(A lot of them will look like, feel like, or play like, a "caster like" class, even if they are by concept the furthest from a caster imaginable, that's just how the game goes)
Knight: Mostly spot on.
They can build into an attack speed style or skill nuking. Their skills have pretty good AoE potential. Their evolutions increment those aspects, with more and stronger buffs for autoattacks, more aoe skill nukes, and new playstyle in the form of Dragon Breath, which resembles that of a ranged caster, but they get to scale from increasing their max health, increasing their tankiness on the side.
Signature builds: Crit auto attack, Ignition Break(generic skill based build), Dragon Breath
Crusader: Attack speed based is a direction that mostly stays as a leveling build, later on spear quicken is mostly a buff to aid you in quickening the spam of other single target skills. Offensive shield skills lose a lot of emphasis later(except for a specific cash shop gear that can bump one to a pretty powerful level), and general support is mostly condensed in the 2nd class skills, 3rd class mostly enhances the user himself, making him tankier and stronger.
Signature builds: Vanishing Point/Overbrand, Earth Drive(shield skill, requires cash shop gear to be functional)
Wizard: You're not wrong :v The stereotypical caster class, with a lot of high damaging area spells, with long cast times and reuse times. When greatly geared, you can almost nulify those cast times, and possibly reduce the wait time of many of the spells, and become a magic machine gun. It is an incredibly powerful class with enough investment in it, downside being caster gear are generally on the pricier side. 3rd class brings them bigger and stronger spells for each element, and access to shadow and neutral(albeit now you get it as a High Wizard now too) magic.
Magic classes in RO suffer from the same pattern, in that you want to have all of their skills, but there just aren't enough skill points to spend. You can have a generically good for everything spread, but can also specialize in a few skills and be really powerfull at those.
Signature Builds: Water Ball(needs a cash shop shoes, not super expensive), Chain Lightning(highest dps in a wide variety of targets), Soul Expansion(highest possible damage on ghost/undead property enemies), Crimson Rock(go to aoe spell for most scenarios)
Sage: *probably the longest one*
It boasts one of the most complete kits in terms of offense vs defense vs utility of all classes in the game, just needs knowledge and practice to make good use of it. Hindsight builds don't exactly get any improvements as a 3rd job, they get a new skill called Spell Fist, that is akin to the playstyle, but functions and wants you to play very differently. You will still get plenty of extra power for it due to better gear available.
The offensive spells get a very large upgrade compared to the almost non existant ones in 2nd class. It plays a little bit different than a lot of other classes, in that those spells have a higher cooldown(wait time to reutilize that spell specifically) but low delay(wait time to utilize any other skill), that makes caster sorcerers use a "skill rotation" to deal damage, and their skills are not weak, plus are all AoE. There is more high end gear that will eliminate some of those cooldowns tho, and then sorc can play as a 1 button wonder like a lot of other classes.
The support skills it gets as a 3rd job are fantastic as well. From generic damage increases, to ground control(albeit mostly useful in pvp), status infliction(again mostly pvp), recovery, ailment removal/prevention, and the unique possibility of messing with monsters attacking elements in the form of Insignias, making it possible for them to completely shut down an enemy from dealing any damage with proper preparation and skill.
Lastly, they get "pets" in the form of Elemental Spirits. Unfortunately the pet focused playstyle is incredibly lackluster. They do however offer a variety of buff and support abilities, that can enhance your damage, your resistance, flee, shorten cast times, improve ailment affliction rate, increase movement speed, short duration immunities, and more, that adds to making sorcerer a class with tools for almost every situation(and unfortunately not enough points to grab all of those tools).
Signature builds: Spellfist, Autocast(hindsight), Caster/Diamond Dust, Support(mostly for pvp)
Hunter: The stereotypical archer from most games, that can attack fast at a distance, or use large coverage aoe spells to kill things before they can reach you. The Falcon and later Wolf are auto attack enhancers, that improve on those builds. Traps can be used for damage or utility. Damage wise they are pretty respectable early due to it's scaling, but unfortunately they also fall off later due to it's scaling. Utility wise they can aid every playstyle in dealing with enemies, inflicting statuses on enemies you don't want to face at the moment, or locking them in place. 3rd class has the unique possibility of using traps as their main build in a completely different playstyle, where they make an extremely tanky character and use of traps base damage(albeit not very high) to have just enough damage to kill enemies. Or the regular archer side, they just get better at what they did, better auto attacks, one of the signature AoE skills of the game with a huge coverage, and their own short duration steroids buff skill for when you need maximum damage output.
