I'm considering doing a 2H melee character that does not wear armor but instead uses alteration as his method of defense. With this in mind I can focus on putting perks in enchanting to increase my magic resitance and to buff my attack skills without having to put many points into smithing. Does anyone have experience with this type of build?

hmm...

You'll probably want to pick up dual-casting since you can't off-hand recast mid fight, so you'll want as much duration as possible.

Alteration will never get you the same armor rating either. With 3/3 mage armor it maxes out at only 300 armor.

Alteration also tends to take more perk slots than an armor perk tree... however the magic resistance you pick up is second to none.

It will definitely give your character a weakness... but that can be fun to play... so I say go for it.

I went unarmored alteration on my 1hand spell sword and love it.... but then... I'm a spell sword so have a nice fat mana pool to cast healing spells while I fight....

You may consider doing it as a 1hand instead of 2.... but if you really wanna go for it, do it.

So you think I should really invest that far into the perks? I know with Ebony skin you can get upto 300 with the perks but with Dragonhide you get 80% damage reduction which is the cap I believe. I anticipate it leveling relatively quickly based on it being "always on". I thought this would be a nice change of pace from all the smithing OP debate.

Pointless. Yo're better off using regular armor. Sure Mage Armor can help, bet if you get Alteration high enough, you'll get Dragonskin armor, which absorbs 80% of all damage.

thats a really cool idea i might try it after my vampire assassin..

First off, there is no Smithing OP debate. The effectiveness of Smithing is agreed upon that it is incredibly powerful. Second, this is really in reference to Weapon damage. Damage reduction via Armor does not really matter. Wear whatever you want, or don't wear anything at all. Dodging attacks is the most valuable strategy there is, and furthermore Magic Resist is more important than armor as dodging magic is harder if not impossible in some instances.

That's what I'm doing right now and it's working okay. The aggravating thing about it though is that you have to semi-continually cast the spell. It's easy to get distracted and let it lapse; then suddenly you're dead at the hands of a lame skeleton. As for having to spend the three perks to get the max out of it, it's just something that goes with the territory so I personally don't mind it. It would be nice if there was a kind of automatic casting feature that reset stoneflesh/ironflesh etc. if you wanted it to. Of course that could lead to the inopportune depletion of your last bit of magicka at a crucial time but I'd still use it if it existed.

And getting to a point where it's effective is tough. Oakflesh ain't all that great, stoneflesh is meh. I haven't gotten to Ironflesh yet for some reason. Just haven't run across the spell tome.

Alteration does not really level all that fast TBH.....

Though you can use telekinesis to boost some levels if you find yourself needing that next level of spell @ half cost.

Did that a couple times to power through 2-3 levels to hit the next mark so I could expend, and use, the perk.

and yah, it starts out REALLY weak, and never overcomes even light armor for physical defense... except with Dragonhide that is...

You COULD try and skip mage armor since Dragonhide makes those perks useless..... but you will have a HELL of a time getting there in cloth without mage armor.

Stoneflesh with 1 mage armor perk gives you 120 armor..... not too shabby really, and really the first point you start to feel less vulnerable. Only goes up from there....

Another downside is an almost reliance on enchanting.... there is very little in the way of cloth garments with decent enchantments.

Alteration means you have to invest in magicka; unless you decide to max out enchanting;

But if you invest in enchanting, you're better off with armor since you don't need to recast anything, and waste enchant slots on reducing the high cost of spells, and still end up with a higher magic resist than if you went with alteration;

Stick with armor, magic is crap.

I am kind of surprised that beneficial spells and buffs have any sort of timer at all. Auras, or more importantly the passive buff system is the best concept ever. Pick which buff(s) you want to make active - bam they are always on until you switch which ones you are running. It is a pointless form of upkeep and more so a frustration than anything else. It isn't like a short duration temp buff that say, makes you invulnerable for a short time - so the trade off is that it has a duration and cooldown because it is so powerful. Spells that are meant to absorb then or do things "on hit" or on "being hit" consume Magicka when it goes off. This means say a spell is meant to absorb a portion of spell damage. You cast it and it is always active. Everytime it absorbs a spell, it drains mana. Some spells, more powerful spells, then you have drain magicka over time instead of putting a duration on it. This allows it to scale better as you gain power and more magicka or regen it offsets this and you can keep it active longer. Any system other than the current is better. Skyrim is living in the dark ages when it comes to lots of stuff.

This build sounded fun, I'm sort of working towards it with my current dual wield character (haven't quite committed to not wearing any armor yet, I'm waiting until my alteration skill is higher.) I don't really see many pros though. The elemental resistance from alteration is a good thing. So is being able to move a bit quicker and for less stamina (though that light armor stamina regen perk makes things a bit unfair.)

Alteration is a decent school and has some strong passive perks, but its armor spells are total garbage. They svck compared to regular armor's protection, they cost a lot of magicka, and they have very short duration so they end up being tedious to use.

You are better off with just 6 perks in light armor. Considering you wouldn't have to both taking mage armor, that's only essentially 3 perks loss even if you still want to get alteration for paralysis, picking up 30% resist on the way of course. Even less of a perk loss if you consider not having to bother with dual casting or stability if you'd've wanted decent duration for your armor spells.

As for 2 handed, it's definitely the worst choice for melee. Swings are slow, the power attacks are just plain unwieldy, and its damage scales poorly relative to one handers. Defensively it's worse than sword and board which isn't even really significantly inferior offensively, and it's way behind dual wielding when it comes to damage.

So yeah, this build would be one of the worst you could make if effectiveness is what you're after. But on low or middle difficulty range, shouldn't be a big deal so if you find 2 handers more fun no reason not to use them.

Well if you go cloth with 2h weapon then its a must to enchant really.
Enchant your smithing gear and buy some pots from vendors to make better 2h upgrades but dont perk or level smithing.
Enchant alteration cost reduction and 2h fortify gear for more dmg and less spell cost.
Perk the magic absorb and resist but not the mage armour becuase its pointless.
Alteration is the easiest thing to level just use the spells out of combat while your magic regen is 3%
Use vendor pots and alteration spell to boost the time the spell works ( stability, alteration pots ) so your dragonhide works longer.
Enchant your weapon with drain health and fiery soul trap to level enchanting and do additional dmg and heal at the same time.
Go with health as your main purpose becuase once you get the spell cost to 0 there is no use for magica really ( 100 skill and perks only in enchanting )

I always invest in Alteration, not being one shotted by higher levelled opponents is plus for any character, and Alteration has a lot of utility spells, like Light spells, Water Breathing and Detect Life. Invest in dual casting, it does make the spells last longer and cost more to cast, but not having to recast because you need to is a very good thing midway through a battle.
Alteration also levels fairly well alongside your main attack skill.
A spell does not count against total encumberance either.

Thanks to everyone for the advice! I'll report in on this after I've played it a bit more and let everyone know how it goes. I have to admit Conan running around in a loin cloth is a pretty awesome idea. By way of background I maxed alteration on a destruction build and absolutely fell in love with it but this time im going to be getting hit much more as a melee character. I think the majority of the posts are right though armor works better than not having armor but I'm gonna try and make this work.

When I made my light-armored shield/1-hander warrior, I used alteration to supplement the light armor. This was VERY effective. I did hit the armor cap, but by that point I had taken alterations magic resist perks, which made me feel like the perks weren't wasted, even though I never cast an armor spell again.

Even without ANY perks in light armor, wearing light armor + alteration spells will give you superior AR to alteration + mage armor. Remember that all pieces of armor (not clothing) will give you a hidden +25 to AR.