Well, I'm a guy with too much free time after work so I have several characters at 20 now. I'll give a full break down of the game.
You start the game being able to create either a role playing character or pvp character. PvP characters can ONLY do the pvp stuff but role-playing chars can do anything they want.
PvP characters start out maxed at level 20 with "standard" items. When choosing a pvp character you can pick a ready made template that has the skills and attribute points pre-assigned or a custom one. The problem with the custom on the first time you play you won't have any skills to customize with. This is because PvP characters that are NOT in a template can only use what was unlocked on the role-playing side of the game. So I recommend everyone try out the role playing side first to unlock a few skills.
So you start a new character and there is plenty to decide on. first your choice of primary. This info is mainly straight out of the users manual just regurgitated. You can pick from these classes. I'l expand a little bit of extra info if I can based on the class. Remember your primary once picked is LOCKED IN STONE. Secondary classes can change later but I'll go into that further down.
Warrior is a melee based class and the only class that can wear plate. Technically, it has 3 levels of armor: Leather, Chain, and Plate. To put this in perspective the Droknars Forge's (a high level town late in the game) armor is 70 for leather, 80 for chain and 85 for plate. These guys also only have a BASE energy of 25. Your base energy pool never increases with levels. Only items can add to your maximum energy pool. These guys have 5 different attributes to put points into. Strength is to add to armor penetration and allows you to carry some shields and affects some skills like sprinting and endure pain. While great, this isn't exactly a "must have" skill but it's definately nice. The Axe attribute allows you do to more damage with axe skills. Axes have a max damage range of 6-28 damage. Axes and swords are only 1 handed weapons. Swords have a damage ranged of 15-22. Hammers are the 2 handed weapons for warriors and as such you do more damage per hit but lose the protection benefits of a shield. Also, they attack a tad bit slower. While axes and swords have very similar skills, hammers tend to have more counter and knock down skills instead of bleeds and cripples. Tactics is the last attribute for warriors. This affects hold some other shield types, stances, and "universal" melee attacks. This is a decent skill like strength but can be ignored in some builds. For others it can be essential.
Warrior as a primary. You are the tank. Your job first and foremost is to rush in first to grab the agro. But dont rush in blindly. too many a group has been killed by a blind warrior rushing forward to agro one group of monsters but instead agroes more then one. Pay attention to the mini map like everyone else and watch the agro range "circle" on the mini map. You can pick any other class a a secondary for the warrior primary and have it work well. As a monk you are your basic paladin with some heals but not enough energy to keep tossing them out like a real caster. As a necro you can do extra damage AND keep yourself alive OR delve into some nifty curses that affect all foes in melee range. As a mesmir, you can completely shutdown and neutralize enemy casters. As an elementalist you can deliver a well timed AoE like whirlwind or nuke a runner. There are also many elementalist knock downs to complement a hammer warrior. As a ranger... well you can get troll ungent and a pet. Okay ranger is about the only secondary that kinda sucks for a warrior primary.
My personal favorite warrior builds:
Warrior/necro.
Go with Swords, Strength, Blood magic and Curses. This is what I call the degener from hell.
Sever artery will give a foe a -4 degen. Parasitic bond is another -1 degen for 20 seconds but when it ends, either after the timer or being removed or the person dying, then you gain health back.This spell rocks for a warrior/necro because you can gain up to 120 health when it ends if curses is maxed out. It also is cheap to cast, fast to cast, and fast to recharge. It also makes you impossible to kill if you spread it around alot. Faintheartedness is another nice one that slows down the attack rate of a foe and gives them another -1 to -3 degen. Stacked with sever artery and parasitic bond that's a total of -8 degen. This is digustingly powerful in pvp. Especially since you can make it all last for 20 seconds or longer. Demonic Flesh + Endure pain is another nice combo for some Major health. Get a +25 health sword pommel. +25 health shield, Superior Rune of vigor and you can have up to 1200 health for a limited time. Demonic flesh also lasts a LONG time as an enchantment.
Warrior/Mesmir - Same thing as above, the difference is a bit more caster taking out power and a bit less survivability if you get overwhelmed. Sever artery + conjure phantom is a -9 health degen in just those 2 powers. Empathy + backfire are two of the best counter based spells in the game. The only problem with a warrior/mesmir is that your power pool is kind of low and many mesmir spells take 2 or 3 seconds to cast.
Rangers - Are great at one thing, using range. They also can get a "pet" but to me it's a complete waste of skills since you need to have 2 skills out of your 8 total devoted to having a small dot and agro distraction. Also, pets tend to die a lot and when they do, you now have any beast skills nullified until you rez it. As a ranger you have many nice attack and healing combos and even better, traps. Do not underestimate traps. A good barb, dust, or fire trap will do wonders in both pve and pvp. Rangers once they get their skills make a great primary or secondary BUT you earn some of the higher ranger skills, you'll have a lot less use for skills of other classes. They also only have a base energy of 25 but the Expertise primary skill makes all RANGER powers cost less energy to cast. It doesn't affect any other skill powers from other classes. Rangers can also wear cloth and leather equivalent armor.
