So I've been playing my mage since decrypt and I've just hit the lower thirties. Generally I don't (or more accurately, didn't) have much of an issue with combat, I use Illusion when I'm feeling spiteful, Conjuration when I'm being lazy and Destruction when I'm being masochistic. Under most circumstances my strategies rarely fail me, but this is just getting vexing. Yes, you guessed it - the uselessness of alteration for robe sporting mages. On expert difficulty, with two points in the mage armor perk and while using the ebonyflesh spell I'm consistently getting one-hitted by the average bandit. I've started to use the F5 key more than the healing spell in my offhand.

So I come seeking advice, but I want to make this clear. Lowering the difficulty is not an option, the game becomes far to easy for my mage. I also have no interest in wearing armor. I'm a mage, dammit! So yeah, any tips while keeping those two stipulations in mind would be awesome.

<sup>Have you put any points into health at all? It is unusual to be 1 hit by a regular bandit.

Ethereal shout can be handy in a tight spot because they can't harm you while it is active while you can stiill hurt them with spells.

Edit: text was a little small for some reason.</sup>

Don't get hit? If you're at a point where you're struggling, summon something via conjuration and then hide via illusion.

Don't be tempted to leave your health baseline just because you're a mage, especially in higher difficulties. Even with 300-400 armour you will easily get one-shotted by 2 hander wielding enemies if you have less than 200 health.

Also, don't forget that a shield doesn't count against your Mage Armour perk (Nor does using a shield by itself result in growth in an armour skill even though you do net additional armour value from it), if you need extra defence you CAN use a shield to block/bash with... some mages feel that is un-magey using a shield. But proper shield usage (Blocking, parrying, timing bashes to maximum effect, blocking arrows and even spells later on) is far more cerebral than "spam fireballs"

Of course, once you get dragonhide (Master alteration spell), you probably won't need it anyway since you'll have a flat 80% damage mitigation.

I haven't put any points in health, its all been doing to Magicka for the last thirty levels. I'll have to look into this Ethereal Shout. Is it locked within a quest/plot line or can you find it by way of exploration?

Edit: Is this ill-advised, should I focus on health more?


The problem is two-fold. I can't avoid everything, this is a simple fact. I'm going to be in a cave with tight corridors that have enemies sneak up on me. The solution to that problem (or similar circumstances) is an excessive amount of micro-management through tedious menus. As noted in the original post, I'm utilizing pets and illusion spells to my advantage. But preemptively juggling ebonyflesh, invisibility, detect life, rout, pacify, storm atronach, fireball and healing magic every thirty seconds is a bit much.

Thank you for the response, but I'm looking for things more in the way of passive buffs, shouts, enchant suggestions, potions, etc..

How much magicka would you say is good enough before I switch over to buffing health? I was hedging my bets on better defensive skills late game, but looks like I might need to heavily invest in health before its to late.

I'd spend everything in Health from now on, as you can easily reduce the costs of 2 schools to 0 with only 1 armor (clothing) set with Enchanting (which falls under the mage category as well )

I use 1 clothing set for Alteration/Destruction (buff armor, spam bolts) and 1 set for Illusion/Restoration (calm or fury, heal self).
Boots/Gloves for carry weight (I never invested in stamina, so 387ish weightcarry suits me well).

See whichever works for you, I'm sitting on 250ish health on my mage but I can easily stagger everything that comes my way on master difficulty, even dragons.

Ethereal Shout is found, there are no related quests, if you want to you can check up on the wiki but my char usually finds it early by following the local questlines in each town/city he/she visits.

Personally I'd say you need at least twice as much health, you can still be one shotted but it wont be quite so regularly.
At level 60 my Mage has a little over 300 health with the rest in mana and gets by quite well, though she does have a well armoured companion + whatever she decides to summon acting as a buffer.

I have found that 50/50 magicka/health is fine for a mage. As you skill up the magicka costs go down a decent amount. Around 200-250 health is the bare minimum to not get one shot frequently at higher levels on master difficulty, but 300-400 is MUCH better.

Thanks for the advice guys!

I'm sitting at about 450 base magicka (550 with appearl) and 100 base health (120 wuth appeal). So yeah, I guess there isn't much of a need to focus on magicka anymore, and I'll start buffing magic. A suit will be in the works as soon as I start investing more in enchanting (55 SP perkless). Oh and I'll definitely be hitting the wiki for that shout, thanks Sir Crashalot.

Keep'em coming guys, I appreciate the tips as I'm sure other lowly mage lurkers do as well!

I usually mitigate this problem by playing primarily a mage, but with some warrior skills. When you've invested in all the perks related to bound weapons, said weapons will output as much damage as a daedric weapon. Right now I'm complementing that by investing in the one handed skill. I've also invested in the first perks for both light and heavy armor, which increase the amount of damage they mitigate. I also have the Steed Stone activated, allowing me to use heavy armor unencumbered. My primary defense is to overwhelm the enemy with a relentless offense.

Only few things to add.

1) The impact perk from the Destruction tree helps a ton. You can lock down and kill an archer with just lightning bolt. Sometime they will move out of the way of Fireball.

2) For those really pesky ones paralysis stops them. Mass paralysis is of limited use since the casting time is so long. Summon an Antronach then cast Mass Paralysis once they gather around it. Can simplify some fights.

3) Dragonhide puts you at Armor cap for 45 seconds with stability perk but has very little improvement with Mage armor perks. Its a long cast so you're not casting this in the middle of a fight. Limited use but can help.