1) Oh, yeah. Even when I had a bunch of health and armor on NG I still couldn’t survive that. Probably impossible to survive on NG+.

But if you get and upgrade a tower shield you can mostly tank hits. In PvE there’s only a few attacks that will hit through a shield (provided enough stamina). The only reason I would suggest against bows is the cost of arrows in souls counting toward your soul memory, which can make it harder to summon allies if you try to get a decent level as well.

2) Solo? Are you sure? Half of the fun of the game is summoning people to help! Plus there’s specific story threads you can’t advance unless you summon NPC allies in a few fights (and they live).

I could never get that Dragonrider trick to work. But it’s not a hard fight. Just circle-strafe to stay next to/behind him and there’s only one attack he can do to hit you.