Ranger/anything works pretty good. Basically what I like for ranger skills is these. Poison shot with it's -4 degen. Distracting shot to interrupt enemy casters. Pin down to knock people over. Crippling shot to make enemy run slower. Debilitating shot (pvp only) which drains 10 energy about every 5 seconds. Ignite turns all shots into mini aoe fire bombs. Barbed trap which is another -2 degen and slows people down. Dust trap for some added damage and to "blind" attackers and make them whiff like crazy. Troll unget for some major self health regen. Anything else is gravy.
Elementalist is your standard nuker. They have a great primary skill called energy storage that gives you 3 more points of energy per attribute point. This can add up quickly. Since elementalists start with a base energy of 35, get armor that adds up to +5 energy per piece, you can easily have a TON of energy to spend. You'll need it though because some elementalist spells are the most expensive spells in the game costing upward of 35 energy points. They also can take a long time to cast. Because of this, playing an elementalist in a group can be very tricky. If you want to cast that big 4 or 5 second nuke on something, it might just be dead long before you get to cast if the rest of your team is good. If you pick another target then you might end up with agro and die real fast. elementalists get to pick from 4 different power sets for spells. Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. Fire is probably the best "pve" for damage set. This set has the most AoEs and NPCs usually aren't intelligent enough to run out of an AoE. However, fire doesn't always do as much damage in pvp because people move and because fire damage tends to be reduced alot in pvp. Air on the other handis decent pve but probably the best PVP damage based set. It has a few knock downs, some irresistible damage, and less AoEs. Water well, I think kind of sucks so I won't explain it other then it costs too much power, does slows as a side effect, does decent damage but has long recharge timers usually. Earth is a very defensive oriented based skill set with no direct nukes I can remember off the top of my head and just some aoe attacks like eruption and quake that take alot of power to cast.
Combos for the Elementalist are:
Elementalist/monk. With an earth elementalist and monk heals and protections you can pretty much negate almost all damage done against your team mates. Wards + armors + protection powers = most attacks are useless. You can also use a few nice heals to round it out. I typically go with Ward against melee or elements, shielding hands, dawnyas kiss, healing breeze, healing word, heal other, and quake. This is also very close to one of the template chars for the pvp only build so you an check it out before trying to see how you like the powers. with Aura of Health as well, you can always heal others or help them out while at the same time healing yourself for a pretty hefty amount. Elementalists can only wear cloth armor.
Elementalist/ranger. Mix in some knock down attacks from the air line and armor penetration and bamm. Instant sniper. Again this is similar to the PvP only character template called shock sniper. Lightning orb here is key with an air elementalist/ranger for some massive single target damage.
Elementalist/mesmir - This works EXTREMELY well because many elementalist powers cost a ton of power. With energy tap you can get power back from your enemies faster to nail them with another nuke. Couple that with spirit shackles, ether feast, and backfire and you can completely neutralize enemy casters in pvp.
Necro is what I picked originally. Nice mix of everything with some really power single target spells. Many spells affect your life pool in one way or another and not just the blood magic spells. Necros get to wear both cloth or leather armor, but there is a penalty to the leather armor defense in that you take more damage from holy based damage attacks. Necro's also start with a base energy pool of 25 but make up for that with the soul reaping attribute. Every point in that attribute translates to 1 energy point gained when someone on the map dies. Be it pet, party member or bad guy. If something dies you get energy. Which allows a necro to keep going in the middle of the fight were other casters have already blown through their wad of power at the first of the fight.
Necro's by themselves as spell casters have a nasty combo chain I use for massive single target damage. These are all blood magic spells. I have a maxed out blood magic 12 attribute points + 1 for my head gear and +3 from my superior rune for a total of 16 in blood magic. As such here is what I can do.
Parasitic bond to start the fight. Starts a small bit of health degen that over time will do around 40 damage for 5 energy and will heal me some. Yes it's a curse but it's a cheap and effective and fast one. Next is Dark Pact. For me it does a 52 damage if I remember right but I lost 10% of my max health. Next I use shadow strike. This power is godly if the target has over 50% of their max health left. It does for me 50 points of shadow damage AND another 50 points of drain damage for a total of 100 damage. I then use another dark pact because it has recycled (it's very fast), then a vampiric gaze for 64 damage and then another dark pact. This is a grand total of around 350 damage with the bond on and drops most monsters level 20 or under. Which will then give you the heal back from the bond so you are back to full life if your curses are at a decent level. You also get more energy back to start the chain again with a high enough soul reaping. another good lead off power is rotting flesh for a -5 health degen that "spreads" when your target monster comes into melee range with another monster of it's type. This makes rotting flesh awsome in PVP but craptacular in PVP. In pve, rotting flesh that is cast on a monster can't spread it back to you because you aren't the same "type" as the monster usually. In PvP, players ARE the same type as you so if you cast it on an enemy of the other team, they just have to run up to touch you and now you've just got the same disease you casted on them. It's a nasty double edged power that way in pvp.
