Sounds like "Hellhound" got a proper tag now, which IIRC is an Ausar who took the Treatment drug and got the bovine horns and such
whats the best starting stats and class?
The answer is "personal preference" on class. They all do things really good and have shenanigans that are hard to top by something else. Merc is straight forward heavy hitter both in melee or ranged assuming you stick with weapons that go pure Kinetic dependent on your build. Smuggler synergizes extremely well with Stun due to sneak attacks and can break the 50% evasion cap to dodge attacks. Tech Specialists are Energy Weapons pros and can do a lot of damage in the right hands, and Kineticists can get stuff done with relatively simplistic weapons or even no weapons due to basic combinations like freezing > crushing and such.
As for stats, all stats have a cap at each level in increments of 5 per level. Physique is important for most melee builds but you can actually avoid putting points into it early on in builds like Mercenary or Smuggler melee because you can train it; a life time pass at New Texas Gym means you can basically just grind it out at the until you get bored and cap it at your level.
Intelligence is really mainly useful for just Tech Specialist and scant few dialogue checks that matter, and you can level it super easy early in the game using an infamous exploit by progressing with an NPC named Syri on Mh'enga until you're fuck-buddies then when going through the 'Talk' option you ask her about books then whatever the first option is to slowly raise it. Basically, you hold down '1' until it's capped. This works really well every time you level up until she transfers to Uveto, then they nerf it.
If you want an easier first playthrough I recommend Mercenary or Tech-Specialist.
Merc is a simple life and you just smack things until dead, regardless if you're playing Melee or Ranged. Techie is insanely good if you play melee because Charge-Weapon is stupid. Ranged is okay too but don't fall into the trap of focusing in Drones.