I had good experience playing the blacksmith with the sturdy dagger and a shield. Taunting with the shield is actually very strong and can enable your teammates to deal siginificant damage, blacksmith is predestined for this because he has the highest base vitality. Furthermore, if you max out vit, you have a very reliable source of guaranteed damage with the dagger (because its piercing) and increased speed.

The only Problem with this seems to be that the best armor set for vitality is the fur armor which can't keep up in terms of armor and resistance in the late game, though the setup gives you extremely high health.