Signature builds: Trapper, Crit Autoattacker, Arrow Storm/Focused Arrow Strike
Bard/Dancer: It's important to note that in a more recent class rebalance a lot of their kit changed and quite drastically.They still have all of their support skills, but they changed from being in an area around them to being applied to the entire party almost screenwide with a fixed duration, and will apply to yourself. You don't need to hug them anymore to keep the buffs active, in turn the effectiveness of said buffs were reduced, in some cases very dramatically. Don't worry, they are still good, just not a 0 to hero for one specific skill. Their 3rd class buffs are not as impactful as the 2nd class ones, but still decent. The skill difference between bard and dancer buffs is a very big deal, as some exclusive skills are very clearly better than others(can overcome the difference with higher end gear), bards get access to the very powerful stat of Delay reduction, some party wide attack speed and max hp increase as their main buffs, dancer gets... max sp increase and sp cost reduction. On the flipside dancer has the more usefull exclusive 3rd class buff in Swing Dance, the best attack speed buff in the game(it does stack with the bard just in case).
On the offensive side, they can play bow or instrument skills like before, bow skills being the easier to use aoe alternative, and instrument being required for their magic skills(more tailored for single target atm). Recent changes made the magic side very powerful with high investment in gear.
Signature builds: Severe Rainstorm, Reverberation(magic)
Blacksmith: It's not wrong to think of them as another flavour of knight. The extra "utility" of forging and upgrading weapons is not even that important nowadays(upgrading can be used for certain things, but most people have an alt for that). As a 3rd class they have more distinct paths, that of their axe skills, which is similar to the knight feel, with melee aoe skills and single target skill spam. Or the Madogear Suit side, where you ride a mech, and most of your skills become ranged aoe. It is a very different feel, as the madogear has some unique restrictions(such as it cannot be healed by Priests) and some mechanics to take care(overheating), but benefits in extra mobility, access to unique and good aoe skills, and blowing themselves up with Suicidal Destruction(mostly a pvp skill)
Signature builds: Arm Cannon, Axe Tornado/Axe Boomerang, SD(Suicidal Destruction, pvp)
Alchemist: The alchemist kit doesn't have a whole lot going on at first, except for the homunculi system, which i'll get out of the way first, unfortunately their contribution to combat is very little, and they serve mostly as buff bots and an extra meat shield to have. As a transclass you get access to the skill that made the class very infamous in Acid Bomb, a skill that ignores flee, defense and has it's damage multiplied by the target's VIT stat. Who has high VIT? Other players and a lot of bosses. The downside being, each use consumes 1 bottle grenade and 1 acid bottle, materials that have to be made by other players(It should cost a couple tens of thousand zeny per pair nowadays). Once you get to a certain point of wealth it's not much of a concern, but generally not a skill you use willy nilly on everything. They also can buff anyone protecting their gear from being damaged/removed, included themselves 3rd class gets around the heavy money cost per skill usage with their also signature skill Cart Cannon, which again ignores flee and defense, and deals a very decent amount of aoe damage from afar. Unfortunately the rest of their offensive skills while not bad, pale in comparison to the aforementioned ones. They also get to have maximum movement speed with one of their buffs.
Their crafting system is still used nowadays, but some of the things will slowly fade out of use in the future. Of the 2nd class items you can make, mostly things related to skill usage(Acid Bomb, Full Chemical Protection) will remain being used, potions however will phase out for better cheaper ones. The 3rd class crafting revolves more around consumables with temporary stat boosts, and they are and will still be very used.
(Getting into potion brewing as a whole in general requires a decent amount of starting capital in gears and material)
Signature builds: Cart Cannon, Brewer
Assassin: As in most games, they want to deal very high damage very quickly, have a high evasion and mobility, poison aspects to it and stealth mechanics. However there's rarely a reason to play stealthily outside of pvp, so they compare better to a berserker, giving up on everything in favour of an extreme offensve, killing enemies before they can kill them. Transclass gives them access to the most potent power steroid in the game, responsible for making it the class with the highest potential damage ceiling. Really anything you try build into, so long it scales of ATK, they will have ludicrous damage. As for their skill repertoire they have a small arsenal of aoe and single target melee skills that are just enough for killing everything in the game. Most of it's kit really revolves around dealing damage, increasing the damage dealt to a target and increasing the damage the target takes. The poison aspects in the 3rd class are mostly pvp debuffs with little use in pvm(will be overhauled in the future).
