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[Mengu]

There is a lot of what I'll call casual party optimization that can be done even without too much system mastery.

You want a front line, and you want some ways of making strong ranged attacks. You look at roles to try and figure these out. Someone said the choice starts with the defender, which in my opinion is fairly close. I'd say the choice starts with the front line.

Let's say your front line will be a fighter and a barbarian. Then you look at what will support them well. They could both use someone who will buff them and heal them. So maybe they can use two leaders. A tactical warlord could help either of them. And a cleric can help the whole party as well as introduce a divine/radiant element to the part that it currently lacks. Last you want to cover the range attacking as well as control, so you might go with a wizard who does a good bit of control, and little striking. Or you might go with a sorcerer who does a good bit of ranged striking and a little bit of control.

Then you re-examine the party for roles, and seeing you're a bit weak defender wise, for extra marking the fighter might choose to be dragonborn tempest. Again for the same reason, you might decide to build the barbarian as a goliath rageblood. The tactical warlord might go with a reach weapon for supporting from the second rank. The cleric might be unsure at this point whether he can sit back and do range strikes or step forward and do some melee, so he might decide to play a balanced Longtooth Shifter, and take whichever role is more needed at the time.

Then you look at skill coverage. With the Barbarian and Fighter you cover most physical skills, and the goliath can help out with nature. The cleric is the only wisdom based character in the group so he might decide to pick up a multiclass into warden to supplement his potential secondary defender role, and for perception. The sorcerer is the only dexterity based character, and multiclassing into rogue isn't bad to begin with, so at this stage he may decide he wants to be a halfling chaos or storm sorcerer and pick up rogue multiclass for thievery. He also may decide he wants to help the cleric with radiant attacks, and can pick up Blazing Starfall. He also grabs distant advantage to apply that sneak attack easier.

You continue the process till you are sure you have all bases covered, some of them doubly so if it's important to the group or the campaign.

Next you start looking at how to make each other work better. The group currently has no temporary hit point generation other than the barbarian. So the fighter may decide he won't go tempest after all, but will go with battlerager, pick up a shield for extra defense, and try to get some burst attacks for extra marking. The sorcerer at this point is noticing he won't be getting much help from the leaders, so he decides he will scratch out Blazing Starfall, and go with Acid Orb and Sorceress blade channeling so he can make melee basic attacks with help from the warlord. He picks Dazzling Ray as his undead killer power.

And you continue this iterative process until everyone is happy with the amount of support they provide and get from each other.

It's really just a matter of discussing among the group and making sure you have as many bases as possible covered in every area, and to make sure you don't have any poor overlap. Some redundancy isn't bad. But too much redundancy means you're missing some other crucial element elsewhere.

It's best if the group can agree to be flexible at the beginning. Otherwise when someone is dead set on a character, group optimization is not really an option. You just play what you want to play and make the best of it. Honestly, there is nothing wrong with that approach either. Whatever the party decides to do, the DM will likely adjust challenges accordingly anyway, so the fun and threat degree can be set at an enjoyable level regardless of which path the players decide to take.