Spent the afternoon messing around with INT builds. I thought about doing a DEATH BUILD using the Lord of Death staff which splits scaling 50/50 with INT, so I'd have like 45/45 but then I can't use certain spells and stuff so I decided to save a faith run for NG++
Messed around with tons of spells and weapons. Wanted to have a physical off-hand so in a tight spot I could block with my shield and then after stunning the enemy on block, switch to a quick weapon and get a kill in. Tried using daggers/claws but very few are INT. Still the veteran's arm lightning claw is pretty fun even if it's STR/DEX and not doing obscene damage with my 80 INT build. Only have about 26 STR/22 DEX so I can use most of the weapons. Actually wanted a real FP bar this time around so put 35 into mind to start and kept VIT at 60. Faith is 25 for Golden Vow, Arcane is like 9 default.
Anyhow, INT mages are fun!
Not mix/maxing or anything, but what I found worked nice and was fun was:
-short range grunt killer - Night's Comet/Comet
-short range multi-enemy killer - Adula's Moonblade
-Board & Shield - Magic Hammer is fucking fun to pound enemies after they stun from a block.
-Mid-range group - Didn't find a whole lot I like for this - Death's Rancor is pretty good for spam but would be better with the death staff and faith/int split run.
-Mid-range group - Actually I take that back, the magic cannon is great even if it's a little slow windup
-Long-range/slow/boss killers - I tried Ranni's dark moon and the damage was shit even with the Lucarian Regal staff that enhances it. A lot of the big deal ones seemed kind of shit on damage. Crystal Torrent is good if you can stay still for a long time gattling them without getting fucked which didn't work on the big enemies I tried it against. Ended up finding the meteor storm to be the most enjoyable. Yeah it misses small enemies and goes all over, but for small enemies stuff like Comet is fine. For big enemies where all the meteors hit them after you've done golden vow -> jelly fish damage buff -> physics magic boost & unlimited FP and 30% magic buff sigil....pretty much kicks ass.
Finally having been stealth limited in my melee build and just fighting everything. The ease of constantly putting invisibility on with an INT build is so fucking fun. Just run up and backstab every enemy. I should've added points to get invisibility in my melee run. So good.
I upgraded a bunch of weapons to +9, spears, holy swords, daggers, claws, shields, etc... and bought a bunch of extra Somber stones 1-9 if I wanna upgrade something else next run. So I think I'm all good to start a NG+ run and fuck around with magic only.
For NG++ I think a dual dagger/claw & faith build would be pretty fun, though not sure how compatible they are. Daggers/claws seem dex/str ashes of war combo build ready.
Or a Grim Reaper faith build with a scythe and lord of death staff and using all the death magics.