So I played a Seeker, and many of it's powers were strictly inferior to those of other controllers. And one of it's support feats (available at Paragon) increased the damage of it's ranged basic attacks (?), not the sort of thing you'd expect from a controller class.
The Battlemind not having access to a decent melee basic attack meant that you could just walk away from one and unless they managed to have a decent Strength, their opportunity attack was anemic. The original feat that fixed this, letting you use another ability score to determine your basic attacks attack and damage was nerfed when Essentials came out to no longer give you your full damage.
Paladin marks were not terrifyingly damaging in the first place, and until Divine Sanction was added to powers later, they had no way to mark more than one foe.
It may be that your experience showed that a lackluster class could still perform quite well, but I actually watched a lot of optimization going on in order to make some of these classes shine, like the Sorcerer in my Scales of War group, who became a Demonskin Adept to get Demonsoul Bolts in order to give themselves a power that actually did Striker-level damage*.
