What I miss is not being able to make Shield drinks, but I guess I'll have to learn to use the wards and make Regenerate Magika / Regenerate Health potions for my defensive act. In Oblivion I used to mass produce restore magika + shield potions. Great combo for a lonely mage.

Wards are probably very useful, but they just don't fit my play style. I know that mages who use them annoy the crap out of me, though.

Well the fire/frost/shock spells are one of the spells I mentioned playing with in Oblivion in my large post about the spells in Oblivion and Skyrim. So I quite miss them, and it can't really be said wards replace them because in Oblivion they would have the pro of allowing you to still fight while they were on but the con of often just protecting a small % of the damage. In Skyrim wards have the pro of completely protecting you from the spell but the con of locking you out of doing anything else than take spells from NPC's with seemingly endless mana.

No the flesh spells have

I think it's pretty cool, but i tend to like more reflex play in combat rather than passive abilities. I mean it functions as more of a magic "shield" as Shield did.

I think they need to block a considerably higher amount of spell damage than what they currently do. They're much more mana intensive for how much damage they'll prevent in comparison to how much damage can be done with the same amount of mana using destruction spells (And with destruction's damage being what it is, that's saying a lot).

I wish we could have the old fire/frost/shock shield spells back, though, as well as the old shield back ontop of the ironflesh/stoneflesh spells that we have now. Perhaps remove the armor bonus from wards, make shield effectively the same as a ward, but only for physical damage, and then make both spells stronger now that they're more specialized?

Edit: That said, I love the intent of the spell, despite the fact that in practice you're usually better off having something else in your other hand, especially at higher levels and higher difficulties.

I think the wards svck. Use too much magicka trying to block spells, and then what? You are oom.

Magic is hella nerfed.

Come to think of it, I don't think resists work. I gobbled a elixer of fire resist, and being dark elf I should have 100 fire resist and it sure doesn't work against dragon fire.

Every major fight I have to gobble a lot of potions. I think I can cast 3 dual cast incinerations before I'm oom, and that doesn't do much damage to a ancient dragon.

Something just way off with anything regarding magic, wards included.

i like the idea but its impossible to use a ward and cast other spells effectively. i think if the mana drain was cut in half they might be more feasible. that being said they are fun to play with. just dont make sense for a melee or magic build and you have to use both hands for archery builds.

the effect of the shield spell is still there with the armor spells,
they just added real "Shield" spells with wards.
I am displeased that wards are part of the restoration school.

My mage character, normally would keep and attack spell on left hand and ward spell on right hand, PRIMARILY, mostly because they are very nice blocking spells, Dragons do 0 damage to me while I hold it up if they breath fire or frost or other.

The Skin spells in alteration do the same thing as shield in Oblivion, the ward spells are self-targeted staggers.

I've found the wards to be pretty fun in mage vs mage battles, getting into a duel where you're holding up a ward + spraying fire while the enemy mage is holding up a ward + spraying ice makes me feel like I'm in some star wars yoda vs the emperor magic fight.

Of course playing a breton what I find WAY more effective is to turn on dragon skin to absorb half the incoming mana, plaster the enemy mage with fireballs from my left hand while non-stop channeling a healing spell with my right hand, I had a very exciting battle against the mage boss in fellglow keep like that. First two tries she basically insta-killed me.

At what level? In my experience with 100% fire resist against a fire breathing ancient dragon I took probably 170 damage from fire breath. If resists work, which I question if they do, that is enough to shatter a ward, which also in my experiences semi staggers you, delaying ward coming back up.

I will test this myself, but in my experiences with ancient dragons this would be a waste of magicka.

Hmm. Is there anyway to enchant or mix potions with this spell effect?

Spellbreaker.

So. Much. Win.

Shield spells are still in the game. Wards haven't replaced anything.

They havn't replaced anything. I just wish the Ward spells were actually useful.

I like the new Ward spells. I didn't like them at first because they used too much magicka, but now that I'm higher level and have a huge magicka pool the magicka drain is barely noticeable. And I have the perk where Wards absorb some spell energy.

With my Greater Ward spell, only the most powerful dragons and mages can break through it with their spells or breath weapons. All dragons except Ancient Dragons can't hurt me at all with their breath when I have the ward up, and those nasty Ice Spiking mages can't touch me either. I love the wards.

Their Magicka requirements, defensive scaling limitations and the way they take up a hand slot tends to work against them - especially where Master Spells are concerned, or, for that matter, the Ward system works against anything you want or absolutely need to dual cast.

L2play noob. They only break down if you put it right up before a spell. They have a 1 to 1.5 second charge time otherwise they break to the first spell. If you listened to tolfdir in college you would know this.

Even if you wait for them to hit full strength they still stagger you when they become exhausted which takes about one spell hit or a second inside a sustained spell like Flames.

You're better off just taking the spell hit and then using a bit of magicka to heal instead of most of your pool to negate some of it.


72 magicka per second for a shield that absorbs 80 points of spell damage and staggers you when it's exhausted. What a pointless spell.

There is a 85% magic and element cap so you cant go for 100% less magic dmg if you dont use the breton racial + artonach stone.
With both magic and element capped you can take your dmg taken down to 2-3%. With the racial + artonach you can resisnt all magical dmg for 60 seconds.

It should be noted that Dragon breath attacks are not spell damage and will bypass any resistances and absorption. You can however resist and absorb the damage over time after being hit.


I'm using Breton with Atronach and Alteration perks and I have to say enemy casters do nothing but refill my Magicka pool even when my racial isn't active. 80% chance to absorb anything that hits my character and even if it does get through it's reduced by 55%. So on average I take 9% spell damage.

The Greater Ward spell (Expert level I think) blocks every spell and all dragon breath attacks for me without breaking the ward/making me stagger. You have to prepare it ahead of time as it takes a good 2 or 3 seconds to charge up. If a spell or breath weapon hits you before it's fully charged, the shield will shatter and you'll stagger. I take no damage at all from dragon breath attacks when I have my Greater Ward active. I play on normal difficulty so that probably helps. On a higher difficulty the damage from spells might be too much.

Wards are completely useless once your level enough though; when all it does it stagger you for your enemies.

You're better of enchanting your armor for near magic immunity.