I have been trying to use a ward in place of a shield on my warrior mage, but the issue I am having is they seem to be completely useless at melee range and consume too much magicka to be effective at long range.

Wards are terrible. Not only do they cost too much magica to keep up, they also take a few seconds to set up and stun you after shattering. Utterly useless in melee.

Wards are designed to counter magic first and foremost. It gives a slight increase in armor, but it is pretty much useless against Physical attacks since it doesn't work the same way a shiled does. And to counter the high magica expense you pretty much need the Ward Absorb perk. Hope that helps.

wards can only block magic i believe

Wards give a slight boost to your armor rating and its not really noticeable at all.
Wards are designed to block spells that is their function and they work great against mages.
They have a high magic coat ward absorption and a twenty five percent reduction to the restoration school is what I recommend.

Actually, Ward Abosrb doesn't work unless you're using Spellbreaker. You can't regain or absorb magic while using magic, even from a scroll or, say, when using a staff that's supposed to absorb magic in the first place. Ridiculous.

Short and true answer? No- they cannot.

It adds to your reserve some, but in the continual spell usage your magic is still draining.

I swear i have used a ward to block an arrow before, where the arrow fell after hitting the ward and never hit me. but its too much of a very rare fluke for me to use a ward for that purpose.

I used to think so too, but then I took an read the bugs on UESP. The Staff of Magnus won't work properly for the same reason.


Were you wearing armor? It would likely be because of that; same thing has happened to me before without a ward.

The best defense against archery is high mobility. Wards restrict that so it is a poor option.

If you use a couple pieces of Fortify Restoration gear, Wards don't run your mana dry nearly as quickly. I use them with my Cleric character in place of a shield, and they are useful against melee.

Get Spellbreaker, a Ward and Shield in one nice, Dwemer package.

Perfect for my Nord paladin. I'm on my way to get it tonight. Not fast travelling very much in this file (a first for me), so it's taking a while, but it's well worth it.

Really I must never have laid close enough attention then. I will have to look more on detail at it then. If this is the case I hope they fix it the wards can be real helpful.

Wait, you mean that the staff of magnus is actually supposed to be the ultimate mage sidearm? Oh my GOD, why is no attention being paid to this? I like kill cams and mounted combat, but [censored], fix the game so that it plays how it was designed please.

Outside of spelldrinker (or was it called spellbreaker? That Pyrite shield), don't bother IMO. And this is coming from a person who mains a mage, so... yeah. The drain to magica is just far too high, and it'll cripple your mage. Bob and weave, dodge those spells. Grab Lord or Atronoch. Raise Spellbreaker. Do that, not wards.

One last note: Wards do sotraish work on dragons breath, but the destruction stun perk works even better so...

Aye, to a mage, wards only seem worth considering if you're not doing any destruction. Otherwise, staggerlock is a far better option. You don't even have to hit them directly, just fireball or ice storm, back up, recharge, stagger snipe, and eventually you win.

I've honestly never understood the point to wards. Great concept I guess, but horrible in practice.

Hmmm...this is disappointing. I just started a Restoration based character and I was planning on using Wards as my shield option.

So they are only good for blocking magic?

Spelldrinker was an amulet that absorbed spells
Spellbreaker is the shield.

Srsly. The Staff of Magnus absorbs 20 points of magicka per second and 20 points of health instead if the enemy has no more magicka...but it doesn't work. You'd think it'd be a great sidearm for a mage, siphoning magicka to fuel attacks and then health once the enemy runs out. It'd be devastating.


Generally, yes. They add to your armor rating, but there's little use for that. I don't know if the perk Block Runner lets you move faster with a ward up, but if you're specialized in Block enough to actually get that perk, you're far better off with Spellbreaker--50 points of warding plus the 50% elemental resistance from the Elemental Protection perk, which is a prerequisite to Block Runner anyway.

That was probably it then, and probably why i couldnt replicate it with a pure mage.

There are mods to improve wards.

They're -alright- if you're Restoration, not much use otherwise.