[Ryu-Kazuki]

Lantern Bearer, hands down.

As interesting all the class can be in concept, and it's many variety of spells in elements to use, it's very, very lack luster, and very, very poor in combat on its own. Right now, it's not much different than Hexer except for the fact it does get light damage and doesn't get lightning, and some obvious mechanical differences. It's very heavily reliant on distance, which can make its already pitiful damage even worse, which makes it even more pitiful when people can resist the elements you cast with your spells.

The healing, and blind cure are nice, I will say that, and focus beam can get pretty powerful at times, but easily resisted.

Between Evokers, Hexers, and Lantern Bearers in terms of spell damage, Evokers are obviously the best, they're supposed to be. Hexers come second, despite the ranges of certain spells and how the damages can be halved, but they also provide harder hitting status effects, and can lock them in with skills that make them incurable.

The downside of Lantern Bearers is they only get elemental resistances, making melee destroy them if they got close (even Fenrir can't keep them away). Their damage gets weaker farther away, and applies elemental resistances as well, dropping the damage to awful outputs, especially against tanks. And on top of that, the class is very straightforward.

Equip in main slot at lv 60 -> Gain Permanent Eternal Flame (that you can't turn off which can be very bad if you don't have any other spells and they can absorb your element and raging flame is equipped).

Cast Spell -> Eternal Flame Activates -> (May or may not buff allies, depends on if you have any, if you don't, you gain a very small stat bonus.) -> Either switch spells, or cast focus beam, raging flame kicks in. - > Rinse and Repeat.

That's it. There's no skill involved, no tactical planning, it's simply, "use this element while they're up close to do decent damage", or "keep them away so I can survive and hope my subclass can help me out (depending on that subclass)". It's very boring, and very easy to get yourself killed in combat for what is called a promotion class.

It has a lot of support utility, that's great. Supporting is good, especially in tight spots. But supporting is only good when it benefits other people, and doesn't make it very fun or interesting to play when all you can really do is lend aid to other people, but not defend yourself when you don't have allies to back you up.

Lantern Bearers, in my opinion, either need some kind of better damage output, whether it be bypassing resistances in some way (much like Verglas get is one way to do it), or better defenses, other than a strict elemental resistance that only works against mages or people who use nothing but elemental attacks.

To me, this is a Lantern Bearer in a nutshell right now. (Warning, this is parody satire.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fI6b7T6ucQw