excuse me. Try telekenisis + quiet casting + invisibility. Now that is fun. Just because some of us don't fall in line with the illusion+conjuration is the best school, maybe some of us are more creative than you.


The power to move things with your mind and paralyze your foes is more cooler than playing mystical psychologist. mmkay? Troll.

With the double casting perk, and the other perks that increase the level their usable, you can use the spells on enemies up to lvl 56, which is almost everybody except of some daedras.

Conjuration.

Fun to hear " I smell weakness..."

Restoration. There's something incredibly satisfying about beating a man to death with one of your hands while out-healing everything he throws at you with the other.


...Am I weird?

I picked all of them. But I miss Mystiscisim.

I think of Destruction as my Right Hand and Restoration as my Left Hand. Conjuration is the Body and Illusion is the Mind And I think of Alteration and Mysticism as the world around me. All schools are valid in my opinion.

Shouts to me are just a bonus but a relevant bonus. They have good utility but I don't consider them a school of magic per-say but rather an inherent ability. Much like the racial abilities you're given based on race but in a broader spectrum and much more useful.

Calm takes you out of combat and lets you regen your magicka to full quickly, so you can either nuke again or just heal yourself and you have all the time in the world because you can just calm them again.
Also calm lets you sneak perfectly even with no sneak skill, so you can backstab or critical sneak attack with a bow.
You also can get calm at level 1, you can't get paralysis until much later.
Pacify is an aoe calm on the run while moving that you can get in the mid skill levels. Mass paralysis you have to stand still for five seconds and you don't get it until skill 100.
There is no point in casting dragonflesh if you are at the armor cap without casting it.
Paralyze spells have high magicka cost, calm does not.
Only time paralyze starts becomes more useful than the illusion spells is if you have 0 magicka cost gear, but if you have 0 magicka cost the game becomes a joke even on master.
You can cast all illusion spells quietly without having to spend perks in other schools.

Using invisibility, with only 2 perks in sneak to get the double backstab bonus, I have walked into a room with a caster boss surrounded by six elite guards. I cast muffle and invisibility, walked right in front of the guards to the boss, killed him with one backstab completing the quest, cast invisibility again and just left. This was on master difficulty.

I'm not saying alteration is bad, paralyze, attack skills, then calm is a good combo. But saying alteration is better is absolutely ridiculous and shows that you haven't used illusion very much.



How was he being a troll by voicing his opinion? At least he wasn't being directly insulting, you decided to be though...

dragonflesh doesn't give you any armor, just reduces all incoming damage with 80% so i'm sure it would still be awesome. i have 0 armor cause i'm using robes.
illusion would be useless for me, i'd much rather have alteration. i have never needed to calm anyone (that would just make the fight longer when i could just kill them all) or become invicible and frenzy just seems like a waste of time. can't remember ever dying in combat eather and i'm level 40 now. i've used conjuration as main school of magic. for me alteration definitely is better than illusion, nothing ridiculous about it.

I'm going to say Restoration since it's the only school that all but the pure warrior and thief builds can take advantage of in one way or another, the fact it can save you from death (once per day auto heal 250HP when health falls below 10%) and also heal stamina with the respite perks makes it actually very useful for melee builds with restoration.

Destruction starts to kinda svck as you get higher and higher levels and conjuration is powerful if you're a pure mage but if you aren't it's actually rather forgettable. Alteration gives good protection but given how easy it is to protect oneself with Armour the only real benefit is the magic resistance of it's perks and very much later on... paralyze (which enchanting can also apply to weapon effects from level 1... tho on a chance based basis). Lastly illusion requires a lot of perks to be truly useful, it's fury/frenze effect is good to convert an enemy into a potential ally but it's unreliable and really about crowd control when crowd control can be handled in other ways that don't require spending perks.

Dreague (sp?) Death Lords, there's lots of them in some dungeons, can resist illusion spells as well as master vampires. Happens with master spells not just the lower fear/calm/frenzy.

