Yo, I’m on the fence about getting the game, I do love this style of game, but need a bit more info before I commit…
The classes,
How do they stack up against each other?
Can someone give me a rundown of the basics of each class, what they are like to play?
And any other info you think a new player might need/want to know
Thanks
Solder - tanky/melee physical damage fighter. tools for helping the character become tanky.
Demolitionist - ranged caster/fighter, tools for many builds. Focuses mostly on fire/physical/lightning/chaos damage.
Occultist - pets, magic damage, gets a bit of everything, vitality/poison/acid/chaos
Nightblade - aggressive melee fighter, imagine a rogue or assassin. Not as tanky as the soldier, but more dps. physical/pierce/cold/poison damage types.
Arcanist - caster type, has a laser beam spell and a ‘magic missile’. Focuses on all elemental types (fire/lightning/cold), as well as aether damage. A bit of chaos as well iirc.
Shaman - 2 handed weapon fighter, focuses mostly on lightning, vitality, bleed and physical damage. Can be well suited to supporting pets like the occultist.
All classes can synergize well enough with each other, so don’t worry about pairing something like occultist and soldier, because the end result is one of the strongest classes in the game afaik.
Hiya… There’s a lot of useful info in the game guide just here.
As for the classes you get to choose a first class at your first level up and then from level 10 onwards you can choose a 2nd class. Most of the classes can pretty much be combined to be played how you fancy…melee/ranged with guns/magic users and pet casters or a combination of…though not all the classes have pets.
Also if you’re not the sort of player that wants to grind for hours to get specific set items, then you’ll be happy to know that you can survive quite well playing purely self found.
There’s no healer or support classes as all the classes are designed to be able to cope solo.
Hope this helps a bit…and welcome to the forums 
Basicly check the build guides on these forums and click on the linked videos in them , this will give you a pretty good general idea of how different classes / builds play end game .