What kind of unique class would you try to create to not be a "generic" class?

[Teifang]

I'm kind of curious to see if different customizable options with souls changing your skills would really amount to a build none of us have ever seen before. I mean, if you play any fighter, it'll be the same with any MMO. A fighter is a fighter, dps is dps and so forth. But I want to see a NEW class, something that I've never seen before. There can always be a new look and a new name, but the fundamentals that make up a class....Why aren't there any new ones being created?
I want to see people create like a specialized class mixed with another specialized class and see what the outcome is. But I'd suspect many would stick to the core classes and the souls they would collect would be the core classes as well. What would you do?

[Hammerstein]

This is a difficult question. Thing is that since the early days of D&D the holy trinity of fighter, mage and priest has been set in stone. Later on rpgs brought dps classes like the rogue, but they are just "light" fighters with some specialties like stealth and backstab.

Now one can unfold these classes into their respective roles, as we have:

Tanking: armor, blocking, hitpoints, parrying, dodging
Dps: melee, ranged, magical, off-tanking
Healing: buffing, healing, utility
Magic: see ranged dps, utility, crowd control (see utility)

So in order to get a new class one would need to invent a new role in traditional rpgs, since there are a ton of different classes in existence that can fill the above roles.

Classes like paladins, necromancers, rangers (and so on) are just mixes and hybrids of the base classes and their roles. So ultimately it is relatively easy to come up with a new hybrid, but there can't be a truly new class without a new role.

[Massabik]

The only issue with coming up with a unique 'Calling' (in rift terms) is that everything you can do falls under one of the four main headings in some form or fashion. But some form of hybridation can always be found within in those ranges.

[CyclopsSlayer]

Hammerstein has it right. There are really only so many base archetypes that have an adventuring role.

Vanguard:SoH had the only 'new' thing I have seen in the Diplomatic sphere, but even that wasn't fully implemented or integrated into gameplay.

The names may change, the genre may differ, but whether you call a ranged DPS class a Ranger, Mage or Rifleman they still all fill the same role.
Much like in many ways a hand thrown stone fits into the same family as a planetary defense laser, scale changes, but role remains the same.