Any time I try to use a ward to block enemy spells, it breaks. I use the strongest ward currently available to me when I do this.
Even dual-casting them causes them to break.
Why should I waste mana on wards when I can simply heal instead?

EDIT: wards and healing spells together are good for restoration grinding, that's all I use wards for (when you let an enemy attack you constantly and all you do is heal to gain restoration skill)

Wards are meh when you consider that its more efficient to just spam a heal in that hand your ward is in.

Or just take lord stone + alteration.

Yes, and no. I found it preatty good at stopping dragon breath from turning me into a magical stake. But the drain is a joke. It we shold be able to use it like shield not... what ever it is now.

You usually have to start using it before your enemy casts a spell to attack you.

Yeah... I was excited about it at first because it sounded awesome and then I noticed it was a channeling spell, why not just make it a buff that holds out in 10 minutes or something. <_>

What... wards are one of the most OP skills in the game. Holy hell man.

The enemy spell casters make great use of them if they have them, but they drain my magicka so fast I'm better off spamming destruction spells. Not that I'm invested at all in that school of magic because I had better stuff to spend perks on. I have noticed that enemies with wards seem to be able to hold them up indefinitely which kinda svcks because they'll stop your whole volley of spells and still have the magicka to blast you to death with lightning. Their regen is either through the roof or they have a huge magicka pool. Too bad their ward does nothing when I charge up with a warhammer and smash their skull in.

Normally i'd agree, i really havnt used wards all that much at all, im mainly melee, so i dont tend to have the mana pool to be sheidling myself with wards all the time, however i got to an island the other day for the trading company, and there was a mage their launching hellish fireballs at me, 2-3 balls and i was dead kind of thing, and of course he was keeping his distance, it was the first time i've ever effectly used them, and i have to say, i thought it was really good. Generally I cant justify wasting a hand on a ward, but in this instance it was necessary for me to be able to charge him and crack him one with the mace. I mean i obviously took some damage but compared to the resulting firey death of all previous attempts, I considering it a win.

It should remain channled how it is now. but change the constant mana drain. Make it so you lose mana when I spell hits it. this way it operates just like a shield that costs mana when it blocks, so casters can have protection.

You actually gain mana when a spell hits it.
Its a clutch ability, and pretty [censored] amazing when you solo a spell-casting boss.

You can think of the alteration + restoration mage as a monstrous anti-caster.

True that it is more efficient to spam heal yourself against physical damage. The armor buff is extremely lackluster, it is a clutch anti-magic ability. AWESOME against dragon breath. Pretty much nullifies channeled damage.

you don't seem to realise wards take about a second to charge, if you start to take damage and then cast a ward it shatters, but if you cast it about a second prior to an attack it has time to fully charge itself into a magical barrier...

and for all those people posting that wards drink magicka, your doing something wrong, your either not a pure mage (who the wards are meant for, their one of only two forms of protection) or you've picked a bad perk/race for a mage, i can hold the lesser ward (which is enough to completely negate a dragon breath attack) for over 2 mins and still have magica left for an offensive and i'm only a breton, imagine if i was an altmer...