Signature builds: Crit Autoattacker, Meteor Assault, Cross Impact, Rolling Cutter/CRS(Cross Ripper Slash)
Rogue: Jack of all trades, master of none, unfortunately gets the short end of the stick when the game evolves and the auto-steal becomes much less relevant.Their own skills at least deal decent damage now. But this class really is about it's copy system, and with it you can play any playstyle you want, albeit in a weaker fashion than the one it originated from. You really can play and build into any copyable skill as long as you gear for that skill. The possibilities are very much endless, but obviously there will be prefered skills that are just the more powerful choice to copy. As a 3rd class they get another copy slot, where now they can copy 3rd class skills too(and anything below, if you want 2x 2nd class ones). They also give them a new identity as being the other autocast focused class with the addition of Auto Shadow Spell, which will cast any 2nd class and below skill they have copied when performing a melee attack(except for holy magic). Their bow side is enhanced with a new single target skill(and the possibility to copy 3rd class bow skills).
While they get one of the shorter ends of the stick in pvm, they get to shine in pvp, being one of/the best debuffer in the game, with a lot of tools to disable, cripple, escape and mess with their opponents.
Signature Builds: Autocast, "Bow"(copy any 3rd class bow skill of preference), "Caster"(copy aoe magic skills of choice), Ignition Break(the most often copied skill for melee builds), Meteor Assault(enabled by the use of a certain cash shop gear), PVP(general pvp tanky debuffer)}
Priest: The support side is what you would expect from the archetype. As for ME, it plays a lot like a wizard, but they only have access to holy magic. A very, powerful, holy magic. 3rd class gives them another damaging skill with a more single target focus that can deal very heavy damage. As for the melee side, the novelty got popular enough that they added some tools for it, but not all that much. You can take it as far as any other class with attack speed gears. It is a build mostly carried by it's items(for all classes really). Not much else to say on 3rd class, a lot of their existing skills gain aoe variants, some new buffs and new utility.
Signature builds: FS(Full support), ME/Adoramus(the "caster"), "Battle"/Crit Autoattacker, Autocast
Monk: You may be glad(or not) to know that monk combos don't require precise timing, instead they need that you input their sequence in a certain window, so you can actually just mash all your hotkeys and it will work. Transclass gets QoL tools and a few more combo continuations. However, most people don't carry the combo playstyle into 3rd class. 3rd class gets it's own new set of skills, some with a combo feature(that this time does require some timing), buffs(mostly to themselves) and ground control(mostly for pvp). Sura does not rank in the top performing classes, but is regarded as a very fun to play one by most people that have one. They have excelent hard hitting skills, some melee and some ranged, excelent mobility, and can always act as a tank when needed by turning on Mentral Strength(90% damage reduction for 2minutes, very limited actions). They are also one of the most popular pvp classes, due to very high mobility and damage burst.
Signature builds: Guillotine Fist(single hit nuke, used mostly for mvp hunting or pvp), TC(Tiger Cannon, very high potential skill, used both in pvp and pvm), GoH(Gates of Hell, most popularly built for pvp, it can be made very powerful for pvm, but the stat focus are completely different), "Reflect"(involves gearing yourself with a lot of gear that autocasts skills both when receiving or dealing damage, abusing of mental strength damage reduction to stay alive in packs of monsters)
Taekwon Kid/Soul Linker/Taekwon Master: The 3rd class for these is not yet available on iRO so there isn't much to elaborate there. They hardly fill any niche in current day, and people that have/play them is mostly for the novelty.
Signature builds: nah really
Ninja: Their caster side has the uniqueness of being a spammy playstyle from the get go, without the aid of any gear. Their spells have little to no delay/cooldown in them, so you will enjoy a cascade of numbers on top of enemies heads. Their 3rd simply enhances the damage of the existing skills, and gives them the shiniest toy of ninjas, where they can remove all of their fixed cast time. The throwing and melee side are still rather underdeveloped by comparison. Male and female have different skills like bards and dancers, but it's a much smaller differing skill set with lesser impact(kagerou has more pvp tools and oboro has slightly more damage). In the future they will expande of the niche for each gender, being female the primary caster, and male the primary throw/melee one.
Signature builds: "Ninpou"/Caster, Throwing/Petals(Swirling Petals skill), KS(Killing Strike, pvp oriented)
Gunslinger: To make it very short, you can think of them as a different flavour of Hunter/Ranger. Ranged class with ranged skills, some aoe some not(most aoe), that differ depeding on the weapon of choice. It's very powerful very early if compared to most other classes, remains being very powerful for most of the game and endgame, but their damage potential isn't as high as the main classes at the very very high end of gearing.
Signature builds: RT(Round Trip, huge aoe gatling skill, most common for leveling), Shattering Storm/Vanishing Buster(the shotgun skills), Crit Autoattacker
Super Novice: Novelty class for people who want to play with the added challenge. It gets tools from every other class in the game for unique gameplay possibilities, but remain extremely frail. It is very loved by a portion of the community, while the other poses the same question as you, why?
Signature builds: why? (autocast is the most popular)
Summoner: It shouldn't exist.
Signature builds: No
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