Do you use a lot of restoration?

[HappyFaceClown]

Get by? Followers. I use Faendel and Janessa as well as that Strong Arm chick early on when I'm playing a mage, especially Janessa if I'm using a lot of fire. Just have to be careful to not hit them when you're using ranged spells. Evenutally, on Solstheim you can get a perk that keeps your followers safe.

And don't forget flesh spells. You can even get Oak Flesh as soon as you get to Riverwood.

Hmm... I'm going to have to read a mage guide. I can't believe that you have to rely on followers that much.

I also guess that you have to be a jack of all trades type of mage. Maybe specializing in Illusion or whatever, but in the video she was clearly using Destruction lightning. I often try to go pure something and I don't think that's a viable strategy as a mage. You need a little of every tree. Really need to plan my perks out before.

Me, I usually have my mages in armor and using a weapon (bound sword and bound bow), but, many folks play pure mage w/out armor (just Skin spells) and robes. That's where followers come in. You're going to need a body guard. Physically you just can't fight them off and, even at high levels, destruction doesn't always protect you. Illusion can help, but I almost always use Conjuration on mages just so I can summon help (i.e. dremora and storm antronachs). IMO.

same here, i always wear armor on mages, not just for the protection but imo armor just looks cooler than robes.. plus a robes only pure mage character can literally be a nightmare to play! i've done it only once and that was just to say i did it, i died more times than i can count, football spiked my controller on one occasion, and had a screaming match with my tv.. took me an entire summer to beat just the main story like that.. will NEVER try that again.. best to go with armor.

 

[Lady Redpool the Unlifer]

I love using restoration, unless I'm roleplaying an "evil" character I count on it constantly. Mage character? Wards, better magicka regeneration, and avoid death. Playing a warrior? Respite to heal stamina with restro spells(non stop power attacks), actual necesary healing, avoid death(can you tell I like this perk?). Then of course the beautifully broken necromage perk. This is by far my favorite school of magic, even if it is a bitch to level.

 

[Kalin of High Rock]

I generally work with a ward spell in my left hand. Because nothing makes me feel more like a boss-level badass than holding out my palm and blocking a gout of dragon-fire.

You shall not pass!

Then of course the beautifully broken necromage perk

Oh my, but I'd have to be a vampire to take full advantage of something like that.

>_>
<_<

You're not with the vigil of stendarr, are you?

 

[Lady Redpool the Unlifer]

>_>
<_<

You're not with the vigil of stendarr, are you?

Of course not, I wouldn't be caught alive with those fools, it was fun watching their hall burn though......................

 

[AS88]

Hmm... I'm going to have to read a mage guide. I can't believe that you have to rely on followers that much.

I also guess that you have to be a jack of all trades type of mage. Maybe specializing in Illusion or whatever, but in the video she was clearly using Destruction lightning. I often try to go pure something and I don't think that's a viable strategy as a mage. You need a little of every tree. Really need to plan my perks out before.

Me, I usually have my mages in armor and using a weapon (bound sword and bound bow), but, many folks play pure mage w/out armor (just Skin spells) and robes. That's where followers come in. You're going to need a body guard. Physically you just can't fight them off and, even at high levels, destruction doesn't always protect you. Illusion can help, but I almost always use Conjuration on mages just so I can summon help (i.e. dremora and storm antronachs). IMO.

same here, i always wear armor on mages, not just for the protection but imo armor just looks cooler than robes.. plus a robes only pure mage character can literally be a nightmare to play! i've done it only once and that was just to say i did it, i died more times than i can count, football spiked my controller on one occasion, and had a screaming match with my tv.. took me an entire summer to beat just the main story like that.. will NEVER try that again.. best to go with armor.

Robes are terrible for protection unless you use Alteration spells with the Mage Armour perk. I agree that armour looks more badass, but I like the understated look of robes on a mage. Nobody suspects the old robed guy in the corner to turn the inn full of people into smouldering ash

 

[HappyFaceClown]

Me, I usually have my mages in armor and using a weapon (bound sword and bound bow), but, many folks play pure mage w/out armor (just Skin spells) and robes. That's where followers come in. You're going to need a body guard. Physically you just can't fight them off and, even at high levels, destruction doesn't always protect you. Illusion can help, but I almost always use Conjuration on mages just so I can summon help (i.e. dremora and storm antronachs). IMO.

same here, i always wear armor on mages, not just for the protection but imo armor just looks cooler than robes.. plus a robes only pure mage character can literally be a nightmare to play! i've done it only once and that was just to say i did it, i died more times than i can count, football spiked my controller on one occasion, and had a screaming match with my tv.. took me an entire summer to beat just the main story like that.. will NEVER try that again.. best to go with armor.

