At this point I only ask for OP reductions because It's not ragnarok online
we don't need to be JRO (also they could help us with balances, possibly because that's a rich country and can pay for more developers) but we need a balanced game.
If they test every class in PVM, PvP, WoE (one against one, they only could make OP gears for too weak classes like +300% dmg while nerf OP dmgs over 1m DMG.
Korea is also a rich country, and it has nothing to do with the country. The company which owns kRO is richer. That's a big part of the reason why jRO is better developmentwise.
Also, balancing a game is a VEEEEEEEEEERY complex work. Most players think they are balance experts, but most of them don't know even the basics, and this is one of the few reasons which make me disagree with the rejection of anything that comes from kRO because it "seems op" in their eyes. However, it's clear like water that Ragnarok is unbalanced and it already affected game healthy a lot.
instead a class for something specific thing:
if you want to spend 200m- to do 300k dmg -> chose rangers
If you want to spend 2b to do i 300k dm in average time of 1 AS with one of these skills AV, SR or metallic sound-> you have to spend more than a ranger but they should get the same power when they have same lvl (but with more difficulties because that's not the 100% purpose)
So, people will like every class and will feel able and comptent as another.
This is exactly why unbalance occurs in the first place. If you need to spend 10 times more in a class to do the have the same level of efficiency that some other class have, then, by the time you can do it, the forementioned class will be many times richer than you AND will be able to deal 10 times more damage than you do. IMO, a big problem for Rangers is that they have great gears that are extremely accessible, thus being cheap. No other class have gears as effective for the same price... actually, most will need to pay way more money than they do. This is so true that most rangers still use WW sets or parts of it on high levels, the difference is that they use enchanted versions. So, if you want to release new gears for rangers, they will need to be even more OP, else nobody will use them.
For classes to be equivalent in power, they need to have the same level of effectivity at similar budgets. This include difference in roles, so, it's nothing strange that Rangers deal way more damage than ABs, but it IS strange that they deal way more damage than Warlocks at similar budgets. My second warlock deals roughly the same damage than most rangers in High TI (when No Limits is off), though I'm sure my gears cost at least 4 times more than theirs. If they had the same budget, they would surely oudamage me by far.
But in your example, comparing rangers to maestros, you're somewhat right that maestros should need to pay a big premium (I wouldn't say as big) for dealing damage similar to rangers, BUT they should be able to deal reasonable amounts of damage AND be great at supporting on the same budget.