If I were you I would just bite the bullet and pick 2h/polearm without a shield to start with. Then you should fire up native and practice blocking with the bots.
Set combat speed to slower first and fight the novices, block them until you can confidently block the highest ranked dude, cause hes also the fastest.
Set combat speed to medium and repeat. If you want to be all cool set combat speed to fastest and repeat. Also spar with them a little, practice attacking back after a block and experiment with mouse settings. (make sure you have manual blocking enabled)
Then create a skip the fun character. Try this build (you can also do polearm if you like):
Strength: 21
Agility: 18
Hit points: 66
Skills to attributes: 8
Ironflesh: 5
Power Strike: 7
Athletics: 6
Weapon Master: 5
Two Handed: 146
Get into the duel server on cRPG and duel. Get a heavy bastard sword and some light armour. First try to block a lot, just doing simple attacks back. When blocking goes better, attack more, maybe try feinting and hold attacks. Still, most important is that you get blocking down.
After several hours I hope you get the hang of it, you might learn it very quickly or very slowly. Don't get discouraged when you'll die a lot at first, it is the only time to quickly close the gap with the average player, who is pretty good these days.
Then try to get into battle, most importantly is you try to survive and observe, the quicker you get how to be efficient in battle the better. If you do die quickly spectate someone high up the boards, he probably knows his stuff. Spectate good players from different classes to see which one seems fun.
Why do I recommend going shiedless rather than a shielder? A shield might break, you need to be able to block when that happens. I personally find being a shielder a lot less fun than being a shieldless meleer.
If you would start as a 1h you would have much less understanding of how people fight, understanding your opponents is very important (also why you should try being a shielder in the near future). When you have a shield you press RMB and you block, you would be less forced to duel and get better cause you have easy blocking.
When you dont have a shield you'll be constantly reminded of how much you suck and will therefore be pushed much harder to improve and thus improve quicker.
When you think you have a good idea of how combat works and have taken a good look around the battlefield at the different classes you should start your main character, which should not be skip the fun. 21/18 is a pretty good build for any melee class, judge by your melee experience with the skip the fun character if you want more power or speed.
Judging from your post I thought you prefer melee, if you are a determined horselover or ranged lover this was a waste and you should go with that.
