Ok, so I've spent some time in the forums looking up answers and opinions on the stuff I have encountered, seeing if certain things are common issues or if I'm just incredibly unlucky. As of last night, I have over ten hours of experience running through the Multiplayer content, and some observations and opinions based on those. If you agree or not is up to you, but this is my personal experience guiding my words.
1: The Initial Experience - Starting out feels very rough. You get your free starter chest (since I got the Deluxe Edition, I also got a free Large Chest, which had a new Legionnaire Armor for me), and you get you starting characters set up with their stuff. None of my friends were on when I started, so I went for a quick match, playing as an Archer. Early on, the archer does little to no damage with the basic bow you get. Running with two keepers and a legionnaire, I often felt like I couldn't hold my own weight in battle, and regular enemies felt like significant threats on Routine. By the time we'd wiped on the fourth zone, I had gotten the kill shot on a whopping six enemies. Trying out the other classes also felt underwhelming, especially since I was awaiting unlocking other classes, ones I saw other people playing as they'd gotten lucky in chests.
2: That first Great Item: Such was my experience for the next few dungeons, until something happened: I purchased my first Large Chest. Hidden in it's depths was two things that changed my damage from mediocre to amazing: a 83DPS Bow and a Fire Rune. Between that and getting Long Shot, I went from unable to beat the tank in kills to topping the chart. What before had been 20-25 damage a shot now became 70-100 a shot on auto-attack, with hitting 600ish with a Long Shot at good rage. It was at this point that I realized how dependant on weapons the characters were. Leveling up didn't do much in terms of stat modification compared to replacing that bow. Unfortunately, the way gear typically came for me afterwards, I realized that Bow and Rune were a fluke of luck.
3: Defeating Bosses, Forming Strategies: Soon afterwards, I beat my first Routine dungeon. The Tevinter Commander never knew what hit her between the Keeper, Elementalist, Reaver and my Archer. We killed her so fast, I was beginning to think they'd stealth nerfed her until I realized what was different for my group. We had gone from undergeared, low level classes that barely had any options to over-leveled, well geared classes with full skill bars and the knowledge on what to use when. We went on to the next run, and dealt with Demons. Everything was smooth as silk until we got to the fifth zone, where we encountered the toughest boss: The Demon Commander. We wiped on him repeatedly (multiple runs, obviously), and many of us believed him too powerful for a Routine difficulty.
Finally, in a run with former Raid Groups of WoW and SWTOR days, we beat him. It wasn't hard. I was confused, until I realized why we'd beaten him so effortlessly - Tactics. One of my friends had fought him so often he knew what each attack looked like, and knew the ways to stay alive. No grouping up. Keeper shields the one he is about to pop under. Melee rushes him until they see the green circle, then back off. Me, as an Archer, keep the adds off of everyone, don't even worry about the boss until the adds are cleared.
With this in mind, I helped two other groups the next day trample him down. Him, and the other two, as I learned the Templar Commander's moves as well that night. I realized that these fights required thinking, not just DPS races.
4: So many Chests, So Little Cloth - When my friends and I were planning on playing as a group, we each claimed certain classes as our mains. I wanted to be the Elementalist primarily, and loved the idea of being able to craft the armor to unlock them to avoid the bad luck of chests that I dealt with in Mass Effect 3. However, I soon realized that the stuff I was getting from chests was not helping me further my goal as near as fast as it was for my friends. Where as they wanted to unlock the Reaver, Alchemist and Assassin classes, I wanted to unlock a mage. They had their materials needed by the second day. It took me three times the amount of time played to get the materials needed to unlock Elementalist, and I unlocked Assassin and Katari at the same time, as I had that many of the other materials ready by the time I had enough for the Elementalist.
Leather and Metal came in at two, occasionally three times the rate as cloth did. With so many options for TYPES of cloth, it made it difficult to get 8 of one type. By the time I had 8 silk, I also had 4 plaidweave, 4 highever cloth and 4 of another type, nevermind the 20ish leather and 30 iron.
5: New classes, New Experiences - So I started up my Elementalist. The major difference here was, unlike my Archer, I started off with a fairly decent stave. The damage was immediately where it needed to be starting off: Just enough to severly damage basic enemies, not too strong as to dominate the field. Here's where it felt like a proper difficulty. We made it through with ease once we got used to our new roles, and because we knew more about the enemies, we fell for less of their traps. The stealthers were still a valid threat, but we were getting better at noticing and killing them before they oneshot someone.
In summation, the MP starts off really slow. You tend to feel underpowered, and you will die a lot. If they hadn't mentioned this in the stream from the week before, it would have been a massive turn off for me. New abilities with leveling up makes it more bareable, but what really turns things around is better gear. Unfortunately, a lot of the time the gear you get won't be an improvement over what you already have, and so you get a lot of salvaged materials that you can patiently wait to turn into weapon upgrades or armors for new classes/new looks.
TL;DR - It's fun, but it might take a few hours to get there. Play with friends who don't care about dying a lot, and it's a blast.
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