Robes are terrible for protection unless you use Alteration spells with the Mage Armour perk. I agree that armour looks more badass, but I like the understated look of robes on a mage. Nobody suspects the old robed guy in the corner to turn the inn full of people into smouldering ash

indeed.. i especially like the hooded necromancer robes, if you're a vampire and wear them on a skinny pale elf character i swear you look just like Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars.

 

[Kalin of High Rock]

I never liked the hooded necromancer robe, mostly because of the goofy skull insignia on the chest. As though walking around in cryptic, moldy black robes wasn't sinister enough, you need to paint a skull on yourself?

I played Kalin as "pure" mage until I reached maximum skill in all the schools of magic and wanted to continue leveling the character. This was, of course, before legendary skill levels and such. The result was something of a light-armored spell-blade that used a sword in the right hand and a spell, usually a ward but it would change situationally, in the left hand.

What I like about pure mage is that with enchanting you can take some of the more interesting clothing and dresses and enchant them better than even the best robes. It made for a pretty interesting looking character.

The problem is that even with alteration armor spells and perks, you will never be as well protected as a character wearing full armor, even light armor. Especially when factoring armor, armor-crafting and enchanting perks.

I really like the look of some of the more mundane armors, especially the heavy armor like iron and steel. I eventually settled on the ancient falmer armor, fully enchanted and enhanced. It's elegant and detailed enough for my highly refined magely tastes and the white, red and gold coloration appeals to the vampire in me. I finish the look off with an enchanted hood.

 

[LotusEater]

Get by? Followers. I use Faendel and Janessa as well as that Strong Arm chick early on when I'm playing a mage, especially Janessa if I'm using a lot of fire. Just have to be careful to not hit them when you're using ranged spells. Evenutally, on Solstheim you can get a perk that keeps your followers safe.

And don't forget flesh spells. You can even get Oak Flesh as soon as you get to Riverwood.

Hmm... I'm going to have to read a mage guide. I can't believe that you have to rely on followers that much.

I also guess that you have to be a jack of all trades type of mage. Maybe specializing in Illusion or whatever, but in the video she was clearly using Destruction lightning. I often try to go pure something and I don't think that's a viable strategy as a mage. You need a little of every tree. Really need to plan my perks out before.

I've played many squishy pure mage types and I never use followers. Pure mages are more about evasion and making yourself hard to hit by whatever means necessary. Personally, I think followers for a mage are all crap, especially if you are running a lot of Destruction magic. You'll spend more time picking and aiming your spells to avoid hurting your follower than anything else.

If you are gonna go pure mage with no followers then you are gonna need Destruction for offense. No way around it really, unless you want to spend most of your time casting Frenzy and watching other people fight. I would suggest focusing on Fire, not only is it the most dependable of the three elements imo, it also augments very well. Not to mention Ahzidal's Ring of Arcana and Ignite. Every mage I build wears that thing. With it... and Aspect of Terror from Illusion plus 2/2 Flame Augment and Intense Flames, you are looking at 21 points of fire damage per second for 15 seconds... do the math, even on Legendary difficulty, Ignite goes to work hard.

Another huge factor is you need to decide what kind of resistance you want. Magic Resistance or Atronach... or both, though that's a lot trickier.

Magic Resistance sources-

Breton Blood- 25% (Racial Bonus)
Agent of Mara- 15% (Book of Love quest)
Alteration Magic Resistance- 10-30% (1-3 perk points)
Lord Stone- 25% (Standing Stone... also +50 armor which is nice for a mage)
Enchantment- % dependent on Ench level (acquired by destroying any Magic Resistance item)
Enchantment- % dependent on Ench level (acquired by destroying Shield of Solitude, more powerful than above)

The cap as far as I know is 87% Magic Resistance, so it's fairly easy to hit the cap using a combination from above. Note also that it's possible to get two separate MR enchants on the same item, but you must acquire Shield of Solitude and destroy it, however the max you can have on one item is 45%, so even if you got the number up to 25% for each enchantment, the item would only grant 45% instead of 50%.

