Umm, rune caster doesn’t work with ground skills, only with ice sphere. It only synergizes well with wiz3.
Also CD is not a problem if you have cryochrono in your party. Watch some ET videos. Top team here is pal3, 2 wiz3elems3 and cryochrono. They have a squire as well, but it just stays behind doing nothing.
The problem with wiz3 is that it will boost any upcoming rank 8,9,10 and 11 classes with just 2 lower rank classes.
Also highlanders are much better in endgame then hoplites as hoplites grant flat crit rate and it will fall off with levels. While highlander have skull swing that destroys bosses armor.
Levelling is not a broblem in this game, with right equip and stat distribution you can level pretty easy with any class, especially if you have good party setup.
I can’t see how elem can possibly fall off in late game, as it has some skills with true AoE. While pyro truly falls off, already at level 250 it can’t do much. Sure it has some uses but you can’t rely on it too much in ET for example.
My opinion is mostly based on kToS tier list for ET, where barbarians are considered lowest tier class btw. I don’t have a link right now, sadly.
But I can tell you that S tier classes are Pal3, Wiz3Elem3 and Cryo3Chrono3. So I assume that other classes need buffs to compete with them.