Looking to build a Illusion/Conjuration Mage

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TheAnt317

New Member
I'm interested in doing a run as sort of a support-class Mage that lets his followers/team do the heavy lifting while I buff, debuff and heal from the back line. I was thinking of doing Illusion/Conjuration because I love the status effects and the ability to summon things to fight for me. I was also planning on taking Alteration, possibly Restoration and I'm not sure what else. After the first three, I'm at a loss.

Do I need something like Sneak to keep baddies from spotting or getting to me? Would I need any Destruction skills? Perhaps I could/should take Alchemy so I can poison a bound bow, or is that not needed with Illusion spells? Which follower should I choose? Also, which Stone should I activate?

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

Also I'm on the PC version, all DLC, with the ability to run mods.
 

Wauten Dayhil

Demon Hunter and Wordplay Extraordinaire
You may want to look into Destruction spells for the sole purpose of laying down runes. You're going to want to be in direct combat as little as possible, so having the runes around would help to prevent enemies from getting to you. However, Sneak wouldn't be useful. With Illusion, you could always turn yourself invisible - which should be a last resort, anyways. Since your focus is buffing your allies, running around trying to avoid enemies isn't going to be very useful, and will take away from the RP aspect.

Also, while a bound bow would be useful, and does actually work with the whole "support mage" class (they do occasionally take part in combat, if only to harass a bit), it would prevent you from casting any other spells, unless you found a mod that would allow you to cast without your hands.

As for your stone, the only ones I can think of are the Serpent and the Lover, or perhaps the Lord.
 

Harc

Big Hog
As stated above, if you were going to use any destruction aspects, I'd go with runes. But honestly, I see no challenges in summoning things to fight for you or turn the enemy, of course if the level of the spells were low than yeah, there would be a problem, but work on building that up, and then as you progress and level up, you'll get more powerful spells.
 

The Phoenician

Shiney, let's be bad guys.
I'd stick with bound bow a just be ready to scoot over destruction.
 

Cordelia

Global Moderator
Staff member
The reason sneak won't help you is because your follower or summoned help getting into combat usually ruins your "unseen" status. Don't think of sneak as being an active effect like invisibility, but an action; it is the ability to move forward, past enemies, without alerting them to your presence. It's a lot less the "hide from combat my follower is engaged in while holding a spell ready" skill. Which is not to say don't invest in it, but just understand it's a more of a "get into position" skill, and less a "stay hidden while my friends do the killing" skill.

I found that in the earliest levels of being a pure casting mage it was really hairy living through encounters, even if I had a follower and a summoned fighter. However, keeping your Calm spell high level will usually shut down most oncoming enemies long enough for you to get into a better (safer) position. It doesn't hurt (early on) to have a destruction spell or two handy (hehe), or a physical weapon you can whip out briefly. I recommend physical over bound for the conservation of magicka, and because it takes less time to pull out a weapon than it does to conjure one. However, what you choose depends a lot on how much briefly using a weapon to potentially save your ass would break the RP for you. And, even at the cost of your character's life, RP is priority. ;)

Whether you've chosen to take up actual arms to defend yourself, or not, there are many situations that will feel like you've exhausted all of your options. In those cases, using a power like Voice of the Emperor (Imperial racial: Mass calm) or Battle Cry (Nord racial: Mass fear) will help keep you out of alive until your follower or summoned fighter is freed up to defend you again. Just keep in mind that a racial power is not like a shout with a short recharge period and it can only be used once per in-game day. So that's a last resort set up, when you absolutely have nothing else to pull aggro off you.

I like to call it an "Oh plops" option.

If you're going to incorporate dragon shouts, I would go for Turn Ethereal as another ass saving power. You can't participate in combat, but you won't take any damage while it's active, and it gives you a chance to heal up and restore your magicka, which is going to be a vital help in crunch times. Red says she's used it to survive long falls, and managed to kill a saber cat by doing so. (It turns out the saber cat did not have Turn Ethereal when it leapt off the mountain to follow her.)

If Alteration interests you, the spells Paralyze and Mass Paralyze are in the Expert level sections. These are great for keeping yourself undamaged while your follower/summoned fighter free themselves to help you. It does take investment in Alteration to reach it, though, and with splitting points down various other trees, it may not be reasonably helpful by the time you get it.

When it comes to the combat level magics, Fury is probably my favorite spell, because I'm a little evil inside and I play characters who revel in the implied suffering of others. "You two were once allies -- perhaps even friends --, and now you slay each other. Bwahahahahahaha!" It's a good early cast spell, because you can get your targets to focus on each other with a couple well aimed Fury shots, and that should be enough to cause your follower to rush in.

