Classes.. Classes Everywhere..
stargrace 
One of the most difficult aspects to ArcheAge I have had to deal with so far involves picking a class to play. There are 120 class combinations and of course some are going to be better suited to your play style than others. There are of course “recommended” paths, but what fun is that.
As I have mentioned a few times now, I started out with two characters. One on the East, and one on the West. On the East my character eventually went down the cleric path, and I have to say – I don’t like it. The heals are mediocre, killing is slow, and while I do have survivability, the class is just not speaking to me. Reading forum posts it seems that healers should wear a mixture of cloth and leather to make the best of their skills (and not be quite as smushy), and use a shield / scepter combination. There’s no way you can unlock all the skills in each branch, which is something I wasn’t aware of from the get-go so I wasted a lot of my skill points (thankfully you can re-set them for a small fee). You also don’t need to purchase any skills in order. Your best bet is to look up an ArcheAge build generator, and mess around with the options there. You’re also not locked into the class you play (thankfully). I’m pretty sure I’ll be swapping around my cleric to something more of my liking. I’m not really sure why it’s not speaking to me, normally I really enjoy playing healer-esc classes, but this time it’s just not good.
On the West, I’m playing a paladin – and I love it. One really important thing to keep in mind is that each skill you use can set off a combo. For example my paladin build has 8 combinations that I can trigger. It’s a pretty generic PvP build, but it’s got good DPS (at least so far, I’m level 19) and great survivability. Plus I get to wear plate, and hey, what lady doesn’t look amazing in a shiny set of armour. Each character is inching towards 20 since I have been swapping back and forth on them and playing each faction. The two sides are different enough that it’s actually holding my interest for now. I expect that some time in the future I’ll get tired of one side or the other and start to focus on “just one” character. So far that hasn’t happened.
The game is incredibly complex, especially if you do more than just follow the quest chains (which are pretty generic kill 10 rat quests). The politics involved are astounding, and I’m loving every second of it.