Spell-swordWar-mage style

Post » Sat Jun 02, 2012 7:29 am

just wondering which style to go
  • heavier armored yet just as powerful Spellsword
  • lighter armored more agile and quite powerful warmage
just wondering which way my breton when i get to making him.
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Sunnii Bebiieh
 
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Post » Sat Jun 02, 2012 11:34 pm

Armour eventually comes down to how it looks imo, both can reach the armour cap if you choose to make them do so.

The only other worthwhile differences are reduced stagger vs increased stamina regen, you can call that yourself.

I'd be inclined toward heavy from an RP point of view, that may be Oblivion influencing me there.
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Kieren Thomson
 
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Post » Sat Jun 02, 2012 6:32 pm

I usually go with light armor as I like to try and sneak up on something before I kill it. You can move a little bit faster in light armor. I went with one-handed weapons so I could use the other hand for magic.
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Enny Labinjo
 
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Post » Sat Jun 02, 2012 2:29 pm

It's mostly an aesthetic choice, the biggest decided factor for me when rolling a similar character was the standing stone issue. When wearing heavy armor I pretty much always go and grab the steed stone after a certain level to improve carrying capacity, movement speed, and reduce the weight of the armor to nothing without having to waste perk points. If you want to use a different standing stone Light Armor won't be as heavy to lug around and you can carry more loot. Using my Breton I opted for light armor and the Lord Stone for an immediate 50% resistance to magic without enchanting anything.
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FLYBOYLEAK
 
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Post » Sat Jun 02, 2012 7:54 pm

Go heavy. + Steed.

But FWIW, the Warmage option is probably the worst of all choices, from an optimization standpoint. Far better to have one method of making corpses and dump the rest of your perks into support/defense skills. Plus you'll likely want to spread points between health, magicka and stamina, and the the weaker for it.
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Danny Warner
 
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Post » Sat Jun 02, 2012 8:41 pm

Battle-mage here. 100hrs in and lovin it.

Saying that light armor will EVENTUALLY scale to heavy armor is true. But that's some 40+ levels in. Go with Heavy Armor from the start. Get the Stead Stone asap. You will move just as fast as light armor. Use a heavy shield - getting elemental protection early makes those first couple dragon encounters a bit easier, and deadly bash opens up melee for combo moves.

I'm optimized to kill in a variety of ways: Lay a frost ruin. Poison arrow and shoot. Enemy charges and trips the ruin. Power attack then slash. Shield bash to stagger. Shout to double stagger. Launch a fireball or two to finish them off. Loot. Micromanaging being the only downside.

Stats: I went for a ratio of 3:2:1 - 3 points to Health, 2 to Magic, and 1 to Stamina. Don't neglect stamina if you want to out run oppenents. Magica - you get so many staffs mid/late game that I think having more HP is the way to go if you melee.

Primary skill is destruction. Totally perked in it and trained it to 90 as fast as possible. 1H was my secondary skill. Went straight up to paralyzing strike and specialized in bone breaker. The rest I used for utility. Archery/Block/Restro/Smithing.

I did exploit Speech Craft early on, and took Investor sooner than later b/c running around store to store to vend sux. Smith and enchant for income and you will have no problem with gold; buy all the gear, training, items to disenchant, powerful potions, and scrolls you want. I found that without grinding, I naturally hit 100 enchant and 90 smithing at about lvl 44.

Important lesson I learned quick: If you melee aka tank, you need a shield; if you opt to go shieldless you'll need to kite or you will be spaming pots and restro spells - unless you use a NPC or Summon to tank for you.

Kind of loosely modeled this build around Jarlaxle Baenre. But went more brawler than stab you in the back type.
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Daramis McGee
 
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Post » Sat Jun 02, 2012 5:56 pm

Great post mossomo... I took a different route, though.

Put most of my points in magicka - god knows you find enough health potions to hotkey your way to immortality.

I always have a spell in one hand and a sword in the other. Against tough enemies with a follower by my side, I can't use too many harsh area spells so I often Ironfllesh and then ward off magical attacks while hacking away with 1H enchanted weapons.

OR, with my heavy armor, I stay back a bit, and let my Atronochs and followers take care of business while I use controlled destruction spells.

R
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Rebecca Clare Smith
 
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