Just curious what people think about taking the mage armor perks and using dragonhide.

My fear is that using dragonhide every fight just becomes tedious, even with dual casting, 99 seconds isn't much, and if i am ever caught off guard then i might be SOL, though become ethereal and detect life would help prevent that.

With how i plan on going about my enchantments and perks, dual cast dragonhide would cost 411, dual cast ebony flesh would be 168.

Right now I have 1 perk in mage armor, doubling armor rating for 1 perk is very much worth it in my opinion, helps alot early game.

but regardless, this is just me thinking out loud.

What do you guys think? those that have experience in this matter, what are your opinions on it?

Im leaning towards going with the mage armor perks, its only 3 perks total, and would much more convenient than taking 5 seconds to cast a 99 second spell. Due to the magicka cost of Dragonhide taking up more than half my magicka, its something that i think would be reserved for more difficult boss fights.

dragon hide provides more armor but i dont want to deal with the animation so i use ebonyflesh with mage armor.

Just wear armor. The "mage armor" in skyrim just doesn't compare with wear a set of light armor with the enchantments you want. There's no advantage to being a cloth mage.

If you want to min/max then this is the best option. Skip Alteration and perk up Light or Heavy Armor instead.

Ebonyflesh with perks gives at the most 300 armor rating which gives roughly 40% damage mitigation.
Dragonhide gives a direct 80% damage mitigation making it the vastly superior spell. 80% is the cap for damage mitigation as far as I'm aware. A few people claim it's 85% but I would disagree.

If you can put up with recasting it every 30 seconds which is a pain, especially in lengthy dungeons, then you can forgo armor entirely.

I do wish they would increase the mage armor spell durations to 20 minutes or so. Magic in this game really needs looking at.

300 armor is 36% damage reduction. you can get it up to 375 with necromage/vampirism but it still doesn't come close to 80%. so real armor is betterthan any magic armor unless if u role play a character who doesn't use real armor.

I have thought about this issue of Dragonhide vs. Ebonyflesh also.

The way I play, I usually know when I need to put up my armor. Detect Life and Detect Dead is really useful. If I'm surprised, there is Become Ethereal shout. In a lot of battles, I will not bother with any armor spell. You do not need armor when you are fighting dragons. You do not need armor if enemies can't get close enough to hurt you.

The only time I feel I need to activate mage armor is when there is a strong archer shooting at me. If I get hit once and lose half my health, I will hide behind something, heal myself, and put on my best mage armor, Dragonhide.

Let's think about some scenarios. Your health is 200, an archer is doing 100 damage per shot.

1. No armor. You will die to the second shot. 200 total damage. You can survive 2.0 shots.
2. You activate Ebonyflesh with no perks 100 Armor rating. 12% damage reduction. Each shot is doing 88 damage. You will die to the third arrow. 264 total damage. You can survive 2.15 shots.
3. You activate Ebonyflesh with all 3 perks. 300 Armor rating. 36% damage reduction. Each shot is doing 64 damage. You will die to the fourth arrow. You can survive 3.125 shots.
4. You activate Dragonhide. 80% damage reduction. Each shot is soing 20 damage. You will die to the 10th arrow. You can survive 10.0 shots.

If you play on Master difficulty, you can meet a Draugr Deathlord with Ebony Bow. He does 500 damage per shot.
1. No armor. You die to the first shot. 500 damage
2. Ebonyflesh. You die to the first shot. 440 damage
3. Ebonyflesh with 3 perks. You die to the first shot. 320 damage
4. Dragonhide. You die to the second shot. 100 damage per shot.

But if you know he's there using detect dead spell, you can paralyze him before he can take a single shot.

Whether or not I have mage armor perks, I would use Dragonhide when I need it. The difference is huge. 36% protection vs. 80% protection.

In my opinion 99 second is enough for most situations. I carry around a few bottles of fortify alteration potions which can double that time. I really don't use Dragonhide all that often. It's a bit annoying to use. But when I need mage armor I use Dragonhide. It provides much much better protection than Ebonyflesh with all 3 mage armor perks.

Actually Alteration is fantastic, up to Stoneflesh, so you can get the 3 perks of magic resistance, which are no joke. I cast stoneflesh all of the time early game until I hit the cap. Funny thing is, my mid 40s character right now still hasn't hit the cap. Damn sneaky types never taking hits.

I don't use alteration and I only wear robes....nothing gets near me so I have no use for armor or 'mage armor'

Thats a pretty good assessment, but that is a pretty specific scenario.

and the use of mage amor does not exclude the use of dragonhide, so when going against tougher opponents, I would imagine making use of dragonhide, but going through the dungeon, is it worth having to cast dragonhide 5+ times throughout a dungeon? Few enemies hit as hard as a draugr deathlord archer, very very few do.

What about your average cave bear run-in? or dealing with lower level draugr? is ebony flesh really needed?

I know. A mod I use triples mage armor duration, but the console users per usual get the short end of the stick here.