New Player-Braver and Ranger

[ashleebabee2308]

I've been playing PSO2 for roughly a few months, but I was doing really poorly at it because I'm having trouble figuring things out so I quit for awhile. Of course, when I decided I wanted to go back and play, the game got DDoS'd so my luck is terrible but that's a different story. I was originally going to make one character and try to play all the classes with her, just to save having to make another character and for the fact that I would really rake in the Meseta, but I decided to trash that idea when I realized that you can't get another Mag (well, I can't because I don't do Arks Cash because I live in the US and I don't want to deal with it). Now I'm set on having a Braver character and a Ranger character. My Braver character is already made, a female Newman, and I plan on making my Ranger either a female Cast or Dewman/Duman.

Like I said, I'm fairly new to this game so I don't know what I should be doing with my characters really. I'm not sure whether a Cast or Dewman/Duman is better for being a ranger, what kind of builds I should do for each, what I should subclass as, how I should develop their Mags, what kind of weapons and gear I should be on the lookout for, and how to keep myself from screwing them up too bad. I should mention that with my Braver I plan on focusing more on the Katana (I like melee classes but I've been hearing iffy things about the Hunter class lately about how they got stiffed when Bravers came out, and I figured if I'm not going to play as a Hunter I want to go with the Katana), but I would also like to play partially with the Bow (which I've found I like for certain things, like bosses, over the Katana), so I don't know if I can make a build or a Mag that will let me do both or if it's better to stick with one over the other.

If someone could give me some insight, or some links or anything, into my issues above, I would really appreciate.

As a last question, are Hunters any good to play as? I heard that they're significantly harder than Bravers and I'm not sure I'm skilled enough at this game to play a harder class yet. But I really love the swords they use and, let's face it, I'm a sucker for swords. So if they aren't as bad as I heard, I would love to play as one, but I don't want to put the time and energy into playing as one to find out that it's going to be massively difficult later on.

Thanks again to anyone who can offer some help