Simple question:
Could I go full magica, neglecting health so I can use sword+magic (a lot of magic). Use destructive magic to kill the weakest of enemies and wards to protect myself against the stronger ones while taking them down with my sword.
Cause for my main, which has no magical powers besides healing, wards are useless.
Thanx

Wards seem to me pretty weak and eat lots of mana, i rather use the mage armor spells and enchant gear to have constant elemental protection and pick a race with natural resistance for magic, like Breton. Some of the stones give elemental resistance as well so if you pick stone that gives 25% resistance for magic and then pick Breton race thats 50% magicka resistance right there.

Thats a good idea! Wards are pretty useful. And even if a spell breaks your ward, the damage will still be blocked. Against dragons they are effective as well. The only drawback is that you'll need a big magicka pool.

Wards are great for protecting against spells, but mage armor spells are way better for defending against melee attacks.

Yeah, that was why I was wondering about focussing on magica, neglecting health. Depending on how it goes, I'd enchant either magica or health on my gear.
But ofc I'll start by loading up magic armour on me and cetera before entering battle.

Go with altmer and a 2:1 magicka/health.

Thanx for the tips, gonna start her up now.

It seems like NPCs have the strongest magic for some reason, nothing seems to get through their wards.

I had that in mind when I was fighting a Necromancer a couple of hours ago, when it suddenly broke. I am not sure if you just break it if the capacity is beaten by a single spell, or whether damage adds up...

Basically a ward has its own HP, and quickly regenerates it when it takes damage. if the damage is too great then the ward breaks and you are staggered, but you don't take any damage. This means that wards are extremely effective against low damage constant spells, e.g. Flames and Sparks, and even Dragon's breath attacks - you can just about block a full stream of an Ancient Dragon's fire breath (which would otherwise toast you) with a simple Lesser Ward, since the breath attack is actually counted as many many multiple small magical attacks against which the ward can quickly regenerate to and slow down its decay.

The problem arises when you're trying to block stronger single magic attacks, e.g. Hagraven's Fireballs. In theory, a Steadfast Ward (60HP) can block a Fireball (40 damage) but because after the Fireball hits the ward remains at 20HP for a short period of time before it starts regenerating, you are extremely vulnerable to being staggered by even petty magical attacks.

This is why it is much better to use Wards in short bursts then trying to keep one up indefinitely.

I really like wards, use them all the time with my mage character. Legacy Raider nailed all the main points i would have made to explain it...

The only one he missed, was that using wards just looks cooler than Mage's armor.