I just started playing a month or so ago.
From my perspective of being new, some handy things:
Play recruit until you can join veteran games. Don’t play recruit any longer than you have to. Recruit games won’t advance your gear score, veteran games do.
Get a guy or two up to 35. Keep playing games until you get your gear up to 300.
Once you’re 35 and your gear is marching closer to 300, start playing champion games. This is really when the game starts. You’ll quickly find out veteran becomes face roll that you can run through with bots and go straight to the end. Not fun once you’re geared and more skilled. Champion and Legend are fun because you have to be really active / proactive to live.
In champion you will die if you don’t learn how to dodge / block / push. You’ll also be a liability to your team if you join these games at like level 12 like some people do. You need talents to be viable.
Then when you feel comfortable with something go to Legend. I can only play one career in legend so far that I can actually contribute with and do decently, Ironbreaker because it’s very forgiving.
I’m a lot better than when I started but I still die too much in legend with other classes. Haven’t quite got the hang of barely ever being hit.
Also, red gear really isn’t much better than orange so don’t get hung up on it, it just automatically has max rolled stats.
also of note:
Use and abuse the lobby browser to join games already in progress. You can hop into 3/4 player games one after the next, often halfway through or sometimes even right at the end fight or on the way to the end. Quick and easy XP and loot.