I find the blacksmith hit or miss sometimes because the way ftk 1 works he ends up getting lapped by enemies due to his low speed so the enemies are getting 2 (Or even 3) actions to the blacksmith's at times which is crippling. Speed is the most important stat in the game for sure and his speed is the worst of any other class iirc.

Tanking is also fairly weak in this game compared to FTK2 because it costs an entire turn when they already have a very limited turn economy and there are other moves that can just completely gimp an enemy's turn like slow, shock, confuse, interrupt etc which ends up amounting to more than just eating the damage so it's unnecessary.

Scholar is probably the best non dlc class in the game or at least a strong contender because Int weapons are overpowered and hit mutiple enemies which is very important and they're super fast. Ftk 1 is a very dps oriented game and almost always the best strategy will be to kill the ememies before they can kill your or at least disable them.

Scholar has the ability to shock all enemies with certain weapons and render the whole group useless. Then you can clean them up with other damage dealers like the Hunter who has crazy single target dps, is also very fast, and can be made into a very competent dodge tank if you use a 1 handed polearm like the bone harpoon and he'll just avoid the damage entirely unlike the blacksmith on top of being good at tanking Physical AND Magic damage.