General

If you're going to play MS2 you should get rid off the damage- strive right off the bat.
I'd say play whatever you enjoy. You could get along with just about anything except a Beginner.

Zero is a powerhouse, but getting them to 180 is boring. They also have really repetitive skills

Yup I'm going to be that one guy in these type of threads.

There is no best class, it's only what you make of it. Powerful? Any class with a ton of funding is powerful-except mihiles.

[b]nobody likes mihiles.[/b]

Sorry for the late replys. I love nightwalker but funding is key to all assasins

I would say Demon avenger. They dont need pots and get free stats, and Blalanced between mobing and bossing.

Zero probably

Trying not to be biased here but I do sincerely believe NW is currently the "best" maple story class based upon my own experiences and over 6+ years of playing with many high level chars (lot more than my profile shows although my profile can be a good example of such as far as class diversity goes). Although the term "best" varies on what you are looking for. Of course there are those "charts" out there which supposedly show class potential vs similar funding but it breaks off really into some classes have an advantage mobbing, some have an advantage bossing with similar funds until everyone hits cap unless you want to be all future ready. Also if you have unlimited funds and could cap on any char you'd be looking at attacks per second / hits per second / lines per second to really see what can potentially out damage other similar cap funding classes. As always it goes down to whatever you have the most fun playing. Are you looking for range or melee, are you looking for a class that has high or low mobility, looking for a tank class or a squishier class, etc. You're going to sacrifice something in order to gain an advantage in another area. Game is pretty balanced right now IMO.

So within strictly being strong Zero, and within being all around good shades?

Mihile, Hayato, Lumi.

Shade's aren't really strong (as in OP), no. But they do have an auto-resurrection passive, 100% stance, basically all of their attacks heal you, and a quick, 9-hit attack at 4th job.
Personally, I think that Shade is a really balanced class that's suited for a lot of situations, and that's why it's so good.

Zero has always been the strongest, not dark knights. Drks are still near highest dps though but after nerf we'll be like 5th strongest or something, Not too bad. There will be class rebalancing sometime soon and zero's dmg remains unchanged and op. For pirates I'd say shade. Thiefs would be NW. Mages would be f/p and Bowman would be marksman. Phantoms will get nerfed badly.

Are they like really strong right now? When I quit the strongest class was Dark Knight, where do they stand right now? I watched a video which said that phantom was the best but phantoms always been overrated imo. Thanks for the response means a lot.

One word.
Shade.