When I said the Druid can dual-wield daggers, this is at Master level, getting the chance to triple damage. They can also learn Leather to Expert, removing any recovery penalties, so their action economy is quite good, making them a capable enough fighter, behind the Knight, Thief and Paladin. Probably also the Archer due to better HPs and dual swords, although I've never found the Archer to be that strong either. I'd say the Druid is slightly ahead of the Ranger despite the lower HPs, due to the general weakness of Axes. Never played a Monk, but I can't imagine that Unarmed damage keeps up at higher levels, even with Staff added on top.

The familiar also gives +3 to all magic skills, so if you develop to max your spells are at level 10 without being GM level, a useful bonus. There are some overkill elements: GM Meditation is a bit of a waste, as you say, even moreso as the familiar also gives the Druid SP recovery - she has far more SP than she would ever use. (Meditation as a concept always fit the Monk best to my mind, but obviously with the game mechanics it would be virtually useless on a Monk. If it had some sort of HP bonus as well............)

Overall, I probably prefer GM-maxed characters too, but I've actually found the Druid a solid backup everything, without being hugely strong at anything. Backup just means making sure she has something better to back up - you want to pick a standard basher, healer and magic-slinger to round things out, rather than your 4th slot being a second of one of those.