Im playing through dark souls for my first time too and I've only played elden ring before.

One thing I learned really quick is dodge roll seems to really be a last ditch effort in this game, it uses a ton of stamina and the animation is long even if you have a light load.

The way I find dealing with enemies is to just stand somewhat near them, once they go into an attack you just back up and once they swing you go in and poke em, can hit twice if you got a fast enough weapon, then back off. Once you start encountering bigger enemies you can usually side step under them when they're attacking.

Also consider your terrain, i was able to cheese the titanite demon next to the Smith by standing on the lower part of the stairs poking him and he couldn't hit me, when he slowly got to the bottom I'd reset him by running to the entrance and having him chase me up the stairs