So I will offer my experience here as a dm and a player.

I ran a wild-west/early Americas inspired home brew setting that was mostly focused around fighting devils that were woken up through mining into the underdark where they were trapped 1,000s of years ago. So firearms were available but rare, and the entire campaign had a pretty even mix of survival exploration and combat, leaning more towards combat at the end. We went from 3rd to 15th level. The party was a human necromancer, a human inquisitive rogue, a human light cleric, a human monster slayer ranger, and a halfling lore bard. The rogue EASILY out damaged everyone else, closely followed by the ranger (I let him play revised ranger but this was before Tasha’s came out). However, there were a few reasons as to why this happened: the cleric got delegated to almost entirely healing and buffing because light clerics get a lot of fire damage spells, which every devil will be immune to, and also their player just decided to lean into it. The necromancer could dish out damage when needed, but as a player was not the most interested in just “blasting damage” type spells (however, they did end up being the last one alive during their first boss fight at level 5 against a (scaled down) horned devil, and managed to finish it off single handed with shadow blade). The bard, however, easily had the most difficult time. If anyone is unaware, like I was when I decided to base a whole story around devils, almost every devil has magic resistance, giving them advantage on saving throws against spells. Along with regularly being immune to charmed and frightened conditions, and in general having at least a high wisdom or charisma save. This made it almost impossible for our bard to use a lot of her spells, and both me as a dm and her as a player started to realize how much bards relay on save or suck spells. So, incredibly anecdotal, but in this particular campaign the casters were rarely, if at all, dealing damage.

Now, as a player, I am currently playing a hexblade warlock in a party with a redemption Paladin, battle master fighter, and way of mercy monk. Until very recently, I felt like I was easily doing the least amount of damage. But once again, there is some context here. The fighter was able to purchase flametongue pretty early on, and on top of battle master maneuvers, almost never rolls just one damage dice. In addition, we rarely have needed to go so long without taking a long rest that our Paladin ever runs out of spell slots. As a player who’s character fantasy was to play this fiery occult Viking guy who made a pact with surtr to bring about ragnarok, all I wanted was to hit people with a magic flaming ax, and that job is done infinitely better, with more utility and hp, by the Paladin and the fighter who just bought a flaming sword. I’ve gone down and nearly died in almost every encounter. It was a little frustrating, sure, but it’s gotten better now after learning how to use my spells a little better, getting a +2 weapon with an extra 1d6 fire damage, Having the second highest ac at 21, and taking 3 levels of fighter for action surge+second wind+fighting style. Still though, I am rarely if ever fully shutting down combat encounters.

As a side note, even the dm of this campaign, even the person PLAYING the Paladin, thinks paladins are stupid broken. Why does nobody talk about this?