Maybe for certain characters, but the absurdly high magicka cost of both of those spells, plus both of them requiring master, makes them pretty unappealing for any of the characters I'd play.

Paralysis has a shorter duration than calm(or pacify). As an archer, I can get more out of calm by far just getting at a nice distance and on favorable terrain. Paralysis I suppose would be good as a melee mage, and you're not using your magicka for much else and use dual wielding to get as many attacks into a paralyzed enemy as possible. But Illusion is just less situational. And, though I dislike the level based spells, Illusion does scale as you level well enough if you take perks at the right levels. The low level calm and fury spells are a huge help early game. Paralysis only becomes really viable @ 75, and obviously mass paralysis and dragonhide are a 100 thing. Until then alteration is mostly minor out of combat stuff, some of which is neat but doesn't require any real investment, and the armor spells which will be near worthless without perks in mage armor which you don't want to waste perks in if getting dragonhide.

Also Illusion has invisibility.

Alteration could be argued to be competitive at high levels, but I don't think there's a solid argument to be made that it's better.

+1

The same school produces Dumbledore, Riddle and Potter. Who can compete with that?

Of those in the poll I will pick Conjugation. It's the one I practice most often irl.

If you are a conjurer, you don't need any other skill. Two dremora lords will beat anything in the game, even on master and unlike the other summons they can't be banished or commanded. You were probably better off going illusion than alteration because all you needed was to cast invisibility and hide in a corner.

Last time I checked, destruction-mages need near -100% casting cost to be viable.

Thus conjuration + alteration is more likely to encounter.
Either way, you can drop cost from spells down to 0% for any school... so cost is not an issue, really.

Back on topic:

Conjuration, Alteration and Shouts are the most powerful "schools" of magic.

Ancient Dragons and Spriggan Matrons would like to have a word with you.

Illusion and conjuration hands down. "Okay you guys all fight each other and winner fights my choice of atronarch or dremora lord".

There is an Illusion perk that allows your illusion spells to work on undead like Draugr and dwarven machinery.

I have a pure mage that I have been playing. To be honest, I use a little bit of everything, and have been perking most of the mage trees.

Restoration: Heals, obviously, but also Turn Undead can be useful. I've just started to use Wards, which can be very useful, though they lower your damage output.
Illusion: Frenzy, Fear and Courage are used often here. This is starting to fall by the wayside as I haven't been keeping up with the perks (and is becoming more resisted).
Conjuration: Atronochs mostly, as they can be a great distraction, but they can be pretty weak at times.
Alteration: Armors for extra survivability in melee and Transmute for the monies.
Destruction: Pretty much everything. I have focused mostly on Fire and Ice and haven't found any fight I was unable to get through. Even though I have Adept perked, I tend to use Apprentice Destro 99% of the time and don't see this changing any time too soon. Runes are awesome, but it svcks that you can only have one at a time (there should be a perk to up this, maybe the craptastic Rune Master perk).

I'm around L22 and just became Arch-Mage.

Illusion. With all perks other than master I can make anyone fight anyone. Can calm anyone and slit their throat. And can make people run away in fear from me. Not to mention muffle, invis and the buff up for my summons

Destruction....with the balanced magic mod

I'm loving Illusion, with Conjuration a close second. Love going into a forsworn cave and having everyone fight each other, leaving me only with the last person alive. I spent about 10 minutes pacifying a caster forsworn until I could get her to move into a hallway with swinging axes, then hit the switch.

Conjuration is fun when you summon the Dremora Lord right in the midst of a battle. That guy can take some abuse.

Restoration.

I agree with Odd Hermit's ratings, other to say that the one Conjuration summon he thinks is too powerful is to me the only adequate one. The others die too easily. Fire Atronachs and Thralls die like wimps, and in fact even the Storm Thrall does, and I am only on Adept st level 50+.

Restoration.

Keeps me alive.

Conjugation, Destruction and Restoration are surely help a lot. :intergalactic:

"Conjugation"?

What are you summoning,...


...verbs?

Conjuration is the most powerful/useful. Illusion is good for invisibility and silent casting.