Legion said:
I cannot speak for Dark Souls 2, as I am playing as a Cleric/Knight (Temple Knight basically), but for DS1 this is entirely untrue.
My easiest play-through was as a pure mage. I didn't use a single weapon throughout the game and never struggled at all. I didn't wear heavy armour either nor did I carry a heavy shield. I wore the Crimson set to start with, then the Dingy set for a while before ending up with the Witches set. I used a Dragon Crest shield and a Crest shield.
All you need to do is get enough souls to buy all of the spells as soon as they become available. Then put all of your souls into Intelligence until it reaches level 40 before using them on anything else. As long as you move onto better spells as they become available you will not struggle against any enemies. I eventually moved onto 44 and then 50 Intelligence to use the endgame sorceries at which point I was completely overpowered. Crystal Homing Soul Mass is insanely powerful, and can be charged in advance so you never need to worry about being hit while using it.
Well in dark souls 1, you had power within which made soul spear take off half of a bosses health if you can cast it.
Nothing really resisted magic too. Think your sorc playthrough will end at seath? Lolno.
You still had to conserve your hard hitters for bosses though but that's what the (much stronger back then) magic weapon was there for.
Dark souls 2 is not kind to mages in pve at all, no more power within, shorter casting windows and soul spear does 200 more damage than heavy soul arrow which makes it about as strong as a regular lightning spear but with limited range and 2 casts instead of 11, whoop dee doo.
There's an entire section of the game filled with enemies that are almost immune to magic, another section with so many enemies, you will run out of magic if you zap them all and just try to cast anything against the lost sinner, I dare you.
Basically, pure mage is hard mode and outright impossible in the curse area now.
It's only good for pvp.
