I disagree, I think R8 has some of the most interesting design so far.
Sage skills are all really cool with their potential interactions with earlier circles. Fireball spam with duplications might be enough to bring back Pyrokino, or make Pyro3Chrono3 a good dps/support hybrid build. The class concept in general has a lot of potential for cool abilities in the future.
Hakkapalle could be really interesting in theory, but much like Corsair and Rogue it seems to just under-deliver because IMC has trouble really melding melee and ranged abilities in a kit properly, and they get bogged down by weapon and mount requirements.
Murmillo takes a completely irrelevant but thematically cool build path (Pure shield build) and makes it do potentially ridiculous damage on top of being really tanky. This is a case where it is mostly just “has a bunch of buffs and hits really hard,” but the important thing is that they’re designing to keep lower ranks relevant. Taoist also accomplishes something similar but has a unique mechanic that could be used for a lot in the future, the way we’re seeing Kabbalist’s previously pointless number gimmick start to make sense now.
Inquisitor fills a really specific niche and along with Lancer (which is less unique since mounted-spear-class has already been done) shows that IMC is really taking PVP seriously and designing classes that can provide checks and balances to dominant PVP strategies, which is always important to keep from developing a single unbeatable metagame.
The problem is just that some classes seem to be totally forgotten and remain terrible with no viable build paths. Corsair, Rogue, Paladin, Sadhu, Thauma all remain subpar classes with no really noteworthy interactions with later ranks (and in the case of Corsair and Rogue, weapon/stance restrictions making them actively detrimental to include in builds). And of course Paladin is still sitting around wishing Barrier had a nice attribute so that their best skill wasn’t completely overshadowed by a scroll. Linker’s best skills are scrollable now, but they still have unscrollable attributes that make them worth including in a party.
Enchanter is stupid though, and Mergen really is just another generic archer DPS class. But it’s to be expected at this point that at least some of the new classes with every rank will be uncreative.