Does anyone know how magicka regeneration is calculated when you have multiple effects or items active?

I understand that out of combat it is 3% and about 1% in combat, but my question is if you have the mask of Morokei (+100%) and the Arch mage robes (+100%) is your overall regen rate 9%((out of combat) +200%), or is it doubled and then doubled again for 12%?

If all bonuses are simply added together it makes the Atronach stone unbelievably overpowered (it is anyway), any +50% Magica regeneration item and you have 50% absorb spell and 50 extra magicka with no penalty.

If anyone knows how the mechanics work I would really appreciate knowing the correct method.

bump

You add them together, so if it is "2", then 100% + 100% would give you "6" I believe, not "8".

atronach stone is -50% regen and regen doesn't work combat so it's pretty useless but The atronach stone is great IF your not a conjuer it bugs and absorbs your conjurations and since destruction doesn't scale it's probably save to say you will probably use either conjuration or illusion and apprentice stone is useless 100% increase in mana regen that doesn't work outside of combat for weakness to magic oh and most mages can one hit you having weakness to magic is a really bad idea

I know that the atronach stone is bugged for conjuration, but a -50% regeneration can be removed in many ways and the positive from the stone is by far better than anything else.

look I would say that having % reduce magicka school cost is alot better seeing how most high level spells cannot even be casted with really high mana

Well my magic regens in combat at a slower rate then when I am not in combat. To the op, I don't know but I can visible see the difference so good enough for me.

Combat magicka regen is 33% of normal (out of combat). If you have multiple gear/effects that adds/subtracts to regeneration, then these are all combined together and then applied to the combat regen or non-combat regen.

Example: using atronach stone (-50%), with archmage robes (+100%) and morokei (+100%) = +150% to baseline for normal regen, 83% of baseline for combat... so in the example you can use gear to take a big bite out of the "combat penalty" for magicka regen, but even with two very good +regen items, it still is less than "un-boosted" normal. If you did away with the atronach stone in the example, your combat regen would match your un-boosted baseline -- or close enough... it would be at 99% of baseline.

As an aside, the penalty for using the atronach stone is completely canceled by wearing novice robes. Anything that counteracts that -50% will do the job.
-Loth

Thank you Loth,

That makes my current idea for a powerful robe mage untenable.

It makes me sad, the overwhelmingly best way to build a mage is with heavy armor (enchanted with% reduction cost per school) and the atronach stone. I know a mage in robes can still work, but that build is not even close in ability and power to the heavy armor build.

Odd how everyone in the college at winterhold is still in robes, they obviously have not done the math.

Hehe... the point in being a mage is that YOU DON'T GET HIT! You don't need heavy armor, unless you just want it for the looks. Use conjuration or illusion to keep enemies from aggro-ing on you, and stay mobile in a fight. Cast destruction spell, MOVE, cast destruction spell, MOVE. When you get the impact perk, you can immobilize enemies and not have to move around so much. Use gear that reduces casting cost, instead of increasing mana regen... when you get a high enough Enchanting skill/perks, you can make gear that reduces casting costs to zero for a school... even for two schools, when you have the Dual enchant perk.

I never use heavy armor for my mage chars, and it actually works better, because the mobility you have wearing robes is a lot better than in heavy armor. Try it out, and you'll see for yourself.
-Loth

My character wears robes because it frees up skill points for magic skills, and I also want to put all my level-ups into Magicka, so my playstyle is not to get hit. I don't want to max out enchanting and wear a full set of magicka cost reduction because it seems cheesy and boring to me.

I use both reduce magicka items and regen items. WIth 250% regen my combat rate regen is fairly fast - people who say it is broken have no clue. I only use items I've found overall - not enchanting. With items I've found I have -47% reduction to destruction and 250% mana regen and +70 mana necklace. My mana pool without items is 550 (I think).....

I am level 46 and I play on Adept. I level most things but still meet a few hard fights - which is how it should be. Or I can have bad luck and get killed but that is rare and usually if I'm rushing or not paying attention.

