Mages Gimped? Please help!

[Magey McFireball]

I have been playing a thief, a warrior, and most recently a mage, and I noticed something. With a thief and the stealth skill tree (at around level 30-40) you don't need a lot of gear enchanted with huge numbers to sneak in and one shot almost anything. Warriors don't need +12 Two Handed Skill on their hammer or +5 Heavy Armor on their helm to go in and tear plops up. Both of them can go in and do fairly well in a fair combat scenario. A mage on the other hand, if I go charging in with a set of Daedric armor, I dual cast a couple of fireballs, and out of magicka. All I can do is hide behind a rock for a while until I can pop back out again and fire another one off, with hopefully Lydia distracting them.

Is there any way to get around this until I get a high enough enchanting skill? The Daedric armor usually keeps me enough alive, and I gave Lydia a full dragon bone set with a dwarven shield, but it still gets down to cast, cast, stand there like a moron soaking up damage waiting for magicka, cast, repeat. I would use lower cost spells, except they suck against all the enemies at this level, please help!

 

[Oblivious]

I find I'm running out of magicka quickly as well but that's because I like to keep Magicka, Health and Stamina the same when I level up rather than focus more on magicka. I guess you could cast a combination of low and high cost spells until you increase your magicka and ofcourse carry lots of fortify and restore potions. Wear robes and hood too if your going to focus on using magic. Don't forget to use scrolls now and then too.

 

[Teritus]

You should get the set of robes at the College if you feel that you're running out too quickly; make sure to invest in alteration, though, as you won't be well protected. You can also buy rings or necklaces that allow magicka to regenerate quicker; you don't need enchanting for this.

 

[XbSuper]

Get your enchanting skill up, it is possible, with 100 enchanting and the double enchant perk, to make 2 schools of magic completely free to cast.

 

[Neriad13]

What I did with my heavy mage character was leveled enchanting and smithing at approximately the same rate. Every suit of armor I made, I enchanted with magicka regen. It's a system that's worked pretty well for me as I've leveled up. I think I have enough enchantments right now to get something like 150% magicka regen. This currently allows me to cast adept-level spells (with perks) repeatedly without too much trouble.

 

[Perkless in Skyrim]

As has been said, stock up on Fortify Magicka and Restore Magicka potions.

Find, buy, or enchant gear which reduces the cost of your spells and/or increases your Magicka regeneration rate.

Elsweyr Fondue!

Consider a mage build that focuses on raising your max Magicka at the expense of health and stamina.

Staves of Fireball or Chain lightning can offset the drain on your Magicka reserves.

 

[Gemini Sierra]

When I start my mage I will be doing something like this:
- when I level up, I will take magicka for three or four levels, then the next level take stamina, then the next level take health and then repeat. This will boost the magicka level up nicely and give me the power reserves.
- I will focus on the destruction skill tree to get each skill level perk to make it cost less to cast. Also I'll take dual casting and impact. I'll do the same for the most part in each of the other magic skill trees.
- in smithing, I'll only take the first one and the Arcane Blacksmith.
- enchanting, I'll probably work on some of these to give me a better chance to enchant robes or jewelry to help with magicka regeneration and the magicka costs

That's all I've thought about for now about that, probably tweak it more when I finally start that character.

As to your question on how to "fix" your skills. Definitely put more into magicka when you level, it's your bread and butter, unless you're going for a battle mage, heavy armored kind of character.
Find or make items to help with regeneration. The faster your magicka regenerates the faster you can use it again. Also along this line, find/make items to help with reducing the cost of the magic skill you are using. You mentioned fireball, so you want to get destruction magic cost reduction. Also, fireball in an adept level spell, so you're going to want to get the Adept Destruction perk. that will help in reducing the cost of that spell.
Do the same with all the other spells.

 

[Fife]

I think I may try a caster after I get bored of my assassin. I've been looking into magicka generation as well. How about Recovery and Atronach?

 

[M'aiqaelF]

I love my mage....if you do the mage's college missions you get 3 items that really make you much better: arch mage's robes: 100% faster regen and 25% reduced cost for all schools of magic, morekei (mask) 100% faster regen, and the arch mage's amulet 50 more magicka.

I though about doing the whole smithing/enchanting/alchemy thing for heavy armor but that takes a long time and makes the gameplay unbalanced. It also seems pointless when you can have a follower with heavy armor and melee weapons and a frost atronach with the same kind of attacks do the tanking for you.

 

[Ravenna]

I always invest my levels in magicka, if I get hurt, I have restoration for that,
My first character had 500+ magicka and i never really ran out ever, save for casting master level spells.

 

[Dagmar]

Use Destruction enchanted staves as a backup when you run out of magicka.

 

[Black-Tongue]

It sounds to me like you over-leveled by using smithing too much.

A mage is able to adjust her or her tactics to prevent most damage (except those nasty arrows). The ground sloggers should not be too much of a problem if you are using the right spells with the impact perk.

If fireball is taking too much mana, try going back to the bolt. The dual cast will still give the same stagger and you can cast it more efficiently.


In my opinion though, the magic system is awesome but could use some more depth. Curses would be nice. Something to make your opponent more vulnerable to magic or unable to cast spells or draw their weapon for a short time.