Have you had a chance to use Dragonhide yet?

I have been using Ebonyflesh for quite some time now, and it is awesome. When I dual cast it I get it for 198 seconds. With the mage armor perk at rank three and the lord stone that means I have 350 armor for a little over 3 minutes. I am not sure what this equates to compared to the Dragonhide. Dragonhide is described as allowing the castor to ignore 80% of all physical damage for 45 seconds. Since the protection of Ebonyflesh is described in terms of armor, I don't know how to compare them to each other. Kind of confusing.

I have noticed that if you cast Dragonhide first (it shows up in the active effects as described above), then cast Ebonyflesh, the Dragonhide will disappear from the active effects list and only the Ebony flesh will be listed.

If you do the reverse, and start with the Ebonyflesh, then cast Dragonhide, it appears that the Dragonhide didn't do anything except to use up your magicka. The Ebonyflesh is still listed under active effects, but the Dragonhide is not listed.

Have you used Dragonhide in battle?

I am going to head to a dungeon and give it a go.

Dragonhide is technically better in my opinion but is often not worth it, because it's a pain to cast. It takes a few seconds to charge up during which you're rooted to the ground and defenseless, and it only lasts 30 seconds. So the only times I would actually really find it helpful I can't really use it as the enemies would tear me apart before I could cast it.

It would be nice if Dragonhide and Ebonyflesh stacked, but sadly they don't; neither do any other other armor spells.

If Dragonhide either lasted a lot longer or was faster to cast, I'd use it all the time in a heartbeat...

With all three ranks of Mage Armor Ebonyflesh only results in 300 armor, which is 36% damage mitigation. Dragonhide is always the maximum 80%.

I kind of feel like Mage Armor should have an effect on Dragonhide to make the perk not go obsolete. Maybe extending its duration or something. I think I'll add that to my planned mod.

How did you come up with 300 armor being equated to 36% damage mitigation?

http://uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Armor

Thank you for that link.

So in my case using only the Ebonyflesh spell for example, with no other armor and the lord stone, my displayed armor rating is 350. I am assuming my hidden armor rating is 0 because i do not wear chest or any other armor. According to UESP.NET formula.

damage reduction% = (displayed armor rating + hidden armor rating) * 0.12

yields 42% damage reduction, If I am looking at it correctly.

The Dragonhide spell puts you right at the top with 80% reduction.

So to Cosmar's point


I think that pretty much answers it for me. Thanks guys.

Well, you can extend Dragonhide's duration pretty well. Stability extends the duration to 45 seconds, and even though it's a two-handed spell you can still dual-cast it if you use both hands, resulting in a 113 second duration.

Well for my mage I just got bored of alteratiom, so I went heavy armor, I got wolf armor 1perk in smithing(steel), lvl to 100 smithing, and enchant gear with +25% armor improving, you will get to armor cap using like 2 perks in heavy armor (also used +heavy armor skill on gloves, dont rly know if needed, but good option until it actually lvls up), only thing I used in alteration was 4 perks to get 20% magic resistance, to get it caped on my breton: lord stone:25+breton:25+agent of mara+15+magic resistance:20=85% magic resist

but tbh the only thing a mage needs is 0% destruction spell cost, for dual cast spam, with stagger perk, thats the best defense ingame, but then game gets rly boring.

Unfortunately, you made the right decision. Alteration's defensive spells are a joke compared to armor, even if you take Stability and 3x Mage Armor. I'll be improving this when the Creation Kit is available, but for now there's not much point to an unarmed character.

Each to his own, I suppose.

I am lvl 48 mage at the moment and am enjoying being un-armored (playing on adept level) and find that 3x Mage Armor is plenty. It's not the max of 80% reduction, but seems to be plenty for now. I haven't put any level up points into stamina, so I can't carry much, as it is. I wouldn't want to carry a whole set of heavy armor right now. I make use of a variety of tactics: paralyze, stagger, conjure, shout, ward and bound sword for soul capture, I am having quite a variety of gameplay. I think it is fun. For my own taste, I would not choose to be a straight-up warrior. I think for my next play through I will be an assassin/stealth/illusion type character. I haven't spent one single perk on illusion on this play through.

My magicka pool wasn't big enough for the dual cast Dragonhide, so i decided to level up alteration to 100 (I was already at like 96 anyway, just from normal use) so i could get the half cost for master spells perk. I cast the single Dragonhide on myself and let some bandits hack at me while I just stood there.... that was pretty interesting. Is this what Armor wearers do with max Armor? Even with the half cost perk, my magicka pool still wasn't high enough for dual cast, so I enchanted some fortify magicka items, and got the pool over 700 which is what it took for me. Having 0 cost for destruction saves my bacon when I use up almost the whole pool to dual cast Dragonhide. I cast it on myself if I am about to go into a big battle with a boss, otherwise i use my other enchanted items that don't boost my magicka pool so high (favoring other enchants instead) and use Ebonyflesh instead, which is fine for most battles. The only time I have trouble is with other spell casters that are using an element I wasn't prepared for... at least I have trouble until I change out some gear to mach the threat. The creative gameplay as a mage is what keeps it interesting for me.

with perk, all armor is weightless. It's not a concern at all.