It's a lame thing beth did to slow regen during combat as magic is a mages life blood. Just one of many ways they hinder the mage in skyrim..

Forget about magic regen enchants, your best bet is to enchant fortify magic and work on boosting your total magic...mine's at 1000 now and many spells don't dent my magic bar, i usually have enough magic to finish fights without recharging with potions

So, this here is the fundamental problem. The way to "fix" this without radically changing things is to allow the player to resume full regen if they disengage from battle for like 4 seconds, regardless of if there are still enemies around that want to fight you - if you are using Ethereal Form, why *shouldn't* you regen - the point of the power seems to be to allow the player to rest, drink pots, etc. If you stand back and out of battle, why shouldn't that magicka regen kick in? The things which should cause the magicka regen to go into "super slow" mode are:

* Using a weapon (including block with weapons or shield, and using Staves [Note that Staves can still be useful because they are mana-free spells])
* Using a spell
* Using a shout

It would make battle slightly more tactical - having the player use spells, potions, or shouts, or just plain tactics to give themselves the chance to get that magicka regen taking place in the middle of battle.

Potions. Drink potions. That's what they are there for.

However, before we get too far down the 'magic svcks because melee gets....' path, people should remember that blocking soaks up stamina whenever you get hit, regardless of whether you do anything other than simply putting your shield or your sword up, so there is really not much difference between the styles of combat.

I never really noticed the stamina thing until I did some block power levelling with a mammoth recently, and every time it hit me my stamina dropped when I was blocking...when the stamina was entirely gone, I took relatively massive damage each time it struck.

Now, in respect of magick, although the in-battle regen rate is low, the design of the system is such that the focus is on the casting cost being reduced, so, theoretically, you should be able to reduce down your casting rate to compensate for the slow regeneration rate....and unless you specialise in a particular magicka skill, there is at least one item available that increases your magicka, increases your regeneration rate, and decreases your casting cost across all types of spells...it's up to the player when they get that bit of kit.

Why does anyone worry about magicka regen when magicka usage reduction enchants are so much better? I tried both on my mage and magicka regen is only good if you like wasting a lot of time during combat running around waiting for the regen to happen. It's much too slow.

It's working for me.... I do have the half cost perks and another 40% off (archmage robes + 1 25% enchant) but otherwise I'm stacking regen and +magicka. I dual-cast. wait a second. rinse and repeat. I can do that all day, and it's fast enough to stun lock any 1 enemy (dragon, giant, no matter) I handle more than 1 enemy by using Companion, Summons, and Illusion to let me stun-lock down 1 enemy at a time.

Really? Well, like I just said... I've just been spacing out my cast with enough time to regen ea/ shot.

The Apprentice Stone is key I think... which also includes a weakness to magic... but Alteration counters that and then some.

Not true, battle music only turns on some of them time.Usually it depends on the strength of the enemy, a high level enemy will almost always trigger the battle music.Enemies like wolves, mudcrabs, and skeevers almost never trigger it unless you allow them to deal enough damage to you, in which case it will trigger.Enemies of average strength attacking as a group usually triggers it too.In my experience, the best way to tell whether or not you are in combat is whether or not you can see any red dots on your compass which indicate enemies that you are in combat with.

Yup... this

Compass is the dead giveaway.

Also, you need more than JUST magicka regen... it's percent based, so the higher your Magicka pool, the faster it regens too. You should be stacking both.

Morokei, master robes, ring of +80%, amulet and glove of plus mana, highborn. Never, never have an issue. I use thunderbolt, ice storm, conjure dremora, runes, and wall spells all the time. On expert.
Even when using lightning storm I still regen while using highborn. My mana pool is in the high 500's. I might have put 50 points in health, otherwise straight mana.

Well, on Master I conjure dremora and I never have magicka problems either.

I use a mod to boost magic regen and make magical damage scale with level.


Being a Mage has never been better!

Playing a Pure Mage in Daggerfall was practically impossible because of the lack of Magicka regeneration outside of sleep, unless you abused the hell out of the bug where you went to use an enchanted item, then canceled it to gain magicka equivalent to the cost of the last spell you cast. If you tried to sleep in a dungeon to regain Magicka, alot of the time your sleep would be interrupted by a monster and you wouldn't have enough magicka to kill them. Potions as a whole in Daggerfall were rather rare.
In Morrowind, it made playing a Mage slow as hell, you constantly had to sleep or chug potions to go just a bit further in a dungeon.

Magicka School Reduction is nice and all, but you can only get 2 schools down to -100% cost though (Unless you use the Resto Glitch). I wonder how good dual enchanting Fortify Magicka with Fortify Magicka Regeneration would work, considering you regenerate a percentage of your Maximum Magicka per second (Normally 3% of total Magicka per sec outside of combat, 1% in combat).


