I'm still really new to the game and finding that I can only really get melee going in the early game so far.

If you want to try early magic, I would suggest trying necromancer and a horde of zombies as a meat shield or inquisitor and backpedal with the first spell.

Golem necromancer seems genuinely busted so far. You have effectively infinite stamina for spells, and a horde of zombies to distract enemies.

Had 2 long runs, 1st was a Golem Berserk (Died lv11) and the 2nd a Dijin Warlock (Still alive lv 13). so I played with both melee and magic, and magic is far much better.

Late game the bosses just deal too much for close range (one of them was dealing 90dmg per hit for example), with mage you can easily cheese any enemy using long range magic and running away.

Magic is nice in that you can equip any type of weapon (spear/bow/sword/etc), which means you can use literally any strong weapon you find.