Necro/warriors make a good combo in that many necro powers are melee range only. Leather armor also helps with the damage. Also, the stances are what make necro/warriors work. Problem is, the good stances aren't available until MUCH later in the game. These stances usually allow you to take almost zero damage for a small period of time. However, you can use one stance when another wears off to continually stay in stance mode and prevent tons of damage.
Necro/monk is also another one that rocks. With demonic flesh you can add another +200~ish hitpoints for 60 seconds. If you use infuse life you can heal team mates in an emergency situation for over 500 hitpoints. You can also keep the healing coming as team mates mow through enemies. Just you can't heal for as "much" as a monk primary.
Necro/mesmir is the ultimate shut down character. While decent in PvE, these guys can really shine in PvP. With the ability to use multiple hexes from the Curse and Domination attributes people don't usually stand a chance to do anything. They call this character "warriors bane" in the pre-made template and it is decent. However, I would choose a couple of different powers then the template but that's my personal taste. I'm not big on enfeebling blood as a curse. Shadow of fear is MUCH better or faintheart for stopping melee based or ranger based chars.
Mesmir is another good char and is probably the ultimate monk/healer killer in the game. They tend to have many counter or preventative based powers which either react to an action a foe takes or prevents some actions period. They don't have very much in the way of direct damage and probably the best damage spell they get is confure phantom. Mesmir's to me don't make the best PVE characters but they can be GODS in the pvp arena. A mesmir can single handily shut down any character type out there.
My favorite mesmir combos are:
Mesmir/ranger is the ultimate monk or caster killer. Ether feast, backfire, energy tap, spirit shackles, debilitating shot, and distracting shot = no powers being used by the target player PERIOD. Backfire does up to 140 damage for 10 seconds if the target player casts a spell. Ether feast drains 5 energy from the target and heals you for an amount. Energy tap just drains energy and gives it to you. Spirit shackles drains 5 energy every time the player attacks. Debilitating shot also drains 10 energy. Distracting shot stops any action and makes it take 20 seconds longer to recharge. What does this mean? You can drain the crap out of a healer, prevent him from healing, and make it so if they try to heal they kill themselves. It's disgustingly powerful against other casters. Round out the power list with poison shot and conjure phantom and you can sit back and watch people die from a -9 health degen. Health degen is probably the single strongest way to kill another player in pvp. It sneaks up on them and when they notice the damage it is usually too late.
Monks are well monks. They heal. Some can be protectors and prevent damage or hexes in the first place. Most secondaries for a true healing monk won?t matter except maybe mesmir for energy tap to get some extra energy when you need it.
How the attribute system works is like this. The first few levels you get 5 attribute points. The next few you get 10 per level. Finally you get 15 per level for a grand total of 200 attribute points at level 20. Every time you put an attribute point in a skill group it costs a cumulative amount to put the next point in. An example is when I start the game all my attributes are at 0. I put in 1 point into say Air Magic and not my Air Magic is at 1. To get my Air magic to 2 I need to use 2 attribute points now because it?s a cumulative cost. This means an Air Magic of 2 costs a total of 3 attribute points. An Air Magic of 3 costs a total of 6 attribute points. The max you can get a skill group is 12. Which total of 91 attribute spent if you max out a skill. With 200 attribute points to spend, maxing out 1 skill can be expensive. In the game though there is 2 separate quests you can do for 15 more attribute points each for a grand total of 230. You can ONLY complete these quests with role-playing characters and not pvp pre-made characters. You can also raise skills via head gear +1 to any particular skill on all head gear and buy runes you can place on armor. Runes come in 3 flavors, of minor, major, and superior. Primary stat runes, like Air Magic have negatives with them. General use runes do not for the bigger they are. For example a Minor Rune of Air Magic adds +1 to air magic but it has no negative. A Major Rune of Air Magic adds +2 to air magic but has a -50 health negative. Superior adds +3 but has a -70 health negative. This can be made up with a Superior Vigor Rune though which is a general based rune that only adds hitpoints and has no negatives. So why not use 5 minor runes of Air Magic? Because runs of the same type do not stack either. You can only have 1 type of Air Magic rune at any one time. This limits the highest possible any skill group stat can reach in the game to 12 for spending 91 attributes +1 headgear + 3 for a rune for 16 total. Choose wisely how you use runes.
Well this is my general intro into the game with some help. This game can be VERY indepth for the strategy based player or very laid back as well. It can be an extremely difficult game to complete or very simple. I?ve completed all primary quests with a character starting from scratch in 2 days over a weekend and used nothing but henchmen. However, that?s just the primary quests and no exploring, skill hunting, or side quests. It also didn?t involve pvp or item hunting. There is a TON of stuff to do in this game not to mention the raid zones like the Fissure and the Underworld.
The best part of all of it is that you get the feel of a MMORPG but with no monthly fee. The pvp is REALLY well done and there is no one uber group mix setup. Everything has a counter in this game to take it down.