If you are a conjurer, you don't need any other skill. Two dremora lords will beat anything in the game, even on master and unlike the other summons they can't be banished or commanded. You were probably better off going illusion than alteration because all you needed was to cast invisibility and hide in a corner.

There is an Illusion perk that allows your illusion spells to work on undead like Draugr and dwarven machinery.

Last time I checked, destruction-mages need near -100% casting cost to be viable.

Thus conjuration + alteration is more likely to encounter.
Either way, you can drop cost from spells down to 0% for any school... so cost is not an issue, really.

Back on topic:

Conjuration, Alteration and Shouts are the most powerful "schools" of magic.

I agree with Odd Hermit's ratings, other to say that the one Conjuration summon he thinks is too powerful is to me the only adequate one. The others die too easily. Fire Atronachs and Thralls die like wimps, and in fact even the Storm Thrall does, and I am only on Adept st level 50+.

With the double casting perk, and the other perks that increase the level their usable, you can use the spells on enemies up to lvl 56, which is almost everybody except of some daedras.

"Conjugation"?

What are you summoning,...


...verbs?

Conjuration is the most powerful/useful. Illusion is good for invisibility and silent casting.

Even with 0 cost(which some consider an exploit) illusion's pacify is just as powerful as alteration's mass paralysis while illusion is also a more versatile school. And pacify is targeted. Illusion gives quiet casting as well as muffle and invisibility, so you can set up most encounters completely in your favor before they even begin. With illusion + conjuration you can kill many groups of enemies entirely without revealing yourself to them.


Yeah the atronachs are definitely too weak. It'd be fine if the dremora lord was supposed to be the "ultimate" summon, but seems like they wanted it to focus on atronachs or undead but the dremora lord is hands down the best. Part of that is due to twin souls and other atronach perks working for dremora lords, though.

Which Atronach perks work on the Dremora Lords?

Flame Atronach is level 5, Elemental Potency brings her to 10.

Frost Atronach is level 16, Elemental Potency brings it to 24.

Storm Atronach is level 30, Elemental Potency brings it to 35.

All the Thrall versions are level 30, Elemental Potency bringing them to 35. Using them as a Thrall brings them on equal ground level wise, but flame is still squishy and storm is the better caster. Frost is just really really tanky. We're talking 600 range of health with Elemental Potency.

Dremora Lord is level 46 and the strongest of all the summons, hands down. There is no permanent version and it's not affected by Elemental Potency, but you can get 2 of them out for 2 minutes, 4 with dual cast.

You don't even need to do much with 2 Dremora Lord's out really. If you really want to stick with atronachs, dual storm is your best option. Spells have the same range and lightning doesn't have a travel time, unlike flame's firebolt.

Here I thought conjugate was a math term

Hogwarts.