Hello everyone!

I am about to start a new playthrough at master difficulty with no fast travel (the post about it convinced me ). I just wanted to know, as I read from multiple places that mages are not viable, if playing a mage would be impossible. I was hesitating between an orc warrior tank or a breton conjurer/destruction. Any advice would be welcomed as I want this playthrough to be difficult but not impossible. Thanks in advance.

Zulim

Absolutely. It's not like you can run into something that requires you to do 500 damage with a sword to progress.

You won't do as much damage as backstabbing stealth characters or warriors, for instance. But Destruction spells can deal about the same damage as http://pix.playground.ru/download/gallery/276634/b78438ee5d4a7f4541b15d28188948e8.jpg and you can cast them faster than shooting arrows.

Just use enchantment + alchemy, you'll be fine.

Its very boring though

Yes its very possible. Destruction can be used at high levels, dual cast incinerates (with the +damage perks and the illusion fear perk) will do 220 damage. Which is enough, throw in a destruction potion and you can hit 500 damage per dual cast.

Combine that with conjuration, for sponging/dealing damage, keeping the heat of you.
Illusion, fury the enemy to keep the battle away from you.
Alteration, you can go with this with clothing (more fun IMO), or you can go with light/heavy armor, it has no drawbacks. With alteration you can also use spells such as paralyse and mass paralyse.
Make strong use of the become ethereal shout, it allows you to run away to regenerate magicka, and charge up master spells without fear of being hit.

So thats my mage on master from the start, without to much trouble.

It's more easy with a thief.A Pure mage would be easier than an battlemage since you could use more magic.Homever...a mage would easily be killed because of it's health.

No. It is, but it's not fun.

Cheers

Yeah its easy, but boring. Just sneaking around one shotting everything without a battle. Being a mage doesn't force you to wear clothes, you can wear armor without any drawbacks.

Have you even played as a mage? How do you know the OP won't enjoy it? Such a pointless comment.

It's possible, but very, very boring and not fun...due to the poor way the various skill/archetypes are balanced. You're going to have to rely on either conjuration, or spamming enemies to death with impact so they can never attack you.

I'm playing on Expert and I get one hit by melee dual weilding types. Its dangerous as a mage

I still rely on my summoned helpers

It just takes a little more tactics than the stealth- or tankapproach.

Illusion school would be your friend on this, but ya you can...

Master difficulty, Illusions way outstrips the other schools, since you just use the tougher enemies against each other. And you can Calm your way around fights you want to avoid.

Fear can be used in odd ways too, like making guys run from you off cliffs and die, or driving a small army of bears into a dragon nest.

Just started master difficulty. Decided to NOT use illusion since I like killing things in a more direct manner (mind control is usually overpowered or underpowered in games as well so I didn't want to risk it being either one of those).

I am wearing heavy armor, and I do have some mana issues at level 7 when I decided to not use my sword so I could get Destruction up in level. Level 10 now, I think, and I just put my first rank into +25% fire damage. That helps, but I still have some trouble with mana here and there (haven't done much alchemy yet). On the other hand, I don't like constantly running away so the bad guys leave me alone...as eventually that gets exploitive (kill someone, run until the others go back, kill another...it's really unrealistic it at that point). If I didn't do that, I believe I'd be dead since I've died a couple times and gotten close either. My armor definitely helps keep me alive, even if I am currently missing out on any sort of aid to magicka regen.

I do find magick is really limiting early on. I should probably use my sword more. Problem is, it seems much more powerful than Flames (even my iron sword seemed to kill things quicker), and I want to level my destruction. It probably isn't more powerful than double flames (no talent in double destruction yet since apparently it makes dual casting REALLY magicka while only boosting the damage like 20%). I am hesitant about getting the stagger ability for dual casting destruction. That seems really overpowered to me (and potentially quite boring). If I find going without and using Conjuration, Alteration, and Restoration to support lacking, then I'll probably just find a good mod for magic to fix the problem. Right now though, despite almost constant magicka increases, I really have very little magicka overall. I'd like to support my destruction with other spells a bit more, but it is REALLY expensive to do so at low levels. On the other hand, even on Master things aren't that hard at low levels.

I do plan on using crafting quite a lot. I think people have done it without crafting, but I like the idea of crafting powerful items and I know it will certainly help.

Mage play style is very easy once you get the stagger ability then it's child's play.Either way you play zero mana cost of pure mage high mana reg its basic combine that with high enchanting whack magic resistance on gear and you are a god.

I think it is.

Its possible and easy, but sort of counter intuitive.

You don't want to dump all your points into magic, as a matter of fact...

You should either equalize the two between health and magic, or lean slightly more to your choice.. Perks and appropriate enchants make spell cost neutral, not to mention how awesome having 3 people running diversion for you is.

End game mage is gonna spend lots of time in the favorites menu to keep things interesting, but I find its probably the easiest build to play. Paralyze, Double Conjuration, Neutral ability cost, stagger, unlimited followers...

Pretty easy, makes being a Mage feel sort of god-like.

Just don't go running up to something's face and expect to wtf them without getting your wig split.

If you fortify destro and/or conjuration, you're golden. Those schools can become very powerful, it's just that your magicka will be OM NOM NOMed quickly.

Against the first dragon at level 12, I found the Lesser Ward invaluable. It completely negated his ability to hurt me with his breath weapon. It's used kind of like a shield, so you have to keep it active while you defend yourself. I did go through quite a lot of mana potions though. His biting still hurt a bit, but that's a lot more manageable.

Not sure how well the wards will scale in usefulness, but seems like early on they are really good.

I have to agree. If you do go master with a mage I would suggest NOT going destruction... that just ends up turning into a spamfest because of the stagger (it's really not hard at all, just incredibly tedious and boring). Do something that may require more strategy like conjuration and illusion.

It's viable, not too hard and fun.

Easy but annoying, you start to use always the same 2-3 spell for all the time, the master spell are useless, you can do all alot better and with less mana cost with fireball and chain lighting , frost spell too are useless the drain of stamina don't help and the slower effect have a lenght of 1-2 sec then useless.

Its bery easy with conjuration

yes, with enchanting anything is possible. get those spell reduction enchantments as well as health fortify enchantments, and resist magic enchantments. Plus dragonhide, you'll have max armor, max magic resistance and loads of health.

Conjuration and illusion too are useless, conjuration have big problem to find space to spawn the various atronach, and the undead are useless after lvl 35-40.
Illusion i really not see the reason to use it, more good paralyze if you need and you get good armor bonus with the right spell and perks.

You have no idea what you're talking about, seriously.

You can spawn them anywhere, it will always place it near you, even if you cast it at a wall, there is always room. Do you mean reanimated undead? You are bringing the enemy back, so they enemy is scaled, therefore as strong as other enemies. Also dremora lords, atronachs and thralls are immensely powerful. You have no idea.

Illusion, if you have the right perks you can use the manipulation spells on anything that isn't immune (dragons are immune etc), so you can fury some enemies and they will kill each other, is that worthless? You can fear an enemy so he cowers and you can kill him. You can calm enemies you don't want to fight. Combine invisibility and muffle then enemies won't detect you.

Why comment if you have no idea.