I have Dark Souls 2: SofS for PS3 and I'm already at 120h+
I have started as Bandit, and I have given more importance to Dexterity, Faith and Adaptability, and some others, but these ones stand out, just because when looking at the description, it "feels" like I'm the kind of player that would take advantage of those stats.
One thing that bugs me are the Miracles. The offensive ones, I mean. They are pretty awesome to look at, but not so usefull, or resourcefull. For example, the Lightning spear has only 3 uses. And it damages a standard armored enemy around the 120 points. The amount of uses is the "bottle's neck" in this case, in my opinion. I can use it 3 times in an enemy, and still need to arm up my weapon (usually I use thrust weapons with big range, like spears and lances, currently is a spear with Lightning infusion) and do almost as many hits to the enemy, as I would even if I didn't "empty the magazine" of the miracle in the enemy.
This applies for any offensive miracle that I have, and also for the pyromancies (except the poison one, which is quite helpfull against powerfull foes, even with only 2 uses).
So these "magic tricks" feel a little bit weak, just for show.
Am I missing something?
Please don't spoil, I didn't finish the game yet! 😀
Best Answer
Well, just for your information, Lightning (aka offensive Miracles) was pretty much the strongest shit in Dark Souls 2 when it was released, however it got well deserved nerfs.
Aside from that, there are some pretty strong ones out there (in particular Sunlight Spear), however overall Faith builds are pretty weak. As you correctly noted, most spells are pretty much useless and lightning weapons aren't really strong either.
So if you don't want to reset, I would actually suggest you to go for a Hex build (Faith/Int). The strongest PVE builds are still dual-clubs (In case you are interested here is one and another discussion about dual-wielding clubs and why it's strong) and also most PVP players prefer to keep their distance from spells overall.
TL;DR: Spells overall aren't too strong and Miracles in particular are the weakest of them.