Wrote up a little breakdown of the classes I've played:
1. Aman (M) Lancer (22) on Serpentis Isle (NA) - Somewhat long/boring leveling, but that was partly my fault 'cause I was experimenting a lot, trying the crafting etc. Very fun instance tanking that initially had me convinced I wanted a Lancer on retail. I always prefer to be a tank class in this kind of game and being required to manually block was a great dynamic. Didn't do any PVP, not even duels. BAMs were incredibly easy to solo, to the point where the practice I got on them didn't help with my other characters at all.
Video is of me tanking the first boss in Secret Base:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqHmQlah154
I really need to get him to 27 and try out the leash, but he's stuck on a PVE server and that's nowhere near as fun as PVP to me.
2. Popori Slayer (22) on Essenia (EU) - Kinda sucked until level 16, then overhead strike turned it into an actual class. Loved the Popori dodge animation. Soloing/Duoing BAMs was very fun. Instance DPS wasn't half as fun as tanking on the Lancer. PVP was nearly impossible on laggy CBT1 EU servers but I could wreck people pretty fast if I landed a knockdown.
Video is of me duoing a Basilisk with somebody, we were grinding them to level:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvtqbSgAT7o
3. Elin Berserker (27) on Valley of Titans (NA) - Really enjoyed this class. Leveled fast as hell, instance DPS was fairly interesting and BAM soloing was almost as fun as it was on the Slayer. PVP was great, I got to run around one shotting enemy healers all weekend and I didn't have the problems with kiting that people were reporting. Lancers drove me nuts though, they can very easily lock you down and prevent you from getting to the vulnerable cloth wearers. Very hard to find a group because my guild, which was very Mystic heavy before, instead decided to try out Berserkers and Slayers instead this time around.
4. Aman (F) Warrior (27) on Essenia (EU) - Initially dismissed this class because it looked terrible. Eating my words now and as of this moment this has a 90% chance of being my class on retail. Leveling was fast and interesting, but I made the class with the intention of tanking and I was thoroughly impressed. It makes Lancer tanking look like incredibly basic easymode, and being a 'dodge tank' isn't as awkward as it sounds on paper. Warriors are actually quite durable - in defensive stance I had higher defense than my Berserker did, and the zerker had better gear. I honestly believed that Warriors would have a lot of trouble doing fast trash pulls but I had no difficulty piling up 2-4 pulls at a time in Sinistral Manor. The hardest part was dealing with the long cooldown of their taunt, their lack of stuns, and cycling roll/Death From Above without wasting them - a big problem was that some of the integral skills (stuns) don't come until later levels. They also have a LOT of skills - I'm considering a Razer Naga just to deal with them all. I didn't run into any people complaining about my tanking even when my internet was taking a dump and I had 4000 ping on Malgarios. Also didn't run into much if any prejudice towards warrior tanks outside of one group of people who were used to running with Lancers who pulled half the instance at once. Even so, rushing like that accomplishes nothing but making you wait around for 45 minutes while your timer reset. And I still cleared the place so fast that my groups had to wait for 20-30 afterwards.
Anyways, I'd never play a warrior as a DPS class. That'd be awful, trust me just be a Slayer instead if you want light armor agile melee DPS. Didn't have time to get any PVP in or make any videos because I started late, had to relevel and my server had insane queues.