Atronach Sources-

Alteration Perk (Atronach)- 30% chance to absorb spell
Atronach Stone- 50% chance to absorb spell (-50% magicka regen, +50 magicka)

Here's where it gets interesting... we're already at 80% absorption but we can push it to 100% if we want.

Miraak's Robes- 15% chance to absorb (95%)
Miraak's Gloves/Boots- add 5% to Miraak's Robes (100% absorption)
Miraak's Gloves/Boots- add 5% to Miraak's Robes (redundant)

So by pushing Atronach with Miraak's stuff, you can become completely immune to spells and dragon breath and your Magicka pool will get a nice bump fairly often through absorption. Drawback... you won't be able to summon anything as Atronach will also eat your Conjuration spells (just messes up summoning atronachs, reanimation works fine). It also falls a little short against non-spellcaster types as it's more difficult to recoup spent magicka if nobody is flinging spells at you. Also, Atronach is all or nothing, meaning that if a spell is cast at you, Atronach will either stop the entire spell dead or you feel the full brunt, unless you also have Magic Resistance. As far as I know, when a spell hits, Atronach is figured first, if the spell makes it past, Magic Resistance kicks in. Not 100% on that point though so you may want to look it up.

I would also suggest using Shouts to help you evade.

Unrelenting Force- obvious is obvious
Slow Time- Oh the wonderful things you can do when you slow time down to a crawl...
Become Ethereal- aka "RUN!"
Whirlwind Sprint- more obviousness

Those are the ones I depend on early on as those are fairly easy to acquire early on. Good luck!


Oh yea... this is a thread about Restoration.

Aside from the crucial perks the only spell I abuse from Restoration is Poison Rune. Not a popular choice but my Foul Presence build is geared to abuse them and make them powerful so it's a lot of fun for me, but they aren't that great on their own really.

 

[HappyFaceClown]

I never liked the hooded necromancer robe, mostly because of the goofy skull insignia on the chest. As though walking around in cryptic, moldy black robes wasn't sinister enough, you need to paint a skull on yourself?

I played Kalin as "pure" mage until I reached maximum skill in all the schools of magic and wanted to continue leveling the character. This was, of course, before legendary skill levels and such. The result was something of a light-armored spell-blade that used a sword in the right hand and a spell, usually a ward but it would change situationally, in the left hand.

What I like about pure mage is that with enchanting you can take some of the more interesting clothing and dresses and enchant them better than even the best robes. It made for a pretty interesting looking character.

The problem is that even with alteration armor spells and perks, you will never be as well protected as a character wearing full armor, even light armor. Especially when factoring armor, armor-crafting and enchanting perks.

I really like the look of some of the more mundane armors, especially the heavy armor like iron and steel. I eventually settled on the ancient falmer armor, fully enchanted and enhanced. It's elegant and detailed enough for my highly refined magely tastes and the white, red and gold coloration appeals to the vampire in me. I finish the look off with an enchanted hood.

i actually like the green skull insignia on the necromancer robes but yea, it does seem a bit.. forced, like if Skeletor wore a shirt that read "i am evil" lol
and yea some of the plain clothing can actually make for very cool looking characters, one of my favorite looks on female characters is the vampire robes, which ends up being a black dress on females, enchant that at max enchanting level while using a fortify potion with added health and armor and wear some decently armored boots, you then get a badass gothic chic with a very decent armor rating.

 

[LotusEater]

I really like the look of some of the more mundane armors, especially the heavy armor like iron and steel. I eventually settled on the ancient falmer armor, fully enchanted and enhanced. It's elegant and detailed enough for my highly refined magely tastes and the white, red and gold coloration appeals to the vampire in me. I finish the look off with an enchanted hood.

That's my go-to light armor. Love that stuff. Did you know that the bone hawk necklace head fits right in that chest piece? I just noticed that recently, looks really cool.

Regarding your point about the mage armor, though I agree that the Flesh spells fall short, it's fairly simple