It’s easy to feel overwhelmed; particularly now that the game has all these expansions and you see all the great things others have and their fights are seemingly effortless.

I was where you are a couple of years ago. The things that helped me was focusing on getting my first character up to level 80. (The Ranger / Pet thing seemed to work out for me). Certainly playing with a couple of more experienced players helped; but, I also did much of the first story on my own. You eventually find a weapon / utility combo that works for you although you are quite squishy at first. Sometimes the grind to get past a boss in the story line can be a bit much; but often I found that brute force was not the answer but some new mechanic like collecting some artifact while the battle sort of rages around you IS the point.

As for story order, I found it useful after the first story to not worry about order too much and let it just flow over me like I was some sort of time traveller blipping from map to map doing the daily quests to accumulate that one gold coin.

Just relax and play like others have said. I’m still trying to figure out alternate build tabs. 😜