Aion Stuff

So I’m a level 17 Templar and I’m currently having great difficulty in leveling. Even though I have upgraded gear/weapon with full +Attack/HP gems I seem to still be doing a minimal amount of damage. Yes, I know I’m a tank blah blah I do realize this but even though I’m a tank I’m still taking mass amount of dmg + doing little damage making leveling really stressful. So my question here is does this get any better? Or is it going to be like this for a while? I checked out the skills and to me they seemed like it was going to help out a bit like at lvl 19 with the 3rd combo slash move but, I did get a bunch of new dmg dealing skills at 16 and to tell you the truth I didn’t see much of an upgrade in my damage.
Also, to those who have PvPed in the abyss as a Templar how is it? judging from the videos/posts I’ve read it seems like range dominate the abyss.