What should I use for my defense?

Being able to move quick would be an asset, but being a mage, I won't have the highest of health, so the extra defense Heavy Armor offers might be very nice. Also, it would save magicka that would be used from Alteration at the beginning of a battle.

I don't know why, but one of my favourite ways to fight is to be clad fully in Dwarven armour, with a Dwarven shield in my left hand and Fireball in my right. It just looks freaking awesome, and is pretty effective to boot.

That certainly sounds awesome! Must be ever more awesome with Spellbreaker or the Aetherial Shield, in fact, I think this would be perfect with the Autherial Shield.

Oh boy, someone using one of my favourite builds, the classic sorcerer!

Spellbreaker is a must. As soon as you can, do Peryite's quest and get this glorious shield. It is high-ish quality and puts up a 50-point ward that doesn't deplete your magicka when you hold it up. Combined with the restoration perk Ward Absorb, it makes sure you almost never run out of magicka; With Alterations magic resistance and atronach, and the shield perk for elemental resistance, that ward becomes 65% more effective, plus you absorb enemy spells when it's not up often enough to keep it filled.

I MUCH prefer heavy armour. I'd suggest for magic resistance you do work on alteration. Good ways to do this are transmuting iron ore, and casting a one-handed (rather than dual-cast) armour spell before battle, so you don't have to unequip your shield or expend much magicka. Don't bother with Mage Armour then obviously, endgame you'll have the armour cap in heavy and your armour spells will function better as an augment to your normal armour. The steed stone removes armour encumbrance and makes this viable until you can get conditioning, then I suggest taking the Lord or the Atronach stone.

Don't take only the block perks on the left side. If you take both sides and work on stamina as well as magic, by the time you do you'll probably find yourself relying mostly on your shield as a weapon, charging into battle to knock enemies down then bashing them over the head until they die, and using healing, dremora lord or telekinesis in your right hand. You might ask why telekinesis? Well, by this point, if you've worked on stamina, you have high carry capacity and not much need for too much equipment, plus what's on your person is weightless. You also have the disarming bash perk. Picking up an enemy's lost weapon with telekinesis before they can forces them to fight with their fists, pretty much crippling all enemies that use weapons. Fun fun fun. Plus you can feel like a Jedi, good stuff.

Light armor, you can always use alteration for armor boosting spells, and restoration for wards.

Thanks for the tips.

How do those perks make the spell breaker more effective though? Other than ward absorb I wasn't aware that anything else effected it.

Also, I probably won't be using conjuration and Illusion, nor will I be using Alteration past the aforementioned magic resistance perks.

Really like the idea of telekinesis with the disarming bash perk.

The only thing with Heavy Armor is you lose out on alot of potential magic regeneration. Though with all the magic resistance and other magic nullifying abilities, I could go for apprentice stone.

yea, seems like it would be the best of both worlds, and potentially highest magicka regen without mixing robes and armor.

Do not use the apprentice stone with Spellbreaker is all I have to say. When the ward breaks you stagger, leaving you vulnerable. This goes along with how the other perks affect spellbreaker.

SB's base ward is 50 points, meaning that's how much damage it can block before it breaks/dispels. With magic resistance to 30%, and the 50% resistance to each ELEMENT (but not magic in general), you take 50% of 70% of the damage from spells, meaning 35%, meaning you're reducing it by 65%. Thus, that is how much more damage the Spellbreaker can take, unless I'm mistaken (though given the fact my character with the cap magic resistance and full elemental resistance enchants on master difficulty never has the ward break, I'd say I have it right).

I wasn't aware armour still affected magic in any way, I certainly hadn't noticed it. Huh. In fact, UESP says:

• In Skyrim, magic is not affected by Armor Rating.

Lastly telekinesis is alteration btw.


EDIT: At 85% (the cap) magic resistance from enchantments and perks, and with 50% elemental resistance from having a shield raised, you take 7.5% damage from spells. The most damage an NPC spell can do with augments (which I'm not even sure they can have) is 90 points. That means roughly 6.75 points of damage per hit, meaning spellbreaker can take seven hits before breaking, plenty enough to knock down and incapacitate any high-level mage aggressively hurling Incinerates at you.

What it sounds like to me is you want to have the powerful blasts that a mage can perform, as well as the defense provided as a warrior would use.

Fear not, for there are ways to have high defenses and be a very good mage. Here are some things you can do.

1. If you want a higher magic regeneration, just use the best robes you can. Just use your highest Shield spell with it. (Oakflesh+) Just pick up dual-wielding and it will last two minutes at a time. You can also grab the "Magic Resistance: 3 Ranks" Alteration perk that will give you bonus armor.

2. If you don't want to constantly keep your shields up, just use heavy armor. A typical battlemage has a staff in one hand, and a spell in the other. That way if he/she runs out of magic, you can reinforce your attacks with your staff.

3. While technically you COULD use a shield and a spell, you can also just take advantage of the Ward spells and they work even better against mages and dragons if you pick up the Restoration perk "Ward Absorb." Then again, the wards can take a lot of magic to use and only block so much damage out before they break.

Hope this helps.

Oh, I thought that the ward's nullification would be applied before magic resistance.

and the potential regeneration has nothing to do with the wearing of the armor itself, but rather specific items in game. You can find helms with 100% magic regen on either side starting at level 48, but for armor/robes themself, there is Vampire Royal Armor with 125% magicka regen, and then of course the Master Robes with 150% magicka regen.

I'm thinking of going a vigilant of stendarr type clothing option. Add in a helm, so robes with a heavy helm, heavy gauntlets, and heavy boots, get the best of both worlds, just would have to go with alteration all the way, rather than just for magic resistance, go up to expert, atleast that opens up the atronach perk as well.

Ahhhh, gotcha. My bad, misunderstood I guess because I have Oblivion on the mind. Well you could work on enchanting to fortify it yourself. There's also Morkei and random Daedric helm loot that boosts magic regen by up to 100%. If you're willing to give conjuration a shot anyway, you can always get it up to 90 and then use the Atronach forge to try to conjure up such armour.

Yea, i'll probably use enchanting on this build, though since I probably will be using plenty of in-game items, I may very well go alchemy. Would probably give the build an interesting spin. and fortify magicka regen maxes out at 62% without potions.

Also, I have no qualms about using the fortify restoration potion glitch to make a circlet that has 100% magicka regen and nothing else, as there is no such item in game for some reason.

For making items on-par with legitimate ingame items, I'd say it's ethically fine. I'd just use the heavy helm with it though, unless you're worried about aesthetics.