State of the game:

Archers are op, warriors suck early game then beat the hell out of everything, mages are meh.

To begin with there is a very important mechanic: kiting. Kiting allows you to move out of the way of projectiles (very useful when retreating), run away from slow melee enemies, and is still useful when fighting fast ones, since they tend to have a fast attack speed, and you as a squishy wizard or godly archer can reduce the interval they can attack you in.

Since archers and wizards don't necessarily need to go to close range to be effective, you can kite them around to reduce incoming harm. However, melee characters need to be there and endure the punishment, despite the fact that they have no real armor advantage before stonebridge (actually spider dungeon for Gyorn). So they tend to use up a lot more health potions than the others, also they can pass out pretty fast in a singleplayer party. Later of course they get the strongest armors, but will need some backup from the entire party.

Between archers and wizards, the archers can deal the same damage without the need of consuming potions, plus archers have WAY better armor than mages, which makes them the strongest and most effective characters in the game.