The unique thing about playing a pugilist was MP management (though apparently that's going away in 2.0) and taking advantage of elemental weaknesses. If you ever had a fist action turned off, you were underperforming.

Lancers could use the most weaponskills, marauders could swing between damage and tanking pretty fluently, and archers have the best hate control so they could stand there and just keep shooting.

Gladiators had the best defenses, but that was their only trick -- a poor design choice, in my opinion.