Daggerrrrrz was not a serious suggestion.
I actually think blocking itself is just less reliable in Dark Souls 2, though, even if you do have a good shield. It seems to eat up a lot more stamina than before, and you're not going to find a 100% physical shield until after Pursuer (which is early, but kind of a roadblock for new players). Granted, I've never bothered with greatshields (mostly because see below points). I stuck with the Drangleic Shield all through my first game and it was decent but not, you know, the reliable middle shield awesomeness you could find in abundance in Dark Souls 1; this time the best middle shield comes from the second-to-last boss soul! It's definitely nice to have one when you're unfamiliar with the game, but on replay I dropped them and never looked back. It actually feels like they intended for blocking to be much less the universally optimal choice than it usually was in DS1. I think dodging actually works out better in DS2 than it did in DS1 due to being omnidirectional (although i-frames being tied to an actual stat took a fuck of a lot of getting used to) and it's kind of difficult now for me to go back to the older games where you're locked into four directions for rolling.
Pump endurance to 20 and then forget about it. Stamina gains drop off after that point; you might want more if you're going strength weapons since they eat a ton of stamina, but that's about the only build that might need anything past the soft cap outside of quirky stuff like the warped sword (which has a special attack that eats like a full bar).
I almost completely ignore vitality. I don't see any reason to care about it unless you're using heavy weapons or heavy armor, and why would I waste levels on a stat that does nothing but let me move faster wearing armor when I could spend them on being better at killing dudes instead? Poise is a much less solid form of defense than it was in Dark Souls 1; even facetanking with Havel's doesn't buy you very many hits before getting staggered, and once you are staggered poise basically stops existing at all for that fight. And since Souls defensive stats do almost nothing, I find that poise being nerfed significantly diminishes the principle reason to actually use armor in the first place. The mainstay defensive options of DS1 seem to be less worthwhile by design in DS2 (it took me a long time and lot of swearing to get used to this). The fast roll range is also much broader than it used to be--I'm honestly not sure precisely where it is, actually, mobility seems to decrease gradually in Dark Souls 2 rather than having sharply defined cutoff points--so you don't have to obsessively fiddle with your stats and gear to make sure you're just under 25% equip burden at all times.
And that's why I don't complain about the divided stats, Grefter! Actually, it suits my playstyle a lot better--I can get away with investing less in endurance itself and ignore vitality altogether because armor's fucking worthless in my estimation anyway. All the Fashion Soulsest gear is light armor! You know my priorities.
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Torchlight 2: The big bad died offscreen from poison while I ran off to shoot up his minions (to spawn more of my own minions). Poison, you guys! It's so great.
