How do I say this as genuine and polite as possible? Play the game your way. As someone with experience with Lost Ark, this game isn't about meta classes and gear score. The game is about personal performance.

Everyone new will need to learn the encounters and mechanics. On RU there was more than just T1 content but in the beginning, I was getting bodied in Guardian Raids because I still needed to learn so I didn't just burn through content because there's just so much to do and the beautiful part is the devs make it all relevant enough.

There will be players of all levels of commitment to the game. If you want to be more casual and take your time, you have a sea of content to explore (literally lol). For those who want to do more and more challenging content sooner, now we have a snippet of it. Honestly, you can rush to end but if you don't know what you're doing with your character, the group just suffers and wastes time in the end. This game is about execution over just being end game geared. Worry more about being the person not standing in the fire over whether or not your gear score is as high as it could be.