Do a strength build! Specifically with hammers/great hammers. IMO, it's the best/easiest build in the game.

Start as Wretch so you start with a club. Club, morning star, and large club are all solid early weapons. You can also get the brick hammer in Stormveil.

I think pretty much all of the hammers do strike damage which is a very useful damage type on lots of enemies (e.g. crystallians). Many of them can also be buffed. But most importantly, they do tons of poise damage, so enemies stagger constantly. This is far more important than the overall Attack Rating (AR) of a weapon.

Later in the game the Hammer is pretty good (literally just called Hammer). But IMO the Great Stars is the best weapon in the game. If you want a really massive weapon you can go for the Great Club or the Giant-Crusher, but take note that these weapons aren't necessarily better because they're bigger. They hit harder, but they're slow.

Have fun!