I have wanting to figure out a reasonable destruction build that doesn't use the 100% casting reduction and was trying out equilibrium. Healing spells are efficient enough that this works, and you effectively have infinite mana at the cost of time spent channeling equilibrium and covering it's health cost with healing spells.

What's disappointing is the methods to buy this time. The most effective way is just to use impact. I was hoping slows would work, but they really don't. The impact stagger is better than any of the slows, and overwrites their duration enough that it isn't worth using frost spells at all. So the build ends up functioning just like destruction would with the cheesy cost reduction enchants, you stagger spam stuff, except it takes awhile longer to kill things since you have to channel equilibrium and heal in between 3-4 damage spells.

I'm having a hard time telling if slows are even affecting enemies properly though. NPCs afflict you with some pretty significant snaring, but vs. enemies all they do is glow a light frosty blue from what I can tell. I'm not really sure if the slow is even working. There are spells that say they apply a five second slow. 5 seconds is pretty significant and 50% movement speed reduction is as well. You'd think it'd be a noticeable help in kiting, but it isn't. Using dual cast lightning bolts for stagger was far, far more effective for kiting. It seems like frost should be the most effective element for limiting enemy mobility but it's a complete failure from my testing.


A side note: destruction spell costs really are absurd, wow. I kind of knew this from looking at them "on paper", so to speak, on the wiki, but it was something to see in practice. I can easily understand why people would just give up and go for free destruction spells, because the spells are basically broken and borderline unusable at default cost.

I noticed this as well. It appears that you and your followers are slowed much more than other NPCs are.

Yeah I did some more testing and wall of frost does pretty much nothing but waste magicka for a pitiful amount of damage. Wiki says it slows 50% for 5 seconds, and I am like 99% certain it's doing basically nothing. Ice Spike doesn't seem to apply a slow either. None of them seem to work at all against Draugr Death Overlords even though they do take damage from frost. Testing on bandit chiefs though, Ice Storm seemed to actually work, but the effect is just...odd. It's like the slow doesn't take effect for a few seconds after they're hit with spell.

I can say with 100% certainty though that there is almost no practical use for any of the frost spell slows. You can't really improve your kiting ability with them. Impact stagger is completely superior for buying time and kiting, the stagger takes effect immediately, prevents them from attacking, completely stops their movement, and enemies hit by if are incapacitated as long or longer than any of the slow durations.