With "traditional" mage I mean that the character is using only "traditional" methods like all magic schools, alchemy, enchanting and magical items. Some call it as "pure mage playing".

There are some exploits which let you increase enchanting and alchemy practically endlessly. I'm not quite sure so how much you are "allowed" to increase these skills to make enchants and potions to preserve the original intent of the game developers or what I think is fair. For now I'm thinking something like this:

- With 100 enchanting, 100 alchemy and with perks, you can make an enchanting potion and use it to make alchemy raising gear. Then you can make a stronger enchanting potion to use for other enchants only. Although you can get 0 magicka cost for one magic school at least, I'm probably not planning to use 0 cost because every spell should cost magicka no matter what.

I'm trying to keep questions tight and clear so here they are:

1. Raising health? What is a good ratio between health and magicka so that increased health can actually save from one-shots?
2. Using mage armor 3/3 perk? Does it really save from physical one-shots in situations where you are most likely getting hit?
3. How bigh threat magical damage is later on? Does +50 magicka from high elves mean anything compared to breton's 25% magic resistance?
4. What's the point of bonus skill points at the start with different races, if everyone is capped to 100 anyway? I actually chose dark elf because of +10 destr., but it is useless in a long run anyway.
5. Is there any use for magic regeneration? Restoration perks for that are useless? I'm trying to minimize magicka restoration through potions because IMO there should be cooldowns for restoring potions.
6. Is there a mod which gives cooldown for Impact perk effect because stunlocking even most powerful enemies is just so lame? There is a mod for 50% chance, but it changes some other things too I don't want. For now, I probably don't take Impact perk at all until there is change for it because dual casting is sometimes good for extra damage, if magicka reserves are enough to kill dangerous targets.

Disclaimer
Ok- all these things are dependent on how big a slice of enchanting "cheese" you want to cut for yourself.

1. Since you are doing master diff, one shots are going to be a problem from
2-hand enemies for a while, really what you want is damage reduction(armor) to save yourself from one shots, but raising health in a ratio to magic (neglecting stamina) would be a good idea for your career. Is there
A magic number? No.

2. Yes the mage armor perks are worth it if you are in clothes. Ebonyskin without is 100, with is 300 iirc. That is alot more damage reduction.. Yes people will say dragonskin is max reduction anyways, but that doesnt happen till the end of your career. In earlier levels mage armor can be vital. Since you are on a pc, get the "longer lasting mage armor" mod to avoid the 60 second recast stupidity of the stock game.

3. Racial traits- magic is a big threat, and it gets bigger and bigger later on, so hands down bretons have the overall best defensive trait. High elves do have 5 levels of free magic to work with, and that will make early levels as a mage that much easier. If you go high elf you can pump health to avoid death, if you are breton you will have to budget health and magic increases, in the end breton wins. Your choice.


4. Starting bonuses in the end do not matter. You can pick a race with more bonuses to your skill, but any race can catch that increase very easily. I would do race based on personal taste, rp choice, or per day traits

5. Regaring restorations regen perks. Since you are going with robes, as per your mage armor questiom, i would take the regen perks. They will boost whatever high recovery rate your robes already give, and since you said you dont want to enchant your stuff to 0 cost, regen may help there. If you have custom spells from
Mods (like tactical spellcasting) then regen will help you cast those out of combat longterm buffs (like aerialform for speed and endurance, and of course mage armor- if you got the mage armor extended mod) also regen helps if you like using detect life/death, since they require a constant drain on your reserves.

6. For the impact stuff, thats currently what master level mages live on. Since you are on PC ill take a guess you got a destruction damage balancer, i dont know of any impact mods, but try the nexus.

Hope that helps

I think using magicka in a Master game will be annoying (as opposed to enchanting it to 0 cost). You'll be drinking potions constantly in the late game because you can't hit them hard enough before running out of it. You could deal with this with staves and use them as needed I suppose.

Conjuration and a follower will help with the armor problem but watch out for archers!

Archers are a pita on master, specially when you get guys shooting dwarven and above arrows at, you hope you have your dancin boots on!

Typically I do a 80/20 magic to health split but in the higher levels you're going to probably want to have over 300 health to avoid getting one shotted for the most part (but it still happens)

Destruction magic is pretty weak considering it doesn't scale with your level and the 'powerful' spells usually require you to remain still while casting which is suicidal. There are mods that address this so I'd look into them especially if you don't want to reduce your magic cost to zero.

Companions/thralls don't suffer from the reduction in damage from what difficulty you're playing on as far as I understand, so bring friends, if for nothing else other than to provide distractions and a good indiciator of when you should probably bug out of there.

Brew some potions that increase your Destruction damange. They help....a lot. Plus, they have one of the easiest ingredients to find (glowing mushrooms).

This is a good substitute for not having 0-cost enchantments.

Also, I think at least two potions will stack, as long as they have varying magnitudes (POP POP!)

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