So I made it all the way to Aldia's Keep, go me! Finished off the Rotten, scored Lucatiel's gear and sword (why didn't anyone tell me it was a dex-based claymore? She wields like a scimitar in game) and even managed to get Veldstadt's awesome armor and mace.
So I redid my build a bit to try it out. It didn't fair so well in PvP, but I kinda liked the idea of a strength-based Hexer, but with so many stats to really spend on, its kinda hard to make this work... any ideas? His gear is super-heavy, even with Royal Soldier's Ring +1 and 20 Vitality I was still encumbered.
Either way, I redid my stats again - using up my final soul vessel to do so (I wonder if I can find another one?) and tweak my build a bit more towards the Dex side and pulled some points from strength, ADP, VIT and put them all into Faith, Dex, ATT, Vigor, and End. I now have 16 strength, but 30 dex and 48 Faith, 20 ATT, etc. at level 121. So I can now cast Sunlight Spear, Blade, and Great Lightning Blade. All pretty cool. Even better? I finally managed to get all the pieces of the Heide's armor set. So I'm sitting pretty, but...
I'm kinda unsatisfied with my build. It's a bit on the heavy side, so depending on my weapon, I get the heavy rolls, but this overall build feels a lot like the one I used in Dark Souls 1, and I was pretty happy with it in Dark Souls 1, but I wanted to try something completely different. I had this idea of trying to be a sort of phantom-like, dark swordsman or something similar, but hex spells are pretty difficult to get the requirements for, and its getting really hard to level up at this point. With only 4 Int in my stats, its going to take quite a few points to bring it up, and over several hundred thousand souls to do so.
And yet, I still can't win at PvP, I haven't scored a single win yet. And I'm not sure how strong my damage will be. And I have yet to get summoned as a Blue Sentinel... I'm not sure if/when it'll happen.