To be fair - and I use that word almost ironically - Essentials paid a modest price in /increased/ overall complexity, in order to make certain classes feel a bit more "classic." (npi, irony, yes, but no pun)
Depends on how you slice it. The overall rules became "more complex" (and more like old-school "classic" D&D) because they had more exceptions, but the individual use cases became "less complex" because, with those exceptions, they individually had fewer moving parts (and thus less like classic 4e). Since the perspective on offer was intended to focus on the player-side experience, I answered with the latter
Um… Seeker, Vampire, Rune Priest, and ..er.. y'know, there wasn't really a complete crap defender, was there? … Knight, I guess.
Rune Priest wasn't bad, just seen as unnecessary (it probably should've just been a variant of Cleric). I have had far too many people tell me that Vampire was too serviceable to be "complete crap" etc., it just
needed the charop tricks that for others were merely
useful. Seeker rarely gets any praise, but it's also not the worst controller by a long shot. That was Binder, which I'm somewhat surprised you failed to mention, as it's the
one (sub)class I've never, even once, heard praise for, and quite frequently heard derided as a dumpster fire.
So sure, the Seeker and (to a lesser extent) the Vampire are some "bad enough to maybe cause problems" classes. I'll grant that as a caveat. I figured they were sufficiently out-there and unlikely to be played, that going into the weeds with a new prospective player would be more than a little pointless (and possibly actively damaging).
Therefore, in the interests of clarity [MENTION=6789786]Lapasta[/MENTION] :
Any class from PHB1, PHB2, Heroes of the Fallen Lands, or Heroes of the Fallen Kingdoms, will be more or less guaranteed to work out of the box. (Paladin can be a bit wonky without content fro Divine Power, but it's not
bad.) Other than Monk, the PHB3 classes can be wonky/less-good, so keep that in mind, though Monk is just fine. Avoid Hybrids for your first character, many hybrid combos are weak. Heroes of Shadow is probably the only "not very good" book, and even then it's not all bad.
All races, regardless of source, are just fine. Likewise classes and other features from Dragon, or any other supplement book (like Swordmage from the FR book, or Artificer from Eberron), are also just fine. 95% or more of 4e's content is
truly well-balanced, though there are a lot of overly-niche feats.
There were some post-Essentials bright spots and that was one. The Skald and Berserker were also pretty cool, in some ways - though the Berserker was the most cross-role sub-class ever, changing roles when it raged.
Yeah....I get what they wanted with the Berserker. But it would have made more sense as a Warden subclass that specialized in damage, getting rage-y stances/abilities instead of the usual ones.