Wall of text incoming from a newbie, tl;dr at the end

Over the last days I played a lot and tried out different build ideas I found in these forums, but in the end I can't really decide which build to take! First I started a pure healing cleric, but my experiences in pugs were frightening and playing solo got old very fast since apparently it's only about healing and following my hireling. Going with a healing cleric doesn't seem to be the number one solo choice. Or is it?

A THF Paladin starting out as a rogue was my next step. Being able to do things myself everything felt a lot smoother and I could complete all the adventures including traps. Searching is more often the problem. Plus the THF doesn't really feel right for my taste

Then I toyed around with a Tempest Trapmonkey to see how TWF feels. Dealing with traps is easier compared to Pala/Rogue in these early levels but I noticed that it's almost impossible to find and disable stuff on anything higher than normal in quests around my level up to six. Am I doing something wrong here or am I just missing Int/gear/levels? Another thing I don't like is that I get beaten up a lot more compared to the pala, thanks to lower AC I guess, and the low willsave really annoys me. I can only imagine how this will be when I hit the nasty mobs in higher levels. Again, will this be better with gear/levels?

To get the most out of trapskills I made a Rogue/Wizard but haven't played her a lot so far since it's as exciting as playing my cleric. I follow my hireling and defender, hypnotizing and charming stuff while they beat everything up. It's rather effective so far since they do like ten times my damage and I can stand in the back and watch them play. Most of the time I don't even have to do something besides trying to manage the hireling KI or healing him - only taking WF hirelings because of this. I've yet to find a trap/door I couldn't deal with even on higher difficulties. It is effective yet boring and I wonder when this will change? When will I be factor and not my followers? When I finally reach Palemaster at 12? This seems to be a long way off. Plus I avoided Undead so far. Will those parts of the game be any kind of fun without being able to charm/hypnotize?

When combining all my experiences so far I'd really like to make a TWF Paladin and it figures I'd need Drow for that. However this doesn't seem to be a good starter build and I don't have cash/tomes/gear waiting to get it working

Probably I could write a lot more, but this is more than enough and I have to thank everybody who actually read it


tl;dr: when building a character for soloing, is it really mandatory to have a splash of rogue for handling traps? Or in other words: would it be possible to get most out of the game without rogue-multiclassing despite being forced to solo most of the time?