Are any other pure magic users having a lot of trouble fighting other mages? It seems that every match up against a mage is a struggle, I'm being forced to use Dragonskin, multiple staves, and my shouts in order to -hopefully- take them down. It's even worse when their familiars are immune to my preferred school of magic, forcing me to switch to a weaker spell in order to damage them. However, the most frustrating element is that they seem to predict -exactly- when my spell is going to hit them, activating a ward spell at exactly the right time. This means that my spell does nothing but drain their magicka. If I could actually land one or two firebolts on them without hitting the ward I'd actually be able to handle them. Can anyone offer advice as how to deal with other magic users? I find I'm constantly getting my butt handed to me.

Am I doing something wrong? I recently increased the combat difficulty from adept to expert for the creation of this character, who is around level 7. Despite this, I have little trouble killing melee oriented characters. Is the increased difficultly the issue?

NPC Mage =/= Player Mage

NPCs have infinate mana, near perfect aim and run away from you while casting.


As a player mage, these guys are really annoyoing, your best best is to conjure daedra to take them out.

Just for reference, I'm a level 35 mage on expert difficulty.

I usually start out by casting any pet thats big enough to act as my shield against projectiles - which is a superior "ward" spell in my opinion as it can retaliate. Depending on circumstance, I'll either use frenzy upon a group of mages to soften everyone up or I'll use fear so that I can deal with one enemy at a time. After that its heals and support shock dps.

Two things that I've found out while facing rival mages.

1. Shock spells are your friend. I don't know if NPC mage's have infinite magicka but it doesn't seem so to me. After using lightening bolts and/or chain lightening for awhile, they tend to pull a dagger and charge at me.

2. Enchant/buy magic resitance items or , my preferred way, use spell absorbtion. I'm currently running with 80% spell absorbtion so I enjoy fighting mages. They only feed my magicka most of the time.

NPC mages can run out of mana just as much as NPC warriors running out of stamina.

This is how I go about taking out an enemy Mage:

1 Summon pet
2 Get some distance between me and them -- this allows you to dodge their ice spikes and such
3 Put up a ward spell
4 Then I use lightning, ice then fire spells to finish them off.

Keeping your distance helps a lot and makes dodging spells a whole bunch easier. Pets keep them occupied. Ward spells work but are expensive to use even with the absorb perk, but they will save your life.

Lightning, lightning and more lightning. Stun with dual cast if you have to. Summon pets, kite and cover. If your using alteration, go in with skin. Wards are meh, unless you have a restoration reduction 75+.

As a Lvl 45 mage I have not so many problems against enemy mages. My warrior has a lot more problems. You should level Illusion and Alteration as a mage. With Alteration you get resistance (and later paralyze), with Illusion you can play with every foe (allegedly not on high levels because of broken scaling, let's wait and see). I never used lightning spells, they may be a good alternative against mages. I usually use double flame ball, calm them, flame ball till they die, calm again if necessary. Or paralyze them and hit them with flame balls. When there are more mages, calm them and kill one after another. To summon melee Atronachs also helps a lot, although my Conjuration skill is rather low.

I fear high ranking enemy archers far more. One arrow from a high draugr lord and I'm dead. So I have to keep them in control every second.