My thoughts on the classes, mostly from a character builder's perspective. Tldr: the PHBII has the best classes that I never want to build with, and if you have new players and want to bring in a new book, let it be this one.

Beguilers
Definitely the class I have the most complicated feelings about. The concept of a skillful trickster is innately appealing, making it an intelligence-based fixed-list caster is a great bit of resonant design. Armored Mage and d6 hit die were good inclusions, Advanced Learning is brilliant (though in this particular case struggles with Shadow spells being clearly superior picks), and I like the ideas behind Cloaked Casting and Surprise Casting.

...but not the execution. Cloaked Casting's bonuses are just too low to be worth seeking out - all the way to level 13 it's just giving you +1 to DC and +2 to overcome SR. Surprise Casting is awful - the idea of a full caster tying in an overlooked mechanic like feints is great, but with Cloaked Casting so weak, it's not worth walking into melee to get. You can't even move-feint-cast without sinking two feats into the strategy. It's frustrating because I could actually see 'feinting caster' become a viable archetype (which would have made the beguiler more distinct from the wizard on top) and instead we got this.

Ultimately I feel like the beguiler's only two real advantages are role compression and ease of play. A 3-player party that needs to fold the face, trapfinder, and controller roles in one PC will love the beguiler. A party full of newbies who don't want to manage spell lists will love the beguiler. But I've only used it in a build competition once, in a very unusual situation where I was stuck with Favored Class (Beguiler) and had a build unusually well-suited to feinting. It's just not a class that I find particular reason to use!

Dragon Shaman
The dragon shaman is so forgettable that I was surprised to turn the page and encounter it instead of the duskblade.

I kid, I kid. But seriously, what's the point of this class? It lacks the armor to be a tank and the weapon proficiencies and BAB to deal damage. It's a healer, but its mechanics discourage healing in-combat. It's a blaster with a breath weapon that hardly outperforms the sorcerer's reserve feat. It's got some very random flavor abilities, but realistically icewalking or permanent endure elements are situational at best. It gets an awful skill list (they had to add knowledge arcana in errata) that prevents it from fulfilling roles like scout or face even with a favorable draconic totem. It feels like it exists for players who want to be a dragon, and it was a great choice for that... for all of four months before the Dragonfire Adept got printed.

The dragon shaman isn't a powerless class: it can contribute to combat, to exploration, to social interaction - but it can't resolve those situations in the way a rogue can just pick a lock and a bard can just charm a guard. It is condemned to perpetual sidekick-hood. You maxed Hide and got skill focus in it? Well, you still don't have perceptive skills or trapfinding, but I guess you can tag along with the rogue. You've got a breath weapon with a recharge timer on it? Cool, mop up whoever the wizard didn't get. You can heal some but not all status conditions? Eh, it'll free up some of the cleric's slots. Troacctid already touched on the lackluster state of the starting packages, and I think they're emblematic of WotC not being sure what this class actually does.

I've used the dragon shaman once - on a build that could've slotted in any high-Will class and would probably have been better off with a swordsage or binder. Maybe I'll ever desperately need Skill Focus as a bonus feat, and I'll splurge two levels, or maybe one of the wackier Draconic Adaptations is essential to a weird combo, but I don't think I'll ever build a dragon shaman an sich, because the class has nothing to draw you in and nothing to keep you there.

I do like how blue dragon shamans get Ventriloquism at-will, though. It's such an unique ability and I feel like I'd have way too much fun with it if it was slightly better-supported.

Duskblade
Since times immemorial, the duskblade has been the gish-in-a-can base class. This is good, I think such a thing should exist, I understand a lot of people will come up to the table and say 'can I play a magic sword guy' and duskblade is a fine thing to point them towards. It's easy to master, powerful, well-rounded, evocative, and incredibly open to a straight 1-to-20 single-class playthrough. This canned gish has it all: good armor, good martial skill, fun cantrip-likes, free quickened spells, and a very powerful channel ability: but canned is canned.

The duskblade is a cleaner, less complicated gish than a stalwart battle sorcerer, or a snowflake wardance bard, or a jade phoenix mage, or a knight phantom. But it's so much less interesting to me. There's not much room for customization in duskblades, no possible optimization as impressive as the built-in Full Attack Arcane Channel Arcane Strike Vampiric Touch.

The existence of the duskblade has made D&D a better, more accessible game. But it doesn't excite me. I don't see the duskblade and start thinking about all the cool things I could be doing with it. I don't look for ways to overcome its flaws or amplify its strengths, because it doesn't need either. I've only once made a build with duskblade, and when I did, it was a 1-level dip, made to get Arcane Attunement more than anything. The rest of the class can stay right where it is.

Knight
I actually don't know what to say about the knight. Is it one of the weakest classes in the game? Yeah. Does it force an incredibly niche sword-and-board-mounted-but-no-charging playstyle? Certainly. Are its higher-level abilities a weird mix of underwhelming debuffs and underwhelming buffs? Of course. If I wanted to play a tank, would I be better off just bringing a crusader or a devoted defender? Without question.

But the knight isn't a bad tank, at the end of the day. Test of Mettle is comprehensive in a way very few tanking abilities are, Bulwark of Defense and Shield Block are pretty fun... The knight can do very little well, but it sure can pull aggro! A lot of 3.5's worst classes fail in the painful way where something else is straight-up doing the same thing better: the monk is a worse unarmed swordsage, the healer a worse cleric, the CW samurai a fighter with pre-selected feats. But the knight is actually doing things that nobody else can replicate - they just aren't enough.

The knight is objectively the worst PHBII class, but it's got a special place in my heart. This is one class that that keeps drawing my attention, pulling me in with a weird mishmash of abilities begging someone to find synergy between them, presenting me with genuinely unique tricks begging to get showcased. I never end up using it, but I hope that one day I can.


Actually, that's not true: I used knight in the E6 round where it was a secret ingredient. But whether I'd say my much younger self did so in a way I'm proud of...