At low levels if you raise one undead with the raise zombie spell in combat you're conjuration skill will go up by 2-3 levels. Same with the basic flesh spell, one cast in combat will instantly net you a level. But restoration at low levels, even in combat, takes multiple casts to level. The equivalent of at least healing 4-5 times your full health.

It's no better a higher levels, you cast the spells less often as they get stronger and the experience you gain doesn't go up enough. It's the only skill I have to gradually power level for it to keep up, otherwise my other skills will be 50-60 when restoration is barely touching 30. It just doesn't level, even though I'm constantly using it to heal in most battles.

Illusion is similar, you need to fury a good 3-4 people for the spell to gain one level to start off with, which is so much slower than alteration and conjuration. But conjuration seems to massively slow once you hit 40-45. The higher level spells just don't give enough experience.

Anyone else get this feeling? I don't want my skills to level fast and I never take the guardian/lover stones, I want a steady pace but for them to be roughly the same. Which just doesn't happen when using restoration.

Using wards/turning undead in battle helps raise your restoration. And if you have one undead enemy just fleeing you could potentially cast a few more restoration spells in that time.

Wards don't level restoration unfortunately.

I suppose it doesn't help playing on master, 1h/2h/destruction/archery level so fast on master.