Dark Souls II Build Help

so I’m totally new to the Dark Souls thing, but am loving the game. I’ve tried each character out in the beginning of the game to get a sense of where they all start out. I get that there’s a huge learning curve and challenge involved in this game, so I’m looking for some advice. Now that I’ve tried out all the classes I’ve decided that I want to play melee/ranged sorcery. Questions:
1) Is that a reasonable character build or am I spreading myself thin?
2) What’s the best class to start with for this build and for someone who is new to Dark Soul?
Cheers for the help
Answer #1
1) I haven’t played Dark Souls II myself yet as I’m waiting for the PC and only watched a couple of videos (up to the first boss, to not spoil myself too much) so I can’t say if it would work well.
That said though, it was totally feasible in Dark Souls I, in fact, as a sorcerer type class you still have to be able to melee enemies due to the simple fact that spells are limited in their uses and you just don’t have enough to kill everything with magic.
What you could do in DS1 (and still can in DS2) is upgrade your weapons into magic variants, which increased their damage scaling from your intelligence and decreased the scaling from the default strength and dexterity, so your weapons would do damage still.
2) If you want to play a sorcerer type class and are new I would recommend going sorcerer, because ranged combat is always easier than melee in the Souls series.
Also some general tips for Souls series newbies
– Be Patient!
This is the most important thing in a souls game. Don’t rush, don’t try to skip enemies, even if it’s tedious when you died, kill everything again, it’s faster than dying again because something came back to… well… stab you in the back.
– Be Alert!
Have a close look at your surroundings, the game is never unfair. It has its moments where it just instantly kills you, but in general it doesn’t hide it and if you’re taking a close look at areas you should be able to figure stuff like that out, for example burn marks on the ground and when you go there a dragon swoops in and burns the area.
– Be Humble!
Don’t underestimate even the most basic of enemies. Everything can be deadly to you at all times. Just because you’re higher level or have good gear, even the first enemies can still overwhelm you when there’s enough of them.
And finally
– Be Interested!
Item descriptions are there for a couple of reasons. Not only provide they information about the uses of the item but also often hint to lore or other information that helps you with other parts of the game.