Looking to fresh start and really struggling to find something solid. Melee and ranged weapon toons feel a bit weak without twinky gear.
Is there something amazing I’m missing?
How far have you gotten in the game? To me it seems it takes maybe all act 1 to build up enough: gear, skills, devotions. Then you get stronger.
Try a mage! I’d personally recommend playing a caster using projectile spells, such as Dreeg’s Evil Eye in the Occultist mastery or Panetti’s Replicating Missile in the Arcanist mastery.
Good luck! 
Go for Shaman and max devouring swarm asap. Everything dies instantly and you just rush the content (on veteran too). For the later parts of the Game you obviosly have to focus on your vitality damage and get a few additional skills. Or you can even respec the whole skill.
Primal strike warder or druid are stupid easy. Ranged or melee. The AOE makes act 1 fairly easy. I leveled a 2H melee PS warder with self-found and it was really easy. I just started a crossbow PS druid and has been really easy as well. Just make sure you grab the Torrent add-on as fast as possible for the AOE.
Edit: plus as others have said, most casters (PRM, DEE, Devouring) have an easy start as well, just keep your spirit up and don’t over invest points in the skills too early.
Also, throw level 7 components on weapons and gear asap. They really help early content.
This sounds good! I was leaning towards a caster as they seem to be the best farmers in Diablo esque games at starter gear levels.
What sort of secondary mastery would you say rocks for a Shaman?
For a vitality based caster - occultist. For a lightning based caster - arcanist or demolitionist.
I like the sound of demonologist 
A vitality conjurer or summoner are the easiest to start with. Both aren’t heavily reliant on gear. What you need is what you can find easily enough. Both can make it too Ultimate.
So you can get to know the mechanics fairly easy, safe up more than enough coins to unlock everything, farm for gear and recipes to get future characters up and running.
I tend to dislike summoners in all games, but a vitality conjurer sounds…interesting.
A question regarding shaman vit caster - is it worth getting some sort of main attack skill to go with casts? I mow through mobs like no tomorrow, but bosses/champs can be nasty.
You will be kept busy between juggling CoF, SoC, DS, ST, WT + the occasional item skill you pick up.
Sorry but is there any list of acronyms? Fairly new to this class/build.
I’ll translate.
CoF - Curse of Frailty
SoC - Sigil of Consumption
DS - Devouring Swarm
ST - Storm Totem
WT - Wendigo Totem
Bad advice imo. It’s very easy on veteran and elite, but on Ultimate it becomes rather hard to improve DPS. My DEE caster has around 4500 on ultimate, wearing some decent faction greens, and I just can’t jump over the point (maybe I can, but up to 5500 at best) without special gear that gives +skills. On the other hand, my friend has a primal strike druid and he’s over 5000 by the end of veteran. I think I heard about some ranged Primal strike builds getting around 16000 dps by the end of elite.
Thanks. Heading towards the end of A1 now, man this build eats energy 
But will new players really play their first build up to ultimate?
I think it’s quite possible they hear from other players or only level to like 30 and then try something else, or get advice from friends who know their preferences already.
Also the statistics the devs published hint that only a very small percentage of players makes it to and through ultimate (and that is from all players).
So I am not too sure if new players need to be guided to viable endgame farming builds.
Trickster.
Easy liferegen, easy gear, easy content up to ultimate, easy leveling, easy, skills, easy life, easy love, everything is easy with Trickster. Ultimate is somewhat tougher, but still easy.
Get a riftstone (chaos strike) as a vitality conjurer for dash skill
Care to elaborate on that? anything I see involving the Nightblade mastery tends to be an either gear-dependent or just outright advanced player type of build.