Hey folks, gonna try a tank mage build, focus on:

Destruction
Blocking
Heavy or Light Armor

plus maybe:

Restoration
Enchanting later on


Main question is, which armor? I'm leaning towards Heavy and maybe Steed Stone early on (really like the idea of reflecting damage perk to mix up with AoE spells for extra damage) but looking for other opinions or angles I haven't considered. I

Thanks in advance!

Heavy. If you were going sneaky mage, light would be better. But tank mage, definitely heavy.

Heavy, why forfeit the extra armor? Unless you wanan be like super-stealth made xD

No, not planning on any stealth with this character. Does Blocking use a lot of stamina? I know Light Armor has a stamina regen perk I believe?

Just some advice, but I wouldn't go blocking with a "tank" mage. Later on destruction gets kinda weak one-handed so you gotta dual-cast it. And master level spells are automatically two-handed to begin with. My Breton wearing d?dric doesn't have any problems so far.

Ugh. Well, damn. I had planned on most likely using a destruction rebalance mod to help damage, but I didn't realize the master spells were two-handed. That screws up my whole idea.

So you can't even be a spellsword with one-hander in one hand and a master spell in the other either?
Really wanting to play some sort of hybrid, and was liking the spell & shield idea. This kinda svcks.

Back to the drawing board. And here I was excited about starting up this character tonight.

....You can still do that, just means when you want to use a spell, you switch out your weapons. =/

sorry about that I love the master spells but I mostly use a sword in one hand and Thunderbolt in the other.

Yeah, Spellsword style would be firing ranged destruction while closing, then probably a cloak spell to cover you while you swordplay.

A Tank would be work fine with the Thunderbolt/Incinerate/Ice Spear one handers.

I suppose I could only do master level spells from range, and switch to expert & shield up close - or just abandon shields altogether at high levels. Meh.

I just worry that the expert spells will be too weak for this at the higher levels, even with some mods.

FYI - Assuming you smith your heavy armor (or use perks), you will be at the armor cap and won't really need a shield. But this could be fun -

1. Use destruction at range
2. When enemy gets close cast a flame cloak type spell.
3. Just block while the cloak kills them. Bash them before they can do their power attacks to limit the damage you take.

Im currently building my tank mage and I find using Restoration to be most benefictial.... unless if you are planning to use a lot of gold for health restore potions.

My charecter had no intention to learn magic until his recent encounters with a group of powerful bandits who almost killed him. He realizes that magic can be benefictinal in battles, and so hes now learning conjuration after paying for a reanimation staff that reanimates weak bodies to fight for you.

IMO blocking seems to be wasteful. I'm not a fan of it.

So I would only focus on the following things:
heavy armor
conjuration (when theirs powerful dragons like the elders ones, the summons can be a good way to distract the dragon so you can sneak attack it)
Restoration
Enchantments (to make the weapon more powerful)
1 handed weapons (My latest charecter is using 2 handed weapons)

Might try this, thanks. I had forgotten about fire cloak.

I figure with perks, bashes should do some decent damage + flame cloak + heavy armor damage reflect + expert spell in other hand. Think that would be enough damage combined when not at range?

Screw it, I'm gonna do it. I really want to try Destruction & Blocking, if it doesn't work well oh well I learned the hard way. XD

I'm not dictacting how anyone plays, but I really liked my spellsword concentrating on swords for damage, while dabbling more into resto and alteration. There's more passive skills there useful for a melee character.

You could say that's not even a spellsword though. It's more a cleric maybe.

you'll do fine just get some of the heavy armor perks I never use a shield.

One cosmetic thing I would suggest is that Glass Armor seems like something a mage would sport better. And you can hit the cap easily with it. Also, glass weapons have a magical look to them.

And if you wanted to take RP more seriously, the only breton specific armor in the game is forsworn. One set benefits mages a little bit.