Whilst I've been playing the TES series since Daggerfall, I have never once played as a Mage for the simple reason, I'm not big on all the jiggery pokery, however, I'm bored playing the usual stealth type and get motion sickness going melee, so decided i had little alternative but to go Mage. Due to the motion sickness thing, I'm not even going to attempt a spellsword, so that isn't an option

Anyhoo, here's a couple of questions;

Other than RP reasons, is there any reason not to use armour? Do you get penalised ala Oblivion style? Even though I'm going 3:1 with magika/health I'm feeling vulnerable and because i'm not used to playing a glass cannon type character, i tend to get hit from time to time and when i do, it hurts.

I'm using destruction (shock & fire) as my main offensive weapon, with a little bit of conjuration when things get tight and when i need something to transfer the aggro away from myself. What other magic school works best with those 2 - Alteration or illusion?

Don't plan on using smithing, even though I'm considering using armour.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I really only feel like answering one of your questions...Illusion is da bomb.

Im almost 100 percent there is no penalty on armor, illusion is highly useful to taking out a few enemies with a fury spell, who will attack the boss type in the room (that you can't normally fury) leaving no peons and a weakened boss

all that said I'm waiting until they do some balance on destro before I make a new mage character

also, you missed out on the more robust magic systems of morrowind and OB

I'm only playing on expert, so the whole destruction balance issue will probably not affect me, but I'm only lvl 20 so i suppose that remains to be seen.

Thanks for your responses anyway, much appreciated.

Personally, I would suggest not wearing armor. Most people swear by it, but you shouldn't be getting close to enemies anyway. You certainly won't get hit enough to ever make much use of the skill unless you spend money training it.

If you take alteration, you can perk a bonus to your armor assuming you're only wearing cloth. That's what I've been using.

Also, if you're on PC, you might want to look at http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2275. It seeks to bring magic up to the viability levels of weapon users. The problem with magic is that it doesn't really scale. Your perks reduce casting costs but never increase damage, so the higher you go, the less effective your damage spells are. That mod fixes that without making you WTFoverpowered.

I play "unfocused mage" on master without armor (or weapons or crafting), and it's kinda difficult So far I only wear fur boots and bracers, and pretty much anything that hits takes me out. My biggest problem is the "reversed hands", I just can't get used to the hands being reversed so I always fire the wrong spells. "Take that, you bandit" followed by a detect life or ward spell. I'm thinking about getting a companion, because currently even my conjured helpers is not really enough. I enjoy the frustration though. My problems are what I'd expect on Master, it's the other ones that got it kinda easy (imo).

There's no penalty associated with armor in terms of magic; so the question really is; why the hell not.

^You are slower/can carry less loot. :B I find alteration makes up for lack of armor.

Well, I chose High Elf for the epic magicka regen and the +50 magicka. I always pick magicka when I level up. I have the minimum in restoration (to get the ward skill, dual casting, and magicka regen). I am also Destruction, with frost now, and likely shock later if casters continue to aggravate me and my plans for alteration don't help like I thought they would. My plans for Alteration include the one where you resist magick attacks and where it replenishes your magicka when you're hit with a spell, in addition to the one that buffs armor boosting spells when you're not wearing armor, but cloth instead. I have conjuration, and plan to get enchanting.

In order of importance to me:

Destruction (frost, and maybe shock (and rune mastery and the one that makes them stumble when dual cast is awesome))
Conjuration (going down the elemental path, not the reanimated path)
Alteration (to get the nice perks)
Restoration (not beyond apprentice tier and ward buff, because I'll never increase my health (unless I begin to really svck and become inable to cast to stay alive))
Enchanting (to max, but later than the previous four on this list)

Also, the ritual stone birthsign is nice, where once a day, you can reanimate (one, or more than one?) dead corpses in a vicinity to fight for you for 60 seconds.

I just told you the current plans/status of my level 16 High Elf Mage.

Oh yea, one reason to not use armor is if you go alteration and use the spell that boosts your armor boosting spells. Another reason is if you're going to level enchanting, cheap clothes are the best things to enchant to level up, and eventually you can get 100 enchanting and get 2 enchants on a piece of clothing. You can do it to armor too, but armor costs more than clothes while leveling up.

Money is too easy to come by to be an issue; and if you're leveling enchanting you'll be rich very quickly even if you buy all your soulgems filled from vendors.

