Well, finished my first playthrough as Assassin, unlocked the harder difficulty level. Man do I hate the boss fights in this game. I'm not sure why they thought "massive hps and the ability to either 1 or 2 shot you" is a fun game mechanic, but it really isn't. Luckily there tends to be semi-exploitive spots you can stand that'll minimize the damage you take, so you can get through them.
Now I'm wondering if I want to play more with the same char, or advance some of the others (I got all 4 chars as far as Sanctuary just so I could swap them their appropriate skill mods, so I didn't sell any that turn out to be good)? So far the Assassin and Gunzerker seem to have the weakest active skills - although I suspect the Gunzerker gets better as you go. I almost never used the Assassin one just because it's extremely situational - or so it seemed to me.
Oh, and Creston - unless you end up getting bad luck, you really don't have to worry about finding good quality stuff, by the end, I'd found at least a few dozen purples, and somewhere around 10 oranges. You go through tonnes of crap stuff, true, but the better gear is definitely dropping well.