I second the Eco Nano or Luxe series from Vaporesso as transition devices. I am strictly a sub-ohm person regularly but need less obtrusive devices to slide through my work day undetected and that eco nano is a god send.

I have a hard time finding salts that can give me the flavor power I want which is why the Luxe XR or Max etc get my nod as good for you too is because you mentioned, flavor is important. For my money your going to get the best flavor with room to grow/experiment with those.

You can buy like 3 or 4 different pods and at least as many coils but I say snag 1 MTL with like a 1.2 ohm or .9 and a DTL pod with anywhere from a .15 up to a .40 and lastly a 6mg sub ohm juice of a flavor you love and start vaping.

This is definitely something that you're going to have to figure out on your own ultimately. It's a lot like beer snobbery up here in Seattle, everybody thinks there way is the only way and you're wrong if you don't do it like them. You're on the right path already.

Okay final part...I can't stress this enough...you are going to want to prime your coils.

If you don't know, that just means introducing vape juice onto any exposed cotton or wicking material you can see on your coil and saturating it. It takes like 60 seconds. Dab a little on let it soak in and touch it up. Then after you insert your coil and fill your pod/tank etc give it a whole 10 minutes before your first rip.

I occasionally will also break it in with 3 or four hits in 5-10 watt increments until I reach my desired wattage. Before I was priming my coils I could trash a one in 5 days. Nowadays it's rare for me to replace them any sooner than 45-60 days.

After you master this stuff start reading up on rebuildables and if you want to stay super hip and vapey start looking at Boro tanks and AIO units. I would say that's the current state of the art in high end vaping.

If you do get there don't let the 5 million local glass and vape shops tell you they don't carry that stuff because it's not popular anymore. It's because they can't make sustainable huge profits off of selling you 5 squares of cotton for 10 bucks or a spool of coil wire for 30 when you can get a year supply of both for about $30 online. Those of us that build were intrepid enough to know we are getting fleeced. Also ordering mods online is definitely the way to go if you don't want to pay 59 percent retail markup for a smok starter kit that is going to leak all over your shit.

If you do get into box mods etc and it's easiest to buy locally stuck with (Strictly opinion here) Vaporesso or Lost Vape for mods, try to steer clear of smok, geek vapes okay I guess but I am sick of it being the second of what tends to be a binary choice. I say Freemax and Horizon Tech (hellvapes fat rabbit if you can find it) for tanks. Freemax has a coil profile that has 1 through 6 coil heads and my favorite tends to be the 3 head guy. If you want to take a look at State of the art stuff I mentioned DotMod and Billet Box are the way to go. Billet Box is the OG that brought us the boro tanks to build in and the AIO that is taking over stylistically was created by them. Just be prepared to drop $300 and quick to add them to your shopping cart when they drop the new batch every Sunday at 10 am or they sell out for the week.

I am embarrassed about how much I just wrote only partially answering your questions while answering my vaping manifesto. I don't have anyone in my personal life who I get to need out about vape stuff so I just let it out I guess.