For a new player, my take for survivability will be:
1. Swords
2. Staff/spear

Swords have good offense and defense capabilities, coupled with ability to riposte. This gives you very good advantage to stand toe to toe with mobs and pkers. However you cannot maledict.

Staff/spear have very good defensive spin and can maledict a person, including bleeding him. However offense-wise, you may lose out to those like daggers, swords, axes, maces.

All said, in the right player's hands, any specs can be deadly, as you can see from another Unofficial website logs forum.