I'm returning 9Dragons after 5ish years and I'm wondering which one would be a good class to start over. I'm leaning towards warrior or melee hybrid because I heard they are a good choice first chars. I'm very PvE centric. I've read that warriors are very good for PvE but hybrids have heals which can reduce downtime for grinding. I got to the point where I have to choose a role for my beggar. Up until now, I have to meditate every ~10 kills. In the old days, my SM warrior had to meditate every 3-4 kills which was extremely frustrating. Is it still going to be like this?

No you don't need to meditate if you have leech HP items.

Also currently GC has been bought by Webzen so it's in transition here and we don't know what will happens in the next months.

Hello and welcome back ^^

As a starting char, melee hyb is great. It has enough heals and buffs to be autonomous, so if you train them you don't have to med every 10 kills also, it is not as expensive as warrior. Warrior is a fast grinder and good at PVP, but for that he needs really good gear, which costs a lot. Hyb, on the other hand, doesn't need such good gear to do things, cuz it has heals and buffs to back him up (so train them!).
If you want to make a warrior, do it later on when you have a good amount of money to spend. You can farm a lot with hyb. Probably not as quick as with warrior, but it's safer for a player starting from scratch.
Nevertheless, Neo is right. Maybe you should wait till Webzen decides to tell us what the hell is going to happen!
All the above is my opinion/advise. If you need any more, just PM here on foruns. I don't have much time to play ATM.

GL ^^