Red prefers the necromancer route over atromancy, because for every enemy that falls, she can turn it into a temporary ally. The difficulty in prioritizing that route over atromancy is, of course, you have to wait for someone to die before you can summon support. Atromancy lets you summon immediately, assuming you have the magicka stores ready. So, RP flavor aside, the mechanical benefit of necromancy is a potentially unending supply of soldiers with a wait for bodies to become available for reanimation, and the mechanical benefit of atromancy is a fighter you can summon immediately with elemental powers that potentially has greater attack and defense than the fodder you'd reanimate with necromancy.

Then again, if you play your necromancer right, you can get a couple of permanent thralls with amazing magical offensive capabilities (Orchendor is probably the best possible thrallable mage -- found in Bthardamz during "The Only Cure", the Peryite daedric quest; the best fit for the second slot is debatable, but it's hard to go wrong with Malkoran -- who stole Meridia's beacon and corrupted her temple.), and that means you can run around with a follower, two undead thralls, and if you give the thralls staves of summoning, they each conjure an atronach, as well. At this point, you're really just sitting back and watching the show.

You can also get the spell "Summon Unbound Dremora" by finishing the conjuration ritual quests for Phinis in Winterhold. While it can only summon a Dremora Lord at the atronach forge beneath the college, it gives you an opportunity to summon a Dremora Lord you can then kill and permanently thrall, so you can equip yourself with two Dremora Lords, or a high level mage (like Orchendor, who teleports and heals himself) and a Dremora Lord.

Just be careful at what level you summon the Dremora to thrall it, as you can only thrall up to level 40 enemies, and if you wait until you're level 40+ to do this method, you won't be able to thrall any of the Dremora Lords you find (including those at the shrine of Mehrunes Dagon), because they'll be higher level than the spell can affect.

The atromancer's thralls are all the normal atronachs with normal atronach stats, but they don't dispell after 60 seconds. Or ever. They don't dispell at all. Also, you can summon your own damn Dremora Lords at will. So, booyah.

In Illusion's tree I recommend the following family of spells:
Calm
Fury
Fear
Invisibility
Muffle (if you want to increase your ability to get you and your follower into an advantageous position before combat happens)

I think the other trees depend on what your personal goals and RP style dictate. Whether you go down Restoration and grab the Protect family of spells (useful if you plan on being mostly in draugr territory), or follow Alteration through armor spells into Paralyze territory, or invest in Destruction enough to get elemental runes to place around you. Whatever you do choose, if you keep an eye out you can usually find a scroll that does a similar spell, which you can hold on to until you need it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go make a mage, because this reminded me how awesome it is. :D

Have fun!
 

TheAnt317

New Member
The reason sneak won't help you is because your follower or summoned help getting into combat usually ruins your "unseen" status. Don't think of sneak as being an active effect like invisibility, but an action; it is the ability to move forward, past enemies, without alerting them to your presence. It's a lot less the "hide from combat my follower is engaged in while holding a spell ready" skill. Which is not to say don't invest in it, but just understand it's a more of a "get into position" skill, and less a "stay hidden while my friends do the killing" skill.

I found that in the earliest levels of being a pure casting mage it was really hairy living through encounters, even if I had a follower and a summoned fighter. However, keeping your Calm spell high level will usually shut down most oncoming enemies long enough for you to get into a better (safer) position. It doesn't hurt (early on) to have a destruction spell or two handy (hehe), or a physical weapon you can whip out briefly. I recommend physical over bound for the conservation of magicka, and because it takes less time to pull out a weapon than it does to conjure one. However, what you choose depends a lot on how much briefly using a weapon to potentially save your ass would break the RP for you. And, even at the cost of your character's life, RP is priority. ;)

Whether you've chosen to take up actual arms to defend yourself, or not, there are many situations that will feel like you've exhausted all of your options. In those cases, using a power like Voice of the Emperor (Imperial racial: Mass calm) or Battle Cry (Nord racial: Mass fear) will help keep you out of alive until your follower or summoned fighter is freed up to defend you again. Just keep in mind that a racial power is not like a shout with a short recharge period and it can only be used once per in-game day. So that's a last resort set up, when you absolutely have nothing else to pull aggro off you.

I like to call it an "Oh pl***" option.

If you're going to incorporate dragon shouts, I would go for Turn Ethereal as another ass saving power. You can't participate in combat, but you won't take any damage while it's active, and it gives you a chance to heal up and restore your magicka, which is going to be a vital help in crunch times. Red says she's used it to survive long falls, and managed to kill a saber cat by doing so. (It turns out the saber cat did not have Turn Ethereal when it leapt off the mountain to follow her.)

