so do not get discouraged if you are losing alot of duels because you get stronger as you play longer. However The schools sets are easier to level and get really powerful the more levels you put into them, also the jade coin sets(50 coin and up sets not the 25 coin sets) are pretty damn powerful and compare very favorably to the cash sets. people do say this game is pay2win because the cash sets start off pretty OP, in comparison to the school sets.
I personally use a maxed out school set almost exclusively for pvp and a lvl 3 jianghu set for pve everything else I just play around with. If you are just starting to play this game would suggest going to the golden server because that is the newest server and you wont run into people that can 2 shot you also read this before you give up on the game because this isn't a short term game in this game you have to think and plan find a style that suits your playstyle.
So over the course of the next couple of weeks I am going to right A guide in small steps if Anyone else has knowledge of the game and would like to share it plz add on to this because I would like to centralize all the guides because everything every where is outdated. In the 2 year history of age of wushu there has been some pretty good guides on the AOW forums alot of them are outdated though.