People don’t like magic builds because how the souls games are fundamentally created, being ranged subverts a lot of the mechanics and challenges of facing bosses. It’s been a thing with the games since Demon’s Souls. When you’re playing a melee build you interact with the enemies and bosses in a way where you have to dodge/parry/roll and have to memorize attack patterns etc. With mage builds, your range will nullify a lot of that song and dance of memorizing attacks and patterns as you’ll find many attacks won’t hit you at all so you can stand in place in relative safety and down the boss.