I would say style, but the clothes in this game are pretty effing ugly while some of the armor looks nice.

The robes get great enchantments that I don't think can be fully recreated on your own.

Anyone else notice magicka does not regenerate as fast in combat as it does out of it.

I strongly disagree my friend, head piece adds 40% to regeneration, body piece 30%, hands 20%, feet 20%, ring 30%. do the math

Magicka only regens at 33% during combat. There are mods that adjust this.

If you want to waste enchantments for magic resistence,allright. Breton+Magic resistence from alteration already give 55 percent magic resistence. Combine this with the lord stone and you are at the cap without wasting enchantment slots for this.

Mara Quest + Lord Stone gives 40% already, you only need one or two enchants, and there are slots where there're no better enchants than magic resist to use on anyway. It's definitely not a waste considering how much better armor is than alteration. You also have to bind Dragonhide, and you've only got 8 hot keys on PC.

The 10% dodge in light armor is also more valuable extra mitigation than the magic resistance perks, since magic resist is so easily capped w/out alteration perks. You can't get the 10% dodge anywhere else.

You might not get the same protection from unarmored that you would get with armor (and honestly, why should you?), but you also free up a huge perk investment to invest in other areas, particular your magic skills.

If you take Alteration already, then it's only going to cost you 3 perks to max your unarmored potential, leaving 46 perks to distribute elsewhere.

If you take an armor skill, that's probably at least 5 perks your looking at to fully buff the armor skill, and potentially even more depending how much you want to invest into the various trees. So you're already down to 44 perks left to distribute, and if you perk even deeper into an armor skill, you can leave yourself as little as 37 perks to distribute if you wanted to max Heavy Armor, 39 if you maxed Light Armor.

No, you won't get the same protection from unarmored as you would from armored, but you honestly shouldn't. And no, there's no magical penalty for wearing armor, but honestly, there shouldn't. That's the kind of "inside the box" thinking that Elder Scrolls tries to avoid - mages don't wear armor, they wear robes. Well, not -my- mage.

My magic skills suffer from the fact that I can't focus on magic as strongly as a pure mage can. My investment in my character is spread out among different aspects. And as a result, I am not as fully developed in any area as I could be.

That's how it should be.

The good reason to near wear armor is that it's one less skill to invest in. It gives you more opportunity to invest in and focus on your magic abilities by giving you more points to distribute in other areas than just armor.

If you're not interested in perking in armor? Well I don't know how the math works out in terms of unperked, unimproved armor vs. Alteration Flesh spells, so I really don't know. But with no perk investment, no I don't think that unarmored should be as effective as armored.

Though I do believe although you can eventually get those enchantment upgrades on armor, you get them quicker and more powerful on robes. I may be wrong. I don't do unarmored. Just my understanding of it.

gah. mind boggling. that magic could go to so many useful things. What reasoning is there for this?

i only use robes, circlet and super fancy shoes and it's very hard to kill me (can't really remember the last none-bug time i died). i have 500 hp and that alteration perk that makes your +armor skill last longer and give you 2/2.5/3 times more armor. it has worked very well so far atleast, i'm level 35.

but the best thing about alteration is the paralyze spell which is the best/funniest skill in the game imo. you can have alot of fun with it (especially near a big drop or on stairs) or just use it as a super safe and easy way to kill people.

I rather decrease magigicka cost for another magic school or increase health/magicka. And i dont waste points in smithing.

Really? Only 33%? I don't understand why my Magicka bar doesn't go down much when I'm firing Dual Cast Firebolts at the dragons then. I'm wearing about 200%+ Magicka regen clothing & jewelry.

:tes:

Alteration is really good but feals really weak compared to the other skills

I like the look of the robes, so I tend to wear those when playing as a mage. But I tend to stick to heavy armor + the Steed Stone (nulls slowed movement with armor).

