Theres more then just Str/Int in char builds.

Weapon and magic too.

Bow, Glaive, sword.

Lighting, Fire, Cold, Healing.

You can go pure physical with a weapon, or add magic damage to the weapon attacks, or pure magic.

Branch out too much and your lvls aren't high enough.  Don't branch out enough and you can't solo....some mobs wont be damageable.

I've gotten a lot of advice between here and the main forums and I thank you. From what I've read, I'd be better off going Blade and Shield so I can be effective in PvP, which is why I want to play this game. What skills are good for a melee character? I mean aside from getting all of the Blade skills. I was thinking I should get the self heal from the Force line, so I'd be kind of like a Paladin, but I would also like some other magical skills if I'd actually have a use for them. Such as some buffs and a magic attack I can pull with for those tricky situations. I guess I need a way to round off a solid tanking character by having a way to self heal, root, and buff myself up.

Thank you

Other skills you should get besides the bicheon trees is fire, lighting and cold (if you want)

For fire:

Fire river force - adds fire attribute to you attacks

flame body wisdon- increase physical attk dam

fire shield phoenix- not a good skill at lower lvls, good for pvp

basic fire protection - mag def buff

pasive (the last skill in the skill tree) - increase phys attk dam

Dont get fire wall skill and dont get the nukes(flame arrow) only useful for int chars

For lighting ( dont get lighting imbue you only need one which would be fire)

Must-Piercing - increase mag attk dmg

grasswalk flow - increase speed

concentration - increase parry ration

passive - increae parry ratio

You cold get cold which is optional but you would have to do a bit more farming to get enough sp.

the physical defense buff and passive are good cold skills dont get the ice wall or cold wave arrest

If your heading towards the pure str route i suggest you dont get ANy of the magic skills as they would be very weak, remmber, you have low magic attack power.

I highly suggest you shouldnt get the force tree line, even thought you want to be like a paladin. The problem is, the skills in the Force tree are slow and waste a lot of time and SP, which could be used for more important skill trees. There are pots and pills which work faster and much faster. Even though using the force tree would save gold because you have healing skills with you they a hassle to use. They have long cast times and casting them in and out between battles would interrupt the speed of your grind, whereas pills and pots dont require much maintence since there is an auto-pot feature (press T on Keyboard) In order for Force to be effective, you have to continually ugrade them and eventually the higher tier of pots will out do them

well u could go for hybrid or pure int nuker fire for glaive if u want to.

force is useless in pvp so ingnore the force skill and pump most of the skill either on fire and lightning.

ice is some what useless just freeze the enemy and will get even harder to lvl up if u go for ice glaiver.

try use ice on bow stat character. works well in range attk to slow down enemy in attk speed and moving speed.