Why can't i summon a skeleton though what was the reason to take that away . The reanimate dead skill is really bland to there's nothing scary about them at all. I'm sorry magic in Skyrim really isn't well done at all.

No. It was the Summon Dremora Lord spell.

Okay, but I still miss my Clannfear. And I seem to recall polls where Clannfear wins. In Oblivion I preferred a Clannfear to Dremora Lord in most cases.

Of course in Skyrim, a Dremora Lord is a great summons.

But again the variety of summons in Oblivion vs Skyrim was great to allow some skill in matching the summons to the opponent's weaknesses and strengths.

I never recalled Clannfear winning and personality, Clannfears are pretty weak and didn't did much.

Here is one poll from a quick search. I seem to remember many others:

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1163730-favourite-summon/

Clannfear beats Dremora Lord 32 to 28 in this one.

Clannfears are much faster and agressive than Dremora Lords. They are in now way weak in my experience, and very effective against many enemies, like mages. In Oblivion Dremora Lords often took too long to attack compared with Clannfears.

Magic may have been tacked on after the release of the game. Remember that day one patch? the day before release someone was like "OMG WTF we forgot magic!!!"

Dremora Lords attack way much faster then Clannfears unless they do a power attack. Clannfears always take like 4 seconds to do a normal attack while a Dremora takes like 1.5 with a swing of their claymore + Dremora Lords can block + Dremora Lords Claymores can do many different enchantment, such as Fire Damage, Paralyze, Armor Degrading, and so much. + The Dremora Claymore has very good stats and they have good armor where the Clannfear had none of this stuff.

Only good thing about Clannfear is they had Reflect Damage.

They run much faster than a Dremora Lord. And cost less magicka. Etc.

True but they lack a lot for Combat stuff.

On my level 98 guy, my clannfears get killed in one-two hits while Dremora Lords and Liches can take more damage + they did had resistance to magic.

You can argue their merits all you want, but that poll still stands. When that poll was taken, more people liked clannfears than dremora lords.

???? I'm stating facts about Dremora Lords and Clannfears and how the Dremora Lords seem to be better and useful. Ik everyone has their opinions of what they like, I'm just stating facts of the topic.

Like I said, that doesn't change the fact that more people wanted the clannfear than the Dremora Lord. The "facts" don't matter.

The only "fact" that matters is that, according to that poll, the summon people liked most is NOT in the game.

According to the polls I've seen and been in, most of them was the Dremora Lord had won.

~Edit~

When it comes down to voting, you must count ALL polls, not just one.

I haven't gotten high enough in Conjuration to get the Storm Atronach so I'm not sure how they fight (melee, ranged, combination of both), but you are correct in that "you have spells for every situation in every school".

Like for example, Destruction:
You get a flame thrower at the start and not another one ever so it is pretty useless high level.
You get a single target ranged spell at apprentice, but don't get another one until expert. So until you can get that expert spell you are stuck with a spell that doesn't scale as well against your enemies.
You get a targeted AOE at adept, but it is only good in some situations. Not so much if you have followers etc ...

My point is at novice you have a melee summon (familiar). At apprentice you have ranged summon (flame atronach). You don't get another melee summon until adept so if you need a melee summon you are stuck with a wolf fighting enemies that one shot it. So you have the spells for every situation, but they don't scale so it would have been nice to have multiple types of summons at novice, apprentice, adept, expert, master that have different styles of attack.

I agree with this. You don't have to be very high level before you hit the situation where it practically takes longer to cast your novice summon than the summon lasts, they get one shotted so fast.

@demo

More variety is not just for variety sake, it is so you can find a summon to fit every situation as you progress in levels. The game is a journey. It cannon be judged only from the persepective of a master spellcaster.

Also, the breakdown between ranged and melee is too simplistic. TES games are all about working around various resistances and immunities. Your apprentice summon is fire immune and does fire damage. Great, not much in Skyrim is immune to fire damage, but what happens when you are facing off against another fire antronach? As a conjuror you are stuck with summmoning a novice level melee wolf that is going to be put down in a hurry or waiting until you get adept level spells.

Flash back to Oblivion. At the apprentice level you had Ghosts (frost immune and frost damage), Scamps (fire damage and fire resistant) and two melee summons of varying strengths (skelitons and zombies). More variety means you have more choices to deal with every situation at ever level of the game.