With full armor; you don't even need most alteration perks because you already have hit the armor cap so you never need to cast a shield spell on yourself.

I've just started playing a mage (first playthrough was a sneak archer), and I'm curious about these points. Why take dual casting in restoration? Are you dual casting wards, and if so, what effect does that have? Also, why take the ritual birth stone when you have spells to reanimate corpses? Is it to get round the level limit on the raise zombie type spells? Or is the ritual stone zombie in addition your atronach?

Also, to answer the OP, from my rather limited experience: as a mage you should never be being attacked in melee, so armor is irrelevent. With no armor skill and no armor perks, the effect is small in any case. You can play a magic using character in heavy armor, taking perks in the heavy armor tree, putting points into health, and going toe-to-toe with your enemies, but I wouldn't call that character a 'mage'. Battle-mage, maybe. Mage armor is there if you need it, and can get you up to 300 armor, which is 36% damage reduction (for comparison, full daedric armor, unsmithed, with 25 skill and no perks, would give 208 armor (including the hidden bonus)), but you shouldn't need it. If you find yourself in melee, use whirlwind sprint, or ice-form, or unrelenting force, or fear, or calm, or ... well, you get the idea.

With Vanilla magic, you shouldn't be dualcasting restoration spells. You expend more mana than you get increased effect.

From the wiki:


You might want to look into http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2275 if you're on PC. It makes sense of some things, and reduces Impact's OPness from destruction.

I have an issue with playing a mage... I can never seem to have enough Magicka... it always seems like I run out way too fast, even with perks corrisponding to the spells level.

That's because damage doesn't scale as you level, unless you mod it.

How so? PC only stuff?

The ritual stone is the only birthsign stone I've found so far, and I am using it with my atronach line instead of the reanimation line. I took dual casting restoration before I knew that mana costs decreased as you leveled up. If I could have that point back, I would, and I would use quick healing instead of dual-casting the original healing spell. However, dual casting the original heal spell is the most mana efficient heal you can get, I think.

I used the ritual stone to help to some extent as I fought a really difficult battle against a necromancer, as there was a room full of bodies before the big battle. It was a difficult quest and I really liked being able to get 60 seconds of extra help against the boss.

That svcks. Do you know of dual-casting wards is worthwhile? I wouldn't mind doing this since I plan to max out the atronach line of conjuration. Are you sure fast healing doesn't get a significant bonus?

Yeah.

To be successful at vanilla destruction, you should look at cheesing up enchanting (reducing all your casting costs to zero) and taking Impact, which is grossly imbalanced but probably necessary to compensate for the rest.


EDIT: Not sure about wards. I also haven't tried it on things like runes and summons, personally.

Come to think of it, I don't regret picking up dual-casting restoration. That first healing spell that you channel provides an instant effect of health regeneration, while "fast healing" requires you charge it in your hand and release it. Being able to channel a dual-cast healing spell allows me to tank a LOT of stuff for very little magicka. I've had situations where I take damage and try to fast heal instead of regular heal, and I sometimes die before I can release the spell after charging the fast healing spell.

You got restoration dual-casting?? lol...

It's my first character. I don't go looking online to min-max everything. Besides, with my magicka reserves, I can spend 2 seconds channeling my life back to full, meanwhile only depleting a very small fraction of my health bar.

You can go ahead and laugh at me though. This isn't an MMO, so we don't have to cooperate with eachother.

Fast healing takes a second to charge up and release. I can instantly heal and continue to tank through damage until I hit full hp, and then I have most of my magicka remaining. You act as if the mana depletion is a lot. I say that it ISN'T a lot, especially considering magicka use of restoration spells decreases as restoration skill increases.

I'm level 18 and I have about 340 unbuffed magicka.

Yes, it's clearly the case that sometimes you care more about throughput than magicka efficiency and in that case, dual casting is the way to go. Single cast healing is the most magicka efficient healing spell in the game (0.83 hpm at 0 skill with no perks), but the healing rate is too low to be much use while in combat. Dual cast healing is less magicka efficient (0.65 hpm), but only slightly less efficient than fast healing (0.68 hpm), and of course much more efficient than fast healing if you haven't taken apprentice restoration.

I'm still not quite sure why you'd *want* to do mage tanking though.