I will say, thinking about these four classes as a party, that they at least are better balanced compared to other clusters of classes, like say the four base classes from the Miniatures Handbook... In a party of Healer, Warmage, Favored Soul, and Marshall, let's be real about who's doing the heavy lifting. Here, at least each one is doing a distinctly different thing. I know I keep bringing up seeing the classes as a party, but I think it's a lens to look at where the design language had settled by the time the book was printed. With PHB2 we can see that Wizards has figured out a lot about the abuses that some classes had and really reined those in and had mostly identified areas to improve. The Beguiler lacks the game breaking power of a Wizard but plays nice for an intelligent caster who plays tricks more than directly interferes. The Duskblade is a marvel of balanced game design, possessing an incredibly high floor and low ceiling for optimization. The Knight recognized that D&D knew they would need to move to some kind of marking system... and knowing is half the battle. The Dragon Shaman... like I like aura classes, but they needed some more active class features... but at least it was a swing at something they hadn't tried since the Marshall.