J

It is all additive, including Atronach stand stone, restoration perks and potions.

Loth,

You have to admit the minor loss of speed compared to always being at the armor cap creates a much higher level of survivability. At a fairly early level you can have great protection and cast magic from two schools for free, meaning you also don't have to increase magicka nearly as high, giving you more health. You can ignore all perks related to lowering spell casting cost, get 50% absorption and bonus magicka from the atronach stone, all at an early level. Yes you can play a mage with robes, but your survivability drops. It is a fact, that is how the game was designed. It's my belief that if the most powerful design for a mage is one that uses heavy armor instead of robes, uses a stone that is supposed to stunt magic, and allows you to ignore most of the perks from you main magical skill discipline, well then the the designer have erred.

I got the balanced magic mod and its great

makes alteration "shields" VERY powerful and improves magic overall

ALSO I do make a 100% reduction in mana cost gear for destruction then I put some magic resistance here and there (amulet, boots) some mana here and there AND tada I have an uber mage

try balanced magic mod its great

That is a super weird build that I doubt many people would come up with. It's just a consequence of having open choices for all kinds of playstyles, there is not much way to control it without unintended consequences elsewhere. It relies on grinding enchanting for one thing. If you were going to play that style, you might as well play a battlemage. Why would you create all that equipment at an early level, have high health and low magicka, and then restrict yourself from using a melee weapon?

Sorry, I brought us off topic. My goal was to make a viable mage build using the apprentice stone in conjunction with every magicka regeneration boosting item I could find and see if that could get you through without doing any enchanting. Unfortunately, since it is additive the best you can hope for is about a +500%, or 5% of you magicka per second, which I think I would be difficult at midlevels (the 100% weakness to magic will svck). I might still try. Thanks for the feedback.

the combat mana regen nerf ruins magic for me. i tried to max regen with enchanting, but it's still so incredibly slow. free magic and perma stun is really boring and really bad game design. but without it you are running around waiting for regen or conjuring and hiding for regen to conjure again. which is also really bad game design. also spells become obsolete and the high level spells cost too much; which is, you guessed it, bad game design. unfortunately the best route for a mage is to wear heavy armor (once you get it to 70 and the no weight / movement restriction you are gold) and double enchant for free magic. i find magic very dissappointing.

No, it is not a fact that heavy armor builds for mages increase survivability. I do not use any armor because it wouldn't suit my characters. Alteration is fine for survivability. You can also use other aids if you like, but you certainly do not need heavy armor, nor does heavy armor actually increase your survivability (unless you plan to get into melee combat a lot, but that's playing a hybrid type such as a battlemage, not a pure caster).

I have a character (pure mage) on master. Survives no problem using Destruction, but it's boring.

It just depends how you play. My mage almost never runs out of magicka unless she is spamming destruction at a stationary target. But then her magicka is almost 600 because I concentrated on it. I do use some magicka reduction, but only stuff at the level you can get from loot, and only three pieces at most. Typical equipment is Archmage Robes, Circlet & Ring of Magicka reduction 20% for Destruction only, boots and gloves fortifying Sneak, and a necklace of magic resistance or elemental resistance. She uses all schools though Restoration is lagging the others due to not being used. Magic is lots of fun for me. (Expert difficulty)

At some point something will hit you, when that happens only taking 20% of the damage does increase survivability. No armor alot of damage, ebonyflesh less damage (300 rating (with all 3 perks), without the hidden 100 you get from armor) means a bit over 43% damage reduction. I am not talking about fun, play style, entertainment value or anything other than survivability, and a mage in heavy armor has more than one in robes.

I see your point, and from a pure statistics anolysis you are correct... based on the numbers, a mage with the very best passive protection gear will outlive one that does not use armor. That's actually nothing more than common sense, actually.

