Personally I find the captain quite a dull character so would stick with others. I'm always someone who wants to be fighting rather than supporting. The Captain seemed(didn't play that long) to have so few attacks it was just dull, so didnt' really suit what I like. Even the Minstrel gets far more attacks, although not melee, and was a far more "active" class to play in terms of combat or healing.
Champion aswell you get a lot of attacks though IIRC you need to build up fevour for lots of them, they are great for damage once you get further into the game and can outlast several attackers, though early on I seem to recall it being very frustrating due to not great single target damage so its a fairly slow going class to start. Once you get armour and weapons that you can take 3 guys down at a time it becomes a fun to play quick combat class, till then I hate it.
Hunter, probably one of the most level characters from early on, trap one, nuke 1/2 others, and goes on similarly throughout the game.
AS for crafting, it does suck, the gap between level 50 and level 60 tier crafting stuff is minimal at best on stats, at least for a hunter, where mostly my stats are getting evened out rather than improved with the top tier stuff. The stuff from raiding is quite a lot better yet I don't like raiding so is really out of reach. THough apparently is very easy to get if you do, you can get whole sets far faster than the level 50 raiding sets, which makes the crafting stuff being so tedius to make aswell as not very good completely and utterly pointless.
It would maybe not be as bad if you could just try and crit items as the previous tier top quality stuff, but I've yet to pick up even one single use recipe for the top tier stuff playing throughout the entire moria levels and doing weapon grinding. I've yet to get any second age drops let alone a hunter one, and even then, let alone one I actually want to use. yes weapon legendaries are very good, makes one thing less tedius, and armour is easier to get IF you want to raid. But crafting was pooped completely, and drop rates of both recipes and second/first age weapons are a joke.
