Thanks. I don't like archery, so I might look at Strider in to Mystic Knight or Assassin. Sorcerer sounds good too as I enjoy some magic casting.
Well Strider is part archer. And Magick Archer, unlike the name implies, can be played almost entirely as a melee. That's what I did on my Dark Arisen release first playthrough.
Both classes basically work the same, you have daggers and bow(magick bow for magick archer). Daggers have the cool melee combat and are fairly self sufficient, and you can use bow for either utility or in the cases it makes more sense(ranged enemies and stuff for example). Magick Archer bow skills especially have a bunch of utility based stuff, like a Flare to illuminate an area, Ward Arrow which creates an area where allies have increased status resistances and Vortex Arrow which pulls enemies close together.
Only Ranger is really archer focused, the other classes using bow can be used entirely as daggers melees if you prefer. I mean Rangers can too, but it's pretty bad as they only have the core skills for dagger.
Mystic Knight is great though, it's my 2nd favorite class after Magick Archer. It was severely impeded by the massive FPS losses from using magic canons though, but luckily this should be fixed. The main downside of the class is canons are way too strong, I'd heavily recommend not to use them(other than checking them out) if you want to have fun. They're good for farming bosses in endgame though.
Can you change your class at anytime, or do you have to start a new to try different things?
I mentionned it but you can change in Gran Soren which unlocks fairly early if you follow the story. You can change at any time once there, and your progress isn't lost. You will want to switch every now and then to level stuff to get passives for your main class too, it's kinda part of the thing.