So in all my time with Skyrim, one thing that I never actually found any use for is Wards. They seem just too cumbersome to be useful:

- You have to constantly hold down one button while trying to aim through the glowing shield
- They are magicka-hungry
- They essentially cut your firepower in half

Do you use wards at all? Are they helpful to you? Or would you rather use fire-and-forget type spells?

Personally, I've always prefered to have a healing spell in one hand rather than a ward.

I use Wards all the time with one of my character builds. They cut your firepower in half, but they cut your damage taken from spells by 100%.

I use them from time to time. They're useful against hagraven and mages.

I did not use them for the very reasons you stated. They svcked my magicka dry and interfered with 2h casting of destruction spells.

No. Healing instead. I don't have much trouble with casters, but being unarmoured, it's the melee hitters that hurt, so a flesh spell, then switch to healing, is much more useful.

Especially dragon breath attacks.

Depends on the character I'm playing, but I do have an Imperial wizard whose main school is Restoration, and he uses wards all the time. Couple of observations so far (though he's still fairly low level - around 20 I think):

-Don't judge all wards by Lesser Ward. If you want to use a ward, you'll need to build for it; that means using the best possible ward for your level. My guess is, most people have bad luck with wards because they only start to use the low-level ones by the time those spells are being outclassed.

-Steadfast Ward (I think that's the name - it's the next step up from Lesser) allows you to stand in dragonfire with impunity. Fun!

-Yes, wards are a magicka svck. That's where having a good damage-dealing staff or weapon in your other hand comes in. My wizard uses staffs & swords, so one tactic when approaching enemy casters is to have a ward up in the left hand & fire away with a staff in the right; if you're close enough, a ward & sword allows you to mitigate magical *and* physical damage while you slice & dice. Don't ward & cast offensive magic at the same time.

Very cool to see that there are playstyles that employ wards...

May depend on what difficulty level you like to play on. I have heard that even the strongest wards are broken by reletively weak spells(which causes stagger) if you play on Master. I have not used them much myself because my mage likes to use offensive magic and none of my other characters are good enough spellcasters to make them worthwhile. I am working on a Dunmer nightblade now, who may try them out at some point, but right now he is enjoying using a shield. You cannot bash people in the face with a ward.

Ewww, wards cut your mobility to nothing, definitely not my thing. The only thing I have use for them is during dragon breath attacks, and a lesser-ward works for that.

If they did not hinder your movement or attacks then I would definitely consider them for a spellsword characters "shield" but they are too cumbersome to mobility for that to be practical- it could be done, but it wouldn't work well.

Edit: and as said above- master enemy mage spells really break your wards quite easily, and being staggered is not what you want.

I hadn't thought about the movement penalty for holding up a ward. Score one for shields that can easily be raised and lowered.