Hey, I started playing recently and I'm finding the combat quite tedious, as in enemies take way too long to die and each attack feels like a mosquito bite. I'm really worried that it is only going to get worse as I level up.

At higher levels, will enemies die in less hits (better skill selection) or more (more enemy HP/armor)?

If that's going to change the answer significantly, let me mention that I won't get into PvP. To me the playthrough is all about casually experiencing the written content at a smooth pace.

I'm using 1H+shield. Is it a wrong class to pick if that's a big deal to me? Online searches seem to say that two-handers are about crowd control instead of damage. Is there a sort of "heavy" class / weapon tree, i.e. attacks slowly but individual hits are strong? It doesn't need to be melee in particular though I would favor it.