Drangelic castle is next for you then you'll get lots of souls there easily. And it's got lots of friendly ruin sentinels.
Demon great hammer or dragon tooth are pretty great if you've got them.
I specifically want to get away from the hammer class because I think I could just smash my way to victory with the Giant Club's two hand R2 attack, and I'd like to change it up a bit into a mid-sized sword direction, but they seem less viable than they did in Dark 1.
I am currently rocking the giant club for any heavily armored enemies and using the sun sword on less armored ones, but it feels like an affectation when I can just smash to win.