Greetings! I've been a knight now for a very very long time. And as a knowledge seeker I have now reached the point where I know enough inner workings of the game to provide for you a guide to victory in this world. Should you have any questions, Please feel welcome to ask and I will supply all of the detail I know :D
So, First I want to cover Class Balancing.
It is important to 'dress for success' this means, Getting a well-balanced class that will allow you to work with ease. Now, A lot of times you'll see someone with the Vog Cub Set, or, really, Many matching sets. These are okay, however, I DO NOT recommend them if you are serious about survival in this world. A set like Vog Cub, which offers Normal and Elemental defense along with Fire resistance Will protect you very well against a Fire Turret, or Firestorm Citadel's fires. But what happens when you find a Ice Zombie? you die.
In order to properly balance your gear, You need to attempt to cover every defense you possibly can. This way, Although you're not as resistant against a particular class of enemy, You have a good resistance against anything the clockworks can throw at you and is very much the smarter choice in gear, Trust me, You'll live much longer this way.
So, Using Vog Cub as my previous example, Lets say we mix it with a Skolver (piercing) and a Dread Skelly Shield. Now, You have a properly balanced class. Your gear, vog, and Skolver, will offer you a defence to both Elemental, and Piercing, While your shield will defend against Shadow. Although the shield has no resistance to you personally, This way, the shield will live twice as long against Shadow attacks, making it harder for you to take damage against it.
So, To properly balance your gear, As previously stated, You must attempt to find a resistance to every type of damage. Using Trinkets, Shields, And oddly mix-matched gear. But I assure you it is the best way to survive in any situation.
So, Now that your Defenses are covered, Lets talk Weapons.
I've only ever used Swords personally, But, This method can be applied to any weapon class. As before, You want to balance all of your gear. This means, YES you will need at least 3 weapons to do this properly. As with your defense, you want to target each and every class, And, This time, you want to try and stick with that class ONLY, Having multiple forms of attack (such as a Argent Peacemaker dealing both Elemental and Piercing) will mess up this process. So the first rule to balancing your weapons is to have a single type of attack for each weapon. You want a elemental weapon, a Shadow weapon, and a Piercing weapon. And then, You need to learn the defenses of the creatures you fight. Once you've learned what creature is weak to what, You can now fight ANYTHING just by switching your weapons against each type of monster, and you're defences are set to withstand anything.
Congratulations, Your class is now balanced.
SO, Now, Lets talk Shield Mechanics.
Shields are a very important tool, But, you HAVE to understand your shields resistance do not effect you AT ALL! So, Having a fire resistant shield isn't going to make you any more fire resistant than you were before. The defense properties of a shield effect the shield ONLY. The properties of a shield calculate how easily your shield can break. The more health your shield has, the longer natural life it gets. The types of defenses determines what attacks break it easiest. In the previous example of a Dread Skelly shield, This particular shield is best for defending against Shadow, Freeze, and Poison. Attacks that are Not shadow, freeze, or poison, will break your shield fairly easy. With the class balance I mentioned earlier using Skolver and Vog Cub, If you are attacked by a Shadow Move, you will take heavy damage as this damage is not covered (unless by UV), But not to fear, That's where that Dread Skelly shield comes in. By having a shield resistant to shadow, It makes it much harder for shadow moves to get through that shield. This means as long as you know how to hit BLOCK, You should be fine against shadow attacks.
I hope what I covered so far is useful, Feel free to ask questions, or ask about gear recommendations, and I will try my hardest to answer your questions or recommend the gear right for you. I plan to cover many more mechanics of the game to give you the ultimate edge not only against a npc enemy but against a player as well.
The best type of gear you can get is to get three different types of armor sets. One resistant to piercing, one resistant to shadow, and one resistant to elemental. Remember that you can change gear in the clockwork terminals and the subtowns. Figure out what strata you are headed towards and dress appropriately.
Status strata are a bit more tricky since it's all mixed. But, in general, you can still manage to pull it off. You can run though some strata with the wrong type of armor. I've done it before (A T3 strata too.) It depends how easy the strata is. I wouldn't attempt to run a Fiend strata with the wrong armor though.
The easiest way of balancing your weapons is to take normal damage weapons. Take three weapons: one bomb, one sword, and one gun. You can do more damage if you take special damage weapons, but if you take a sword, bomb, and gun of different types (example: Cryotech, Archeon, Dark Briar Barrage) then you ensure that one weapon will always be useless (example, Archeon is useless against devilites.) The weapon will change as you fight different monsters, but you'll limit what attack patterns you can use if you do this. It's better to have attack variety and take normal damage weapons if you are going hybrid.
But, that's not your only option. You could specialize and take several guns or swords with you. In this case you are giving up variety to do more damage. This is great for players who prefer one type of weapon style over all others, but it's not a good idea for those who rather take different types of weapons.