I did write a beginners guide which may be useful.
The more skills you have unlocked (they become unlocked for the PvE character that finds them and ALL PvP-only characters) the easier it is to put your PvP build together. (Your PvP and PvE builds will be VERY different!).
If you have your ideal 8 skills in mind, and can get 5 or 6 of them early on in the game, then you need 3,000 Balthazar faction to unlock a new skill (for PvP only). You can get the elites this way too. This is quite do-able from sticking with Random Arenas.
The cookie-cutter builds available will already have some skills unlocked which your PvE character hasn't unlocked yet. I'm not sure if these are unlocked for your account properly if you build your own PvP character.
If you want to do SOME PvE, these are useful references
Free Skills from Quests
Trainers that sell skills
There will be some overlap in the above. You spend your skill points at trainers, so getting a skill via quest may be more optimal.
55hp monks are used for farming. You can have 55hp necros etc also with monk secondary. You will get slaughtered with one in PvP though. Vampiric Touch works through all protection spells so you will be dead in one hit! There are a lot of 'Touch Rangers' about atm (Ra/Ne). You are a major target in PvP as a monk.
If you come across an item giving -15 energy (I think you get one as a quest reward in Ascalon at some point) hold onto it. It can be useful (assuming you are PvPing with a PvE character) to reduce your energy while under an energy denial attack (i.e. quick weapon switch to the -15E weapon), so that once the attack is over, you switch back to your normal weapon (+12E say) and you have 27 energy straight away. (Advanced tactic that, so don't worry for now.)
I threw mine away of course thinking it was useless
GvG would be good. We need a few more bodies though.
DS