Ive played 3 different builds over the last few hours. Rogue, Cipher, Chanter. I am not a veteran either but have scoured vids of gameplay and builds for about a week now. I tried "hard" and it worked , but I needed to rest after a few encounters and this is just the very beginning of play,
Where to stand in combat, not letting eye candy of combat itself make you forget your needed pause for tactics, gauging who to target first etc is a learning curve. so maybe 'Normal" is best if just to get the hang of things.
I long to be on "hard" mostly for cool factor and extra enemies; that is ;going to have to wait.