Hello

With regards to tanking, barbs do still play that role in pve---in certain instances that were designed that way. Before you can access these instances, you would need to level from 95-100, then 'rebirth' (reset your level to 0 in exchange for a bunch of stat points), level back to 100, 'rebirth' again for even more stat points, and level back to 100. Don't worry, its not quite as bad as it sounds: after your first rebirth you get 4x the xp on everything (mob kills, quests, etc) and 3.5x xp after the 2nd rebirth. This stacks with hyper XP stones, so the leveling goes really fast.

The first instance where your barb can be useful in tanking is 'Flowsilver Palace' (abbreviated as FSD for the easy version, and FSJ for the hard version of the instance), in Primal World. Primal World can be accessed after your first rebirth if I remember correctly. Primal World is where most of the daily quests take place nowadays.

The other major instance where a barb is 100% necessary is 'Uncharted Paradise' (abbreviated as UPD). This also has a normal and a 'hard' version. All but the most OP of the OP squads require a barb for the last boss (not due to normal boss dmg, but due to a mechanic that only barbs are allowed to stand in without taking 100,000 dmg). However, this instance requires a high Boundary Level to enter (a way to filter out ppl whose stats aren't really good enough to handle this instance), and you won't be able to enter it for some time. See below for more explanation.

If you plan on being a completely free player, the catchup will take a while, but its not impossible by any means. In Primal World, the daily quests mostly revolve around obtaining 'vitae' which is used to level your 'Boundary Level'. The higher your Boundary Level, the more 'spirit' you have. Spirit generally makes your character stronger all around. Your take less dmg and do more dmg, the more spirit you have. Since Primal World has been out for a while now, there are quite a few Boundary Levels. Catching up on this as a paying player is quite easy, though a bit pricy. There are sometimes items for sale in boutique which can allow you to catch up for most of the Boundary Levels. As a free user, its obviously much slower, but fortunately PWI has modified many of the quests in here to give way more vitae than they used to, so levelling up your Boundary Levels as a new alt is faster than it was when everybody else did those same Boundary Levels.

Other old instances generally don't need barbs anymore. This could change with the revamps that have been promised for Twilight Temple (TT) and Lunar Glade, but for now, most well geared players can solo these instances with relative ease.

Of course, barbs are still highly important in pvp. In normal Territory War, barbs are still the de facto catapult puller (catapults are necessary to damage enemy faction's crystal and win the battle). And in pvp in general, one barb per squad makes the squad stronger, both by providing squads buffs (+hp and +phy attack) and by acting as a buffer to incoming dmg, by standing in front of his allies and distracting the enemy.

There are many new and very cool skills that all classes got, and barbs are no exception. Doing the Primal World dailies will help you access many of these new skills, which include passive buffs that every class gets, and class-specific skills that only barbs get.

Cheers.