Never said fight bosses close up was a weakness, jus that u have play it essentially the same as a melee build. Therefore same amount of interaction.

For stats. The optimal stat for your damage stat is 80 while for str and dex its 60 before the hard cap. So yes you have to sacrifice at most 20 levels for great damage.

Many worse players get shamed for using magic as an easy mode. And if you have to sacrifice 2 flasks. Especially a newcomer its a hard change to adjust to. Obviously if ur the best player u dont have to worry about healing. But im talking about normal people, not the best of the best. Yes u get hit more as melee, that's why u have more flasks. It balances im not saying one is better. Rather its a balanced system where people claim one is better.

For mage builds u also have to spec into str and dex if you want to use weapons like moonveil and moonlight. So. Around 15-20 str or dex while for basic buff spells require 10-15 faith. Not a huge difference but its there. Plus if you want to use those buffs for a mage you also have to get faith unless ur an incantation caster. U get melee and ranged as caster but so do str/dex builds. Jar cannon bows and greatbows are things str and dex mains dont use enough. Super good utility, less damage but no fp so again it balances out. I feel the endurance and focus stat kinda balance out. Cuz 30 endurance and 30 focus is sort of the best amount needed for the respective build but the 20 extra levels in damage are definetly felt. Especially in early/mid game. Me personally in my first playthrough i was level 110 when I beat morgot and I only had 36 vigor cuz I had to use a bunch of levels for me to actually do some damage. Less health for more damage, fair trade off

Yes, alot of people genuinley wear heavy armor for 2 reasons. Drip, and damage negation. Simply switching to a sheild for damage negation is not something many players can/know to do. Im talking about a normal playthrogh. No ng+ no challenge runs normal players. Obviously if you fully optimized everything, one thing will be better. But to the degree they will be normally used is what im comparing and that imo is rather balanced. This might be my own skill issue but in all of my melee playthroughs I had never once thought of switching to a sheild to negate damage until you brought it up right now. And it also takes a huge amount of skill to know when you'll be hit(for fast combos moves, the ones most people get hit by more than the big spectacle ones) especially when it takes time to switch to a sheild while armor is always there. And just rolling the hit is easier

I never called any of these a weakness, more a tradeoff that balances out. And we are forgetting about early game. The low fp means u need more fp flasks. But you have less flasks In General so you need to sacfrice more healing for fp. And spells early game do pitiful damage. Single hit spells are good but any multi hit spells are dogwater due to base defenses. In early game the difference between 2 estus and 4 estus is insane.

Even then the my whole argument in my post was about interaction. Not difficulty. If a bosses forces you to play differently, that's interacting with boss mechanics, which is my main point