I'm not having much luck here with warding magic. My ward will block a few seconds of the "flamethrower" type damage spells, but try and block something meaner like an ice spike or a blizzard, and bam: ward fails, I'm knocked reeling, and by the time I can start doing anything again there's already another spell on the way.

Do wards recharge while active? Is there any way to increase the strength of my ward or reduce its time to establish? Is there any way to not be knocked reeling every time I get hit by a non-trivial spell?

Right, so, I've been playing around with this a whole bunch more. I outfitted myself with two different items of reduced casting cost on Restoration spells (combined 47% reduction), as well as stepping up my game to the Greater Ward (80pts) combined with Adept level casting. I also have the "Wards recharge magicka when hit" perk.

After extensive testing, and absent any world-changing new information that anybody would like to offer, I have to say that ward spells are worse than useless.

The basic premise of the ward is that it absorbs enemy spells that get thrown at you. That's great. The problems:

- that they have a measurable "establish time" that makes it impossible to establish a ward WHILE somebody is using spells on you because the ward just fails instantly

- wards force you to stagger whenever they break, and it takes more time to recover than it does for the enemy to cast a second spell

- wards reduce your offensive power enormously, because your attack speed with weapons is just about cut in half AND you can't move once you start the attack so you have to back your enemy into a corner before you can even attempt to hit them.

- finally, wards offer no means to disrupt the actual attack that you're defending against. While you are warding, you cannot shield bash nor can you use a two-handed Destruction spell to cause the enemy to stagger, forcing you to absorb every spell they use (and enemy casters have far far more magicka than the player does)

A case study: Attacking a powerful vampire at high level (53). The vampire knows the spell Blizzard. Since the AI cheats, their Blizzard does all of its damage up-front, and breaks the 80-point Greater Ward every single time. This results in my character being staggered. By the time they are recovering, the vampire is casting a second Blizzard. My defenses just result in short lived stalemate: I cannot gain initiative by defending against the attack. In fact the only way I can gain initiative is to NOT defend against the attack, accept the damage, and use the window of opportunity to focus my superior attack capability (bash, power attack, Impact spell) to stop them from casting again.

My conclusion:
In the majority of cases, using a ward forces you into a purely defensive posture which is both time limited and self defeating and leaves you worse off than if you didn't block the spell at all. The only spells that warding can reliably protect you from are the minor ones which do relatively little damage in the first place. Warding is, most of the time, literally worse than useless. You're better off just ignoring minor spells and drinking a potion of Resist Whatever to survive the major ones, which offers less absolute protection but leaves you with offensive capability to end the threat. The fundamental mechanics of warding need to be reexamined.