I'm fairly new to the game. I'm trying to play a pure mage.

I got one of the Ward spells to test out as an option for defense. It seems like the way this spell works is that it keeps the defense active as long as I am casting.

Couple of questions:
1) Am I understanding the function of this correctly? It's an effect that is on (both adding defense and draining magicka) as long as I hold down the mouse button.
2) Is the only other magical defense the spells from the Alteration area?
3) How are people using the Ward spells? It seems like I would need to be killing the opponent with whatever is in my other hand or hope my conjured companion is killing them while I have the Ward active. Otherwise, it seems like the Ward will just drain all my magicka.

Thx!

I've not found ward spells terribly usefull myself, they consume alot of mana and I use meat shields or just heal through the damage.

Alteration does have two perks for magic defense, 10/20/30% resist and the atronach one (30% absorb), but no spells for magic defence. The alteration shield spells are physical armor only.

There is a perk higher into the restoration tree that lets your wards absorb magica from incoming spells. I dont know how effective it is, but if it absorbs a good portion then it could be a good way to make them less mana intensive.
Other than that you need the 50% cost reductions to make good use of the wards.

I haven't got much use out of them since it seems NPCs throw much bigger spells than you do. My wards get shattered and fast while their wards stand up to a constant barrage of attacks. I've just got in the habit of using conjuration to defeat enemy mages, bound bow for attacks and a summon to keep them busy and sometimes curb stomp them for no good reason. Like sometimes my flame atronach would totally solo spell casters I had trouble touching.

Thx for the help!

I've found the flame atronach to be quite effective - but it takes a lot of magika to summon. For the times when the atronach isn't available, it would be nice to have a little more defense while I'm either trying to kill off the bad guys or run away while my magika regenerates enough to re-summon.

How long do the alteration defenses last? If I could cast them well ahead of time and forget, that would be great. I find that I'm already hitting the Q key a lot to switch spells during battle.

I haven't done any work in the Alteration area and wasn't going to unless I really needed some of those spells.