s weak) for a fine R9 class for example, Warlocks and Featherfoots are hopeful for their C3 and even Sage and Enchanter are “too bad” at C1 for us to not expect something good at C2.
Also R9 might come with hidden classes only, or different styles of classes simply because they might never reach C3, it has to be thought about in a different manner.
IMO R9 and R10 will be something like 1 circle classes or pick previous ranks, because pretty much all those classes have to be good, they will have few spells even if they ever get to C2 so most of them have to be either good alone or improve earlier ranks.
Something like Shadowmancer having good interactions with Necromancer, Sorcerer or Warlock and fine DD skills on it’s own so other people can also have options.