I have an orc at level 45 with tons of magic resistance and yet master conjurers/ancient dragons still almost instant kill me if I don't have my Spellbreaker Shield's ward up, what gives?
I'm on master difficulty, but I have: 66% total magic res from my necklace/ring/shield, 20% from the Lord stone, and 45% ice/lightning from my shield/boots. Also I have a perk that gives +50% magic resistance while blocking.
In total, that is 86% magic resistance (which I assume means all elements), 45% lightning, 45% ice.
=131% lightning and ice (181% while blocking), and 86% fire (136% while blocking).
Yet STILL I'm getting hurt a TON, usually 100-200 damage per blast from mages, sometimes one shotting (ice storm), and about the same in DPS from dragon's breath.
If I have Spellbreaker on ,however, I lose some magic and lightning res from my other shield, but it's ward blocks 100% damage from dragons and most mage spells.
The problem isn't staying alive, Spellbreaker helps with that, I'm just wondering how the resistance system works and if Master difficulty would lower my resistances.

Magic resistances don't work anymore since the 1.2 patch.

.........That svcks...
Thanks for the reply.

Yeah I'm sure it will be fixed soon.

According to the blog, it should be fixed....soon

Yup, broken in 1.2

When they did work in 1.1 (and hopefully work again in 1.3) the cap is 80% (or 85%?), or so I've read elsewhere. Though at one time I had 109% magic resistance and most magical stuff didn't hurt me in the slightest but some things, like dragon breath, still did really small amounts of damage. With 25% Breton, 30% alteration perk, 15% quest reward, and a 22% ring mages are a complete joke (I still have version 1.1) but still do some damage but I can take 20+ fireballs to the face with 200 health on master. Or I can shoot arrows at an ancient dragon while it breaths on me between 2 to 4 times without healing (if it bites me I'm screwed though).

you can fix it with skse, if you are on pc

Yep this works...

tbh I'm extremely suprised bethesda didn't immediately revert back to 1.1. They broke major gameplay mechanics in exchange for extremely minor bug fixes. Not sure what could possibly be going through their minds when they thought that was a good idea.

fire, shock, frost and derp

resistances, how do they work?

I don't want to talk to an alchemist

Mother*****rs be lying if you get my drift.

yet I found fortify armor potions and fortify health potions are somewhat helpful, ive been using flesh spells on my heavy armor

Is the cap for PC only? Because, e.g. the Dwemer machinery is completely immune to frost (at least in my experience, and before the 1.2 patch ). And on my mage, I enchanted gear and gave it to Kharjo to boost his shock resistance to 100% for safe uses of chain lightning. And when he had the equip, I could try to electrocute him all day, it would always say "Kharjo resisted chain lightning", whereas before he would still be slightly damage (and complain ).

On 1.1 my Dunmer ran about completely immune to fire. Somehow Dragonbreath hurt me a tiny bit, but maybe it is also weakness to fire to make it more lethal or something.
I had the Dunmer Blood racial ability, and a pair of Elvel Boots of Dwindling Flame or whatever it was called that gave me 50% more in resistance.

What is "skse" and how do you fix this ???

Skyrim Script Extender. A modders resource to better support mods and such.
But does that fix it? I'd rather wait for the patch, but I guess I'll use this.

I'm a nord (50% frost resist) and I've got boots with 40% frost resist, and I get my ass kicked by ice mages.

In Oblivion my character had over 100% magic resist, and all magic would actualy heal me.

Does the script extender fix Atronachs being damaged by magic of their element type?