Well said.

But remember you also have frost and shock spells along with those fire spells, also the flame atronach has a flame cloak effect so anything in melee takes a ton of damage despite it being a ranged atronach, also remember you can raise all sorts of things as zombies on top of that so there are plenty of tools at your disposal, and I have honestly never been in a fight where I have felt I needed more spells

Why can't you just take down the atronach yourself if you get into that situation, does bethesda really have to make a new spell for every niche situation like that? be realistic.

There is nothing unrealistic about wanting a few more spells. They had hundreds more spells and spell effects in prior games. No reason to pare it down soooo much in Skyrim.

Sure, a conjurer can resort to destruction (or he can even pull out a weapon), but the fun of playing a conjurer is strategizing your battles, not just casting the same summon over and over again and resorting to some other method of winning when that summon does not work.

Variety is the spice of life! Fewer choices means less replay value.

I don't understand, conjuration is overpowered if anything. Just summon two Dremora Lords (Yes it works with Twin Souls) and sit back. The power is not the issue, the variety is.

Now, don't mistake that defense for complacency, I miss my Clannfear, Golden saint, and especially Daedroth as much as anyone, just recognize the argument.


As for other Magic schools, it's really hard to say. I hated magic in previous Elder Scrolls games. The Highlight of magic in previous entries, was actually making the spell. Once you got it out of the oven, it was a flat, boring ordeal that did nothing to foster a connection with the game. Magic, specifically casting it in Skyrim, is much better, though not without fault. I find myself actually enjoying the mage classes now, from Nightblade to Battlemage and everything in between. But that lack of variety is painful. The spells seem to be Barebones, a good "Starting Point" but nothing else. That's more than could be said of Morrowind and Oblivion, but not enough.

Maybe aftermarket content will fix that, maybe not.

I don't think anyone is saying that conjuration is underpowered, and sure, once you get conjuration to 100 it is overpowered with twin souls and your thrall spells. The problem is, as you mentioned, lack of variety, and at lower levels there are not enough summons available to deal with every type of situation. More variety at all levels would make conjuration much more interesting and fun to play.

Those weak summoned creatures get a lot more use if you use mods to enable you to have more than just one. It's really fun to swarm an enemy with an army of Skeevers even though they aren't that tough on their own.

I think we should be able to summon and reanimate more than one creature at a time from the start. Conjuration loses it's ardor when we are so limited. We should be able to summon/reanimate as many beings as we can magically handle or at the bare minimum, one summon and one reanimate, same for enemies. This wouldn't be a huge balancing issue if the game were more difficult.

This is true, and it gets old, fast, when you have to feed a 2H-wielding boss about 15 Familiars before he finally dies because each of his Power attacks one-shots the damn thing. At the same time, though, all having 5-6 additional crappy summons would do is give you a different creature to spam, since it would still die horribly.

This is something I feel some of those advocating for increased summons variety are either ignoring or overlooking, as the vast majority of the plethora of available creatures were never used. In some cases they just flat-out svcked, while in others they were essentially redundant, but the end result was that the same handful of stupidly OP summons were always picked, as they were the only ones worth bothering with. That being the case, it begs the question of whether or not anything was actually lost as a result of the reduction in available types, since the ones still remaining are some of those that were always picked.

Well a lot of people agree with me, so are we all supposed to stand in the corner? You rude person.

I have 100 in Conjuration. I started out with a Flame Atronach. When the Frost Atronach was available to me, I simply moved to the Frost Atronach and removed the Flame one from my quick-select. When I got the Storm Atronach, I moved onto it and ignored the Frosty. when I got the Dremora Lord, I moved onto the Dremora Lord and there was no point in using any of the Atronachs anymore because they were so outclassed by the Dremora. Plus, with Twin Souls I can summon two Dremora death-machines. I rarely use Reanimation spells because why should I when I can summon two Dremora lol?

Conjuration only begins to be effective when you get the Stormy/Dremora. The other Atronachs/summons seem to just be damage sponges whilst you bludgeon distracted enemies to death. In Oblivion Atronachs were powerful and there were other powerful summons early enough on also. In Skyrim it is ergo weaker, ergo nerfed.