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I know that PF2 has picked up a lot more fans and players over the last year, which is totally awesome, and I am betting that means that we have a lot of new folks learning about the playtest of the new classes and wondering how to best participate.
There is no wrong way to download the documents, read them, have feelings about them or express those feelings, and don't let anyone tell you that your impressions of the class are wrong, or that your ideas about what you want the class to do shouldn't be expressed as feedback.
The absolute best place for your feedback is the official surveys so whether you get to build a character and play it, or not, if you fill out those surveys you are doing your part to help the developers learn more about the classes they are testing. That is all information covered in the introduction to the playtest classes and is hopefully just a reminder that we are all doing this for fun, and to help develop a better game for all.
Some things I have learned from doing quite a few of these play tests that I want to share, not as "do this or despair" but as "be kind to yourself and to others:"
It is totally cool and valid to read the classes and have ideas about what the classes can do, can't do, or could do. It is totally cool to share those ideas on the message boards. But remember that the developers are testing out ideas here, and some times that includes ideas that are pretty rough, that might already have alternatives that might be used instead. The developers are not really dependent on us play testers to come up with the new mechanics or mechanical tweaks they might add to the class. What they really need is feed back about how these ideas that are being tested feel and work, especially in play if you can test it. You don't have to know how to fix anything in order to voice concerns or pain points that you experience when you try to play a class, and while it might be fun to offer suggestions, remember that the people responding to "ideas to fix the class" on these boards are just other players with their own experiences and ideas. The developers may step in to answer FAQ type questions about how things actually work, but they also might not, because they want to see how the wording is interpreted by a broad audience, and they very, very rarely will step into conversations about player suggested "fixes" because that is like stepping into a homebrew conversation about material that might not even end up in the game in the first place.
Even if you have an idea on the boards that word for word ends up in the final class release, that is as likely to have been an alternative idea that they didn't really feel needed to be play tested that they were already possibly thinking about, and just wanted to see the reaction to a different, more experimental idea. You aren't going to get writer's credits for anything you post on the message boards as ideas, so there is no need for anyone to get too invested in one idea or another, nor will convincing a stubborn detractor from the idea that you like mean anything about how the final class turns out.
The developers want to know if you have fun with the classes. Especially when you use one in play. That is the feedback that they are really looking for and will help them figure out what feats are succeeding, which ones aren't even being picked, and which ones people want to use but are getting confused about, or aren't accomplishing the fantasy that they evoke with their narrative descriptions.
So if you want to help the most, try to build characters that feel like they would be fun, play with those characters if you can, keep track of what works and what doesn't and fill out those surveys about your experiences afterwards. Anything else you want to do can be fun and insightful in its own way too, but if arguing about mechanics with other forum posters starts to get frustrating or just not fun, remember that nobody's suggestions on the message boards override the data that the developers collect from the surveys and which elements of the class are pretty well locked in and which ones are experiments being tested is not something that gets revealed until after the playtest is over.
People will get really worked up over very small mechanical differences. It happens with every single play test. Getting into the weeds talking mechanics can be a source of fun for many regular forum posters (myself often included), but nobody wins or loses the play test based upon how frequently or vehemently they post on the message boards. In fact the only way anyone wins the play test is by making sure that as many voices and experiences as possible get considered and recorded in the surveys.
Have fun out there because fun is all the payment anyone gets from participating in these playtests. Overall, I am pretty pleased with the classes thus far, but I really look forward to hearing about folk's experiences playing these classes in games. Don't hesitate to share your stories with us!
Pretty good advice. Thanks Unicore.
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I used to playtest board games in a game-design club in Maryland called Table Treasure Games. One important detail about playtesting feedback is to not just criticize the troublesome parts but to also praise the good parts. A designer could accidentally reduce the fun of a game to fix a problem if the playtester does not point out what they love about the game (or character class in this case).
The Paizo designers do listen to us playtesters. When my group playtested the Summoner class back in September 2020, we altered an existing NPC in our campaign, Cirieo Thessadin, from ranger to summoner. Cirieo was missing a leg, but as a summoner he rode upon his beast eidolon. Our playtest highlighted the need for a feat that Paizo added to the published version of summoner: Steed Form. We probably were not the only playtest with a summoner riding an eidolon, but I believe that our report contributed to the development of this new feat. And this detail came about because we were roleplaying the summoner rather than just testing the class in isolation.