In your case, just from the Maximum Magicka you have, you'd be regenerating 30 Magicka per second out of combat, and 10 Magicka per second in combat. With the maximum amount of Magicka Regeneration from equipment (Without Resto Glitch), which is 375%, you'd be regenerating 112.5 Magicka per second out of combat, and 37.5 Magicka per second in combat. This is without +100% Magicka Regen from Apprentice Stone, +25% Magicka Regen from Elsweyr Fondue or +Magicka Regeneration from Potions either. Personally though, i wouldn't really recommend the Apprentice Stone, since it's 100% Weakness to Magicka can never be fully compensated, since Resist Magic caps out at 85%.

Magicka regen in combat is slower, but regen enchantments do work. Compare magicka regen in combat at level 1 to magicka regen in combat at level 40 with enchantments; there is definitely a very large difference between them. It's still not lightning fast, but much better than nothing...

But why wait when you don't have to? With magicka use reductions I can double cast incinerate continuously long enough to kill anything in the game and if I do happen to run out on multiple enemies I just pop a potion and refill. It's very rare that I have to resort to that though. Waiting for the magicka regen just isn't necessary. I'd rather keep the pace of the battle up than have to wait while the enemy doesn't have to.

The concept of Mana or Magicka whatever is outdated. We have had to come up with mechanics to deal with having a limited Magic pool. Games previously really did not have ANY sort of in-combat regen. And medding or resting out of combat took a ridiculous amount of time. Since then there have been great improvements using different pool mechanics. Action points, Action Bars, Adrenaline systems, Rage systems, Rune systems - etc. Don't bother with Regeneration Enchants, go with Fortify "insert school of Magic enchant" and make casting free.

They seem to be trying to balance classes. If they make it so you run out of spells without a "PC party" to back up up, then they make pure mages impossible, or at least hard enough so that only the dedicated/crazy would do it. Meanwhile my armor and two handed sword work very well regardless of my mana.

Also it seems to me that the NPC mages firing at me fire on a more or less constant basis without any mana restrictions at all.

No the current system seems biased toward warriors and against mages. You can be a mage, but you have to be REALLY dedicated and use all the tricks. You can't just relax and play a mage the way you can a warrior. For a warrior you just keep buying health and stamina, continually update your armor and weapons (preferable using smithing and enchanting) and you'll probably do ok.

In the RPGs (like D&D) that this game is descended from, mages weren't meant to be lone adventurers. They were very powerful, but never had the endurance to be their own party. They needed the clerics and fighters and thieves to back them up. Here you're all alone (except maybe for the occasional brain dead companion) and as a mage you don't really have the skills to BE alone. It's very hard in these Bethesda Elder Scroll games to have ALL the skills that I used to associate with 5-6 actual human players in role playing games.

Totally agree with this, however we are seeing the first decent steps towards multiple character parties, and hopefully we will get to see parties of 3 or 4 in future games.

Although that said, some people will still want to create uber-mages that one-shot their way to instant victory...I guess it's the nature of that type of ego.

Exactly carbon_dragon. Mages should deal comparable damage to melee. The fact that spells do not scale is a huge problem. The magicka consumption v regeneration is also all out of whack. Personally, I think that spells should be free to cast always, unless you Dual-Cast it (equivalent of a Power Attack).

Just think, if they required you to expend stamina to swing a weapon, and stamina regenerated slowly in combat.......

whats the "resto glitch"?

Why?

Because gearing myself up to remove dependence on the only stat that really matters makes the game pointless and boring IMO

so I decide to use the base system of magicka and magicka regen.

I think Free Casting is broken and intentionally avoid it. It should have hard capped at 80-90% reduction off base cost.

The Resto Glitch is a glitch involving how Fortify Restoration Potions affect enchantments on your gear. By looping Fortify Alchemy gear with Fortify Restoration potions, you can make some insanely powerful Fortify Enchanting potions that allow you to create god-like enchants. With this glitch, you can actually enchant -100% Spell School Reduction onto a single piece of equipment, and if you have the perk, two -100% cost enchants on a single item. It's insanely overpowered, so i only really use it for Fortify Carry Weight enchants, since i'm sick of having to run back and dump my loot all the time.
This video basically sums it up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ9m7owVg_w

That's not a resto glitch......

That's the Alchemy/Enchanting power crafting loop.

oh nvm... watched vid... HOLY HELL!

wow thats crazy...i thought i broke the game by creating fortify smithing gear and potions, then upgrading the dragonbane to do 340 damage (my 1h is maxed with perks)
I don't know why anyone would want to go crazy with weapon damage, 1 shot-ing everything is not fun IMO

Just get the spell Equilibrium, use that with Fast Healing and you heal and restore Magick and Health. It is what I do when I need the boost of magick when its most needed. But with enchanting, focus on a primary school with 75% reduce and 50% for secondary and the 150% left over you can divide.

useless? just....LMAO