Tips for early Sorcerer playthrough?

This is my second souls game (played to level 40 in SotFS) and am trying a sorcerer playthrough after getting a little burnt out of my thief character.

Right now I am level 18 with 11 VIT 18 ATN and 21 INT and 10 FTH. All other stats are the sorcerer's base stats.

My setup has me rocking my 3 slots with soul arrow, heavy soul arrow and heal aid. I am using sorcerer "armor" and the mail breaker. I run through the area spamming Heavy Soul Arrow and chugging ashtus flasks. I just unlocked Yorel and am about to buy the magic weapon but the class is just taking a while to get off the floor. I still have to run through the second map before i can reach the next sorcery merchant. What gives ? Is a pure magic play through possible, and does it get any more fun than spamming HSA?

What armor, weapons and stat tweaks would you do if you were trying to have an early game primarily magic based hero?

EDIT: Where can I see how well each spell scales with int? Does the type of staff I have affect the damage of my spells? where is an early game staff?