HOWEVER

In practice, if you are playing a mage "properly" (if there is such a thing), then you will not be getting hit... thus, you will not be gaining skill in heavy armor, and that stat becomes stagnant/irrelevant after a while. This becomes even more apparent if you are able to skillfully place summons tactically or use stealth/illusion to disrupt crowds of mobs and control the flow of combat. Try it out... use destruction magic as well as the support system (conjuration or illusion) as the game "intended", and see if you don't stop getting hit.

It will probably dawn on you when you are getting ambushed by random "tough" beasties like snow sabrecats and bears, and they don't seem to do any damage to you. It is quite easy for you to use magicka to de-aggro even nasty enemies, and when you have that breathing room, you will decimate pretty much anything... especially if you have the impact perk and use dual-casting. As one poster above said, it can even get boring after a while.

-Loth

PS To avoid your mage getting boring, don't use fortify school enchants on your gear to reduce casting cost to zero. Having a finite supply of power will make even a very strong mage still challenging and fun to play.

I disagree with a lot here. For one, while you can avoid getting hit and in fact not getting hit and thus not gaining armor skill is an issue, armor is still 100% superior to robes + alteration. Spending more mana on something you can get passively is just not a good idea. Also, by default, a set of any armor gives +25 armor per piece regardless of skill. That's the equivalent of ebonyflesh as a freebee for just putting armor on, on top of the armor's shown rating. Then there's the question of mobility, light armor has almost no noticeable detriment. If you're using illusion muffle completely negates its penalty to sneak as well. A set of armor only has to give 200 shown rating to match 3/3 mage armor and the strongest armor spell.

You could argue that with alteration you'll eventually get Dragonhide, but then until you hit 100 alteration you're stuck with the basically worthless unbuffed armor spells. You won't even compete with unimproved fur armor until 75 skill, and you're still losing that competition at 75.

There's also the problem that when you have the time and mana to cast dragonhide, you're at a point when you don't need it. I'd only use it if I were intentionally going into melee range, but if you're aware of an enemy you generally don't have to do that to kill it as a mage. When you really need armor is when you're not prepared and/or at the early stages of the game when your health is low. That base 100 armor rating from any light set is more vital to any DiD character than Dragonhide ever will be.

I also don't use cast reduction enchants, and honestly it really isn't challenging or fun at high level. After hitting a certain level of illusion and conjuration(50, but 75 is when it really gets overpowered) everything is easy. There's a certain novelty to watching dremora lords cleave through everything but it's not particularly exciting. I shoot things with a bound bow still but at this point it's unnecessary.

Another thing worthy of note is that due to (destruction)mages not getting more magicka by default, you have an innate disadvantage if you use the same magicka pool for damage as you do control, utility, and healing and so on. You're better off using a bow, really. And with summons, you can have permanent and/or longer lasting ones that partially negate the cost since you can have them out most of the time before combat while your magicka regens several times faster, while high level destruction just gets more and more expensive.

By the numbers, I cannot refute your argument that armor is superior to robes+Alteration... because it IS superior. Superior, yes... and unnecessary -- as the rest of your post goes on to say. For example, a very good reason to religiously cast a protection spell before every combat is not necessarily for the boost to armor rating -- it's to level up your Alteration skill so you can get access to Magic Resist perks, and eventually, the Atronach perk (which kicks serious ass, especially when used in conjunction with the Atronach stone). For a pure mage, your nastiest opponents are going to be the ones who are acting like you are... casting spells, using summons -- and no amount of armor rating will do jack squat against an enemy fireball spell... or any spell for that matter. Using Alteration = Good. Magic Resistance and Spell Absorb = Good

-Loth

45% magic resist from Mara+Lord Stone w/one resist magic enchant would then save you 8 perks in alteration. IDK about you but I like to conserve perks where I can, and alteration just seems like a massive waste of perks if all you're getting it for is magic protection. I do like my candlelight and detect life spells but those don't require perks. Paralysis is also IMO obsolete if you're perking Illusion.

And if you like the look of robes, you can always just use something like this -

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1573

I'll probably customize my own once the CK comes out but this gives you some basic options.