I just use morokei and the arch-mage robes with some sort of enchanted ring/necklace. Boots and gauntlets usually there to boost maximum carry weight.

would anyone like it if your magicka continued to regenerate while you are holding a spell ready to fire? if you are waiting for someone to come out of cover with your fireball ready, it would be nice if you could have the rest of the wait for regenerating your magicka.

you can't enchant armor that is better all around then arch-mage robes

3 perks is all you need in smithing. It's hardly a waste for what you get.

Armor is also vastly superior early and mid-game, while alteration only pays off when you get the master spell. And the pay off is disappointing to say the least. You'll have to waste extra points in magicka or on magicka enchants to be able to afford dragonhide's ridiculous cost.

Dragonhide's base cost is 738. Cut in half with the master perk it's 369. The duration is only 30 seconds. Casting it before combat and waiting to regen to full again requires wasting a lot of it's duration and/or using magic regen enchants which are pretty terrible.

What I do is get some health.. say to 150.. get the lord stone going.. and use low level alt spells to push my protection up fairly high.

That plus a fort health plus health healing potion as soon as im fairly hurt and blamo im far more durable.

Well it was supposed to be an advantage because mage robes have way more Magicka regen than you can enchant yourself.

But that doesn't work when Magicka Regeneration bonuses are practically negated by combat anyways. +300% regen speed? Enjoy your 3%.

Sneaking

The Order Of Imperial Battle Mages would scoff and hurl insults at this conversation, for their entire order are mages, who wear Heavy Armor and carry shields and swords, or maces.. into battle.

Personally I run about in Adept Robes of Alteration, ancient shroud boots/gloves and any one of the dragon priest masks I like at the time or a 70pt magicka Mage's Circlet. Why? Cause I like how it looks!

I've mastered all schools of magic, 2handed weapons, 1handed weapons, heavy armor at 85, light armor at 84, block 87. I would say I am a battle mage, and the best protection is putting about 8 perks in alteration, novice, apprentice, adept, expert, magic resistance, atronach, and wearing heavy armor. You can put a few points in heavy armor if you want to raise their armor ranting, and then cast shield spells over the armor. Its not really needed though as I run around stabbing things with impunity because as a master of alteration I can just paralyze everything at 17% reduced cost because of my robes! and I can sneak up on them because shrouded boots have muffle on them! and I do double sneak damage with ebony blade because the gloves add double backstab damage!

Still, The Order of Imperial Battle Mages, will be most upset upon hearing about these accusations that magic would be harder to cast while wearing heavy armor.

Well see, back when we had more CHOICE in our Elder Scrolls games....

Really though. In Oblivion less armor meant your spells were more effective. It served to make you more tactically-minded. Do you want to be a tank or a nuker? You can't be both, choose correctly. That's choice. In this game it's like.... SURE you can wear a full suit of heavy armor as a mage with no penalties! Have fun, kid!

Sigh.

Updated my mod today - cloth wearers rejoice! (Seriously, I think you guys will like some of the changes I made to Alteration.) http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2275 Feedback is always appreciated. Anything too weak or too strong? You guys tell me!

Prior to the Dragonskin spell at Master level Alteration, you'll max out at 300 armor rating from spells, which is well below what you'll be able to achieve with armor (which has no duration or magicka cost limitations). If you use any armor whatsoever (including mage-oriented Dragonpriest Masks) that armor rating gets cut all the way down to 100, which I find extremely disappointing. At that point you might as well wear a full suit of armor and save the perks from Alteration (that particular mask does give the same regeneration rate as the Arch-Mage's Robes, after all). In all honesty, the Impact perk in Destruction will do a lot more for your survival than Alteration magic/perks.

In my experience as an unarmored mage character, the only real upside to not wearing any armor is your low-mid level weight allowance being freed up a bit; it'll save you some merchant trips when selling all your loot.

Restricting Mages from wearing armor was a holdover from the old pen-and-paper days of RPGs and never really made any sense. I'm glad it's gone.