Get to level 61 atleast or even 62 with some help to get the free capotia accesories and the bundles, after that is grind at polly forest for as long as u can until u have all your gear at PEN.

Might sound hard but its literally the easiest way to have comfy gear to adventure, if u decide to graduate with tri/tet gear you will struggle a lot.

You need to read on guides/discords what you are asking, thers a lot to take in so no one is gonna sit here and put into 1000 words what players have been doing over the years.

https://grumpygreen.cricket/category/black-desert-online/season-server/

This website has more info u can browse about.

Example > https://grumpygreen.cricket/tuvala-gear/

If u in EU feel free to send a whisper and il help you lvl up atleast.

I am by no means an expert on this game nor the classes you ask about but from my experience it boils down to the amount of actions the class requires since the actual power level gets always adjusted by the devs. Sure, some classes stay longer in the sweet spot (i. e. succ. Berserker) or are bottom line classes for a longer while (like sage used to be) but eventually devs do always balance and nerf at will. So the current state of the class should not influence your decision too much. Class rankings you find on the web are outdated fast due to this.

As for learning the class: Yes this game has a plethura of opions and guides for these. Issue is that a lot of content creators (who often are passionate and do a good job) live off creating guides. This has imo lead to an inflation of excessively complex or unfocused guides that want to teach you every ounce, every why and because of the class, guides that throw in a lot of rather useless info for the new player, too.  They pretty much enjoy making a science of BDO and so do discords while actual core progression guide for the average player fits on a sheet of A4 paper not even densely written.

Create trial characters at 60, try them. Look for a "short and sweet" guide which focuses on teaching a rotation, some good ones do exist thanks to the community. Put a cheat sheet with that next to your screen and practise it first in parts, then in full. Get a basic and easy to obtain crystal and artifact set. Once you got that down you can start bothering with details like movement etc.

Good thing is that classes share button combos for similar actions so once you´ve mastered one class it will be way easier to pick up a new. So it wouldnt be the biggest loss if you chose something you would want to change after season (raise your second most fav class using fughars timepiece once you have graduated from season at level 61).

Your main issue seems to be the Tuvala PEN gear cause that obviously is a major difference in power compared to TRI. Use the frozen tides black stones (was it named that way? Havent been on season for a while) for guaranteed enhancements!

Get the enhanced acessories from regional quests (cadry ruins, desert fogans... -> see the "Regional Season Quest" section in this guide https://www.blackdesertfoundry.com/season-servers-guide/) and do not bother enchanting them otherwise. Do more seasons with other chars in the future to grab the good rewards (PEN capotia stuff and a bit more).

To choose from the classes you mention I personally wouldn´t need much more apart from own trial experiments than sth like Anders "PVE & PVP Class Guide in 2023".

Good luck from a constant EU noob who plays this game for the looks and feels and thus Valk with the itsy bitsy tiny head and somewhat dated GFX would be out of the pool for me. So my unqualified opinion would be: go with SUCC Nova or (AWK) Drakania. :p

Another hour or so after that, I finally got a response from the Helper Ashlyn about the ways to activate the skills:

So that was nice of the general BDO Discord. As for you, pal256...

Sorry, but I'm not about to do party content at any point in the future. I don't see this game as my main game. If I did, I'd definitely not play any class that could be seen as a tank whatsoever, because I've found action-style games have issues with me and keeping aggro/enmity on enemies. I'd rather play easier to play games like FFXIV for my main MMO. I just want something on the side when I'm not playing it or PSO2. I'm also completely against PvP. I will either run away from PvPers or die if they attack me. Also...

That was already suggested in this thread, which led me to finding out at how that one valkyrie skill worked and I ended up having trouble getting help from the discord.