Keeping in mind I have zero experience with AA and EQ2 in general. I am a raider from WoW and have just recently given up my mage and rogue to seek out a new gaming life in EQ2. I've been researching all afternoon and this is what I've discovered.
While Swashbucklers are Defensive DPS, Brigands are Offensive DPS. They are used for fast attacks/debuffs. Their debuffs can increase the overrall dps of your raid group by 15-20% which obviously makes them very useful in raids. While the Assassin will most likely top the dps charts, the Brigand is never usually far behind parsing between 1400-1600 with top raiding gear. When distributing AA(keeping in mind i have absolutely NO idea how this system works) Str/Wis seems to be the optimum choice for a raiding brigand. But it appears that Str/Wis is only useful if you have a really good 1hand. For Dual Wield you would want to Str/Agi.
Are any of these statements incorrect? Am I mistaken? I plan on playing the game to the fullest extent and I am definitely ready to commit to an end game guild asap. Obviously I'll try the classes out first, but things change as you level and you discover pros and cons that you did not foresee when you first created the toon.