If you are sure you gonna party with clan mates (i mean not solo a lot) i suggest you robe or light, but not heavy.
If you think you will be mainly healer/mob controller go robe + acu weapon
If you go mele style + buffing/healing/sleeping mobs a bit, go light set + blunt/shield.
If you wondering about tatoos too. imo, +4 wit -4 men will be enough at the begining. The time to see how is your game play ;)
I run that tat and i also have -4 str / +4 Dex tat on her.
I use an Acu blunt w/ shield and a focus dagger. those two have done me well. I am afraid at your level, sleep and drain are the only two things that are worth throwing. The rest is more fun stuff if it lands.
I've used fists and blunts through d grade and c grade but settled on using my AW's gear which is the ds/focus dagger for the crits and attack speed of the daggers. i used theca and demon sets till i leant them out to clannies drake i finished my c grade out with and now using avadon robes which give me over 800 pdef with soul cry on . i use a chrono darbuka to stun with during pve but rare .
Most my partys are a destroyer,prophet and blade dancer and i assist with pa'agrio heart and buffing while i play DD with my set up.
My OL is poor. Regardless, I've made it to 48 w/o clan parties; I've been in Branded pretty much since 38. In pole parties I drop Chaos and Winter and somtimes Root. Mostly I've been partying with NON-polers though and I've found Sleep to be most used, but I still have to drop Root sometimes depending on spawn time. There are almost never healers in my groups, sadly, but I've been more than enough as long as I am able to maintain crowd control. My setup is mostly d-grade, only my robes are c-grade. I went with the Karm set, but I would have gone Demon for the INT bonus if I could afford it. My weapon is a Staff of Life +3, and it's working fine on the middle mobs in Branded. I'm hoping to make 52 before I need to upgrade my weapon. The SoL is the only enchanted gear I have and my jewels are top-d. Boots and helmet are d-grade as well.
As for soloing, tbh, I prefer to sit in branded shouting "lfg" to soloing. I may wait an hour but the xp I make in a 40 minute party far out ways the down time, or what I could have made solo. If I DO solo, I've found Timak Outpost and Hunter's Valley (where the Lakin are) to be good enough.
Now that I have Silence, I can party with nukers in Tanor Canyon and take on the Harpy looking things, I'd rather hit Branded though.
This is not the BEST way to go but it certainly works.