If Alteration interests you, the spells Paralyze and Mass Paralyze are in the Expert level sections. These are great for keeping yourself undamaged while your follower/summoned fighter free themselves to help you. It does take investment in Alteration to reach it, though, and with splitting points down various other trees, it may not be reasonably helpful by the time you get it.

When it comes to the combat level magics, Fury is probably my favorite spell, because I'm a little evil inside and I play characters who revel in the implied suffering of others. "You two were once allies -- perhaps even friends --, and now you slay each other. Bwahahahahahaha!" It's a good early cast spell, because you can get your targets to focus on each other with a couple well aimed Fury shots, and that should be enough to cause your follower to rush in.

Red prefers the necromancer route over atromancy, because for every enemy that falls, she can turn it into a temporary ally. The difficulty in prioritizing that route over atromancy is, of course, you have to wait for someone to die before you can summon support. Atromancy lets you summon immediately, assuming you have the magicka stores ready. So, RP flavor aside, the mechanical benefit of necromancy is a potentially unending supply of soldiers with a wait for bodies to become available for reanimation, and the mechanical benefit of atromancy is a fighter you can summon immediately with elemental powers that potentially has greater attack and defense than the fodder you'd reanimate with necromancy.

Then again, if you play your necromancer right, you can get a couple of permanent thralls with amazing magical offensive capabilities (Orchendor is probably the best possible thrallable mage -- found in Bthardamz during "The Only Cure", the Peryite daedric quest; the best fit for the second slot is debatable, but it's hard to go wrong with Malkoran -- who stole Meridia's beacon and corrupted her temple.), and that means you can run around with a follower, two undead thralls, and if you give the thralls staves of summoning, they each conjure an atronach, as well. At this point, you're really just sitting back and watching the show.

You can also get the spell "Summon Unbound Dremora" by finishing the conjuration ritual quests for Phinis in Winterhold. While it can only summon a Dremora Lord at the atronach forge beneath the college, it gives you an opportunity to summon a Dremora Lord you can then kill and permanently thrall, so you can equip yourself with two Dremora Lords, or a high level mage (like Orchendor, who teleports and heals himself) and a Dremora Lord.

Just be careful at what level you summon the Dremora to thrall it, as you can only thrall up to level 40 enemies, and if you wait until you're level 40+ to do this method, you won't be able to thrall any of the Dremora Lords you find (including those at the shrine of Mehrunes Dagon), because they'll be higher level than the spell can affect.

The atromancer's thralls are all the normal atronachs with normal atronach stats, but they don't dispell after 60 seconds. Or ever. They don't dispell at all. Also, you can summon your own damn Dremora Lords at will. So, booyah.

In Illusion's tree I recommend the following family of spells:
Calm
Fury
Fear
Invisibility
Muffle (if you want to increase your ability to get you and your follower into an advantageous position before combat happens)

I think the other trees depend on what your personal goals and RP style dictate. Whether you go down Restoration and grab the Protect family of spells (useful if you plan on being mostly in draugr territory), or follow Alteration through armor spells into Paralyze territory, or invest in Destruction enough to get elemental runes to place around you. Whatever you do choose, if you keep an eye out you can usually find a scroll that does a similar spell, which you can hold on to until you need it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go make a mage, because this reminded me how awesome it is. :D

Have fun!
I appreciate the really in-depth reply! So far, I've decided to go with Illusion/Conjuration as majors, then Restoration/Destruction as minors with possibly one more skill tree as a minor -- maybe Speech? Because of that, I'll be making an Altmer for the skill bonuses and the Magicka regen. For Shouts, Ice Form and Turn Ethereal sound good. For ratios, I think 3:1:0 sounds good for now, until I get a boatload of Magicka to cast spells which is when I'll start putting some points into Stamina. I'll probably head to the College as soon as I can as well.
 

Cordelia

Global Moderator
Staff member
I think that sounds like a pretty solid build.

I'm going with an Imperial for Voice of the Emperor, and all the magicka enhancing gear I can get my greedy little hands on.

I'll be focusing on Calm effects and alchemy, as I envision her being more concerned with healing and helping than killing and destroying, but also adventurous and determined to explore for ingredients, knowledge, and artifacts to enhance her abilities and help others (hence adventuring in Skyrim. White Vial, here I come!).

Should keep me entertained for a while. ^__^

I haven't decided if I'm going atromancy or necromancy, though. I've always wanted to get the mage thralls, and I can easily justify necromancy IC, but we'll see. ;)
 

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