someone playing a mage recently commented about neglecting strength and dexterity, so apparently equipment enchantments and potions, etc are more than enough for melee and ranged resistances.
I said that earlier this thread, but I've got to admit it depends on your definition of a 'mage'.
To me a mage is someone who focuses entirely on maximum damage at the expense of survivability - basically 'kill them before they even get the chance to touch you'. Such a build requires adopting 'hit and run' tactics, and makes it hard in the occasional confined battle areas, but it definitely works in DKS. From level 20-40 (at normal difficulty) I could kill pretty much all non-boss monsters with one hit (although, admittedly, I'd then be nearly helpless until the cooldown had completed). Towards the end of the game (and after carefully managing my build, equipment and enchants) it was getting so easy that I increased the difficulty level to 'hard' - by then I could do 10k damage from a single spell.
But that's just my opinion - it depends on how you want to play the game. DKS handles mages like most RPGs do - weak at the start, but able to churn through monsters faster than any other build once you've achieved a decent level. Basically, I'm just too impatient to be a tank - I want to kill the enemy and proceed ASAP, instead of gradually wearing them down. And if that means the occasional death because one of them got too close, then so be it...
