Wards are very effective if you have the right build and perks. Greater Ward will stop almost anything magic thrown at you.

The idea behind wards iS you gotta find ways to offset the cost, like Breton dragonskin + ward absorb perk + adept magica half cost perk. And you need a good bit of magica.

I've had 2 characters that never had to worry about magic because of wards.

Yup, that's true. I also use summons to take the heat off of me for a bit and don't usually see too many 'gang' spell casters. I also should mention I play on adept and limit myself to 100 health and the rest in magicka. But yes, wards probably aren't ideal against a group of spell casters, but should be used against a single enemy or, like suggested before, use other means to resist. I just find wards both aesthetically cool and useful in certain situations.

Join the club, Play a Breton and your fears of magic vanishes.

I personally would reccomend the Antronach stone, as it will help your offense as well.

Smas

EDIT: you can bypass the 50% slower regen by armour enchantments. Also picking the Antronach perk helps as well.

You don't actually need to do all that.

Breton 25% magic resist
Mara's blessing 15% magic resist
Alternation perk 30% magic resist
Alternation perk 30% magic absorption
Atronach standing stone 50% magic absorption
(100 - 25 - 15 - 30)% x (100 - 50 - 30)% = 6%

Reduces, on average, all magic damage to 6%, while naked. No enchanting required to out-regenerate dragon priest attacks.

Wards are never more effective than passive resist will be, building a character around offsetting their inappropriately high cost to make them worth using at all seems pointless to me with how easy it is to get high passive resist. By the time you get high enough restoration to make wards not completely svck you're likely at a point where you'd just as easily be able to get high passive resist which is superior. You don't even need to be a power gamer race(Breton). Passive resist has the convenience of keeping both your hands free, and it's active all of the time.

Quite correct. Wards are useless in this game. On master level, even the weakest enemy can break your strongest wards and cause you to straggler.

The only ward worth using is spell breaker. Which is also one of the strongest artifact in game. It is one of the very few item that can claim to be better than player crafted ones.

I've never played on master and don't plan to but if the OP plays on adept the wards are very useful. You may disagree but to each his own.

Damage is inconsequential on anything lower than Expert.

I do play on adept, but want to higher the difficulty. No problems with any enemies besides spellcasters to be honest. Will have to boost my character with some magic resistance and try harder. Expert, if not master... Call me dumb, but I thought there are only elemental resistances. At level 43, I didnt find any magic resistance gear heh, at this level you would think I visited at least all the cities, and I was only in Whiterun, Markarth and Winterhold... Love to explore every inch of land I go to.. Then grab anything I can and sell it/keep it. Anything left, I go back to pick it up.

Funny how I want to complete quests. I go for it, but something else catches my interest and bam, another quest in progress...lol. My next quest however will be adjusting difficulty level and finding some real protection against them cheeky magicians! Thanks for great tips everyone!

Why do you say that? Is it because you can get free casting in two schools once you have 100 Enchant and the 100 Enchant perk? Seems to me that until you get to that point in the game perks that reduce magicka cost can be very useful.

I may never put perks into Enchant beause it seems too overpowered, and while it could be argued that Alchemy is just as overpowered, at least you have to be on the constant hunt for ingredients, which will keep me busy. Once you get your master level Enchant suit finished, what else is there to do?

Try the ATRONACH STONE. It is just south of windhelm in the swamp / geyser area. With that stone you will absorb half of the magic cast at you, so you negate half the damage AND get free mana : ) The mana regen reduction is hardly a drawback, especially since your "recovery" ability in restoration completely negates it on its own. You should see a significant improvement in your survivability against casters with this stone.

Yeah, although I read on the USEP site that there is a glitch with spell absorption in Skyrim that affects your ability to summon creatures. Since summoning is considered a cast on self spell by the game, if you have 50% spell absorption, then half of the time when you try to summon an atronach the spell will be absorbed and have no affect. I am waiting for this glitch to be fixed hopefully in an upcomming patch before I play around with spell absorption too much.

What if you use Wards in conjunction with some passive resist (say 30 to 50%)? Are you still getting staggered by weak enemies with your Wards at Master level? I haven't ratched up the difficulty slider with my mage yet but I want to at some point. The problem I have with passive resists is that they can make things too easy since they are always on and you don't have to do anything. I'd like to find a level of passive resist gear that makes things challenging but not impossible and then supplement that with Wards and potions. You know, mix it up a little so I am not always doing the same thing.

Does this occur on all difficulties or just Expert/Master?