If I hadn't just finished a first draft of a class analysis wherein I tried assigning point values to everything, I probably wouldn't bother posting.
But, since I did, I'm amazed anyone finds the classes remotely balanced ... for anyone playing a typical PC who sees a wide variety of locales.
As the least complicated comparison, I'd start with the fighter classes: barbarian, borderer, nomad, soldier. While the barbarian gets numerous great abilities throughout the levels including what I consider the best ability in the game in Uncanny Dodge, borderers and nomads get the narrow favorite terrains and borderers get the even more narrow guide/swift tracker abilities.
I can understand NPC borderers and nomads as you could always have the favorite terrain bonuses in effect.
As to soldier, I found it came out even worse in my analysis. I don't think it's unusual that skills matter to our characters. Every other class gets at least double the number of ranks per level. Okay, you get a lot more feats, which is helpful when trying to put together powerful combinations of feats, but where you can end up with a comparable or even more powerful fighter than barbarian at whatever levels, the barbarian is going to be far more well-rounded. The soldier has a bunch of levels with either no feat or formation combat which isn't much better.
Our GM often comments that when he reads this forum, our group seems to live a completely different lifestyle. He attributes it to the number of nobles we've had and our social abilities. I attribute it to him taking those things into account as part of his style when other groups may emphasize more the combat prowess of the party. Anyway, as with borderer and nomad, I see noble being a class suited to NPCs. A lot of the comparative power either depends upon a particular locale or on influencing a group of NPCs. Maybe it's a kick for players to amass armies, but my observation is that people like individual power and the noble is just sad on its own.
Pirate came out way better in my analysis than I expected, as good as barbarian through the first ten levels. So, until I have anecdotal evidence to suggest otherwise, I'm willing to not rant about it. Now, out of curiosity, I want to see a dedicated pirate as our party piratewise only has someone so multiclassed he isn't readily identifiable as anything.
I never had a problem with the value of thieves. I was willing to put them right up there with barbarians. My analysis has them being clearly superior, which may be true or may be that the point system needs work.
I don't have much of a sense of scholar. We've had them in the party, but we've never had anyone make good use of the magic rules. We played 20 sessions or whatever before the PC remembered defensive blast, even though I included it as a consideration in combat tactics when I'd post to our list (of course, no one else ever made use of the idea of party combat tactics ...). So, about the only interesting thing in my analysis, since it could be way off, is that scholar was comparable to thief if I penalized it for the requirement to pump knowledge skills and beat it easily if I didn't.
Is there even a point to this exercise? I mean, we and others have fun even with mechanical imbalances since there's a lot more to role-playing than roll-playing. I think there is. I think balanced games are more fun. I think not feeling screwed by trying to be in flavor or different is more fun. While someone can get a kick out of the challenge of playing a weak class, I would think that desire could be satisfied in other areas, in particular in choosing feats that aren't the obviously good ones.
As things stand, for any new character, I'd be hard pressed to see the interest in borderer, nomad, soldier, or noble except maybe for a two level splash for the borderer's Rapid Shot or the soldier's feats or as part of a challenge. I see that as a lost opportunity.
As for the changes I want to see made, the simplest is to jack up skill ranks for certain classes, especially soldier who comes out pretty close to nomad in my point system if he gets 4 ranks per level. To prevent people from just multiclassing two levels to snack up feats, I'd move the feat gains a bit.
For a major overhaul, I'd try to find a way to rewrite favorite terrain to make it more generally useful to a PC. I'd improve the combat style abilities for borderer, especially on the archery path. I'd give the borderer some real specials rather than "wow, it would be nice if we had a NPC to guide us faster through the woods today" abilities. And, so on and so forth down the line.
Meanwhile, where I find the imbalances in races, feats, and classes irritating as it punishes interesting character ideas, I don't really have a problem with ranged combat as things currently stand. I'd rather that finesse fighting were addressed. It's awful without sneak attack which just pushes people back into certain classes.
