Hi everyone, with the new dlc coming out I thought I would start fresh as I couldn't remember the path of my old character.
Similarly to my old character I want to play battlemage, however not make a hash of it this time.

This time I am using heavy armour, destruction, one handed, and restoration as my main skill trees. I have read around to invest in alteration but I don't see how this can be largely beneficial as I am already quite spread out over several trees.

I am not sure whether frost is the best route to go down seeing as it has paralye ability that alteration has, or simply to ocus on fire for the pure damage factor. My strategy is to use destruction to weaken the enemy and then one handed them/close destruction and heal. Also sword seems to be beneficial as with enchants the damage output will surely be higher than the slower weapon types?

Thanks for your input?

If you plan on useing cloak spells when you switch to one-handed frost or shock would be best.
The flame cloak will make your enemies run away if you have the intense flames perk.
Frost will paralyze them making your job easy and shock will dissintegrate them.

Also conjuration would make for a good supportive skill.

I'd say switch out alteration for conjuration. With Heavy Armor the flesh spells are somewhat redundant as Mage Armor won't apply, the utility spells like light balls and telekinesis can be used anyway when having enough mana. With conjuration you gain an excellent element of crowd control as well as summonable weapons, and historically it's been a staple of TES Battlemage skillsets.

Surely frost cloak would be better as it would allow powerful ranged through fire and paralyse when enemies fet close?I didn't even think about cloaks and there uses! Thanks, soDestruction (frost maybe woith fire?)Heavy armour1hConjurationRestoration (only a few points)

I'm still a mage noob myself, but I don't see why you'd need alteration at all if you're working on heavy armor and restoration. Seems like you've got your defensive bases covered. Besides, sufficiently levelled and perked-out alteration would tend to make armor obsolete...

As for frost, I can't speak to that, as I never use it. There seems to be a lot of beasts and baddies with cold resistance out there... I use fire for general damage dealing, and lightning vs. spell casters to drain their Magicka. I imagine the slow and stamina effects of frost would be handy, but I haven't felt the need to dive into it.

When I create a Battlemage I tend to focus on Conjuration for two Storm Thrall Atronachs, Two-Handed (Bound Battleaxe), Enchanting (Acquiring souls is made very easy with the use of the Bound Battleaxe), Heavy Armour and then some in Smithing. If I was to throw in Destruction I'd go with Frost, and focus on Ice Storm, Ice Runes and Frost Cloak especially, pretty much anything to slow down and potentially paralyze the enemy before charging in to deal damage close up.

You could also go exclusively for shock, it will give you a few perks extra from the destruction tree and no creature is resistant to it. The frost shield is otherwise a good idea, just keep in mind that most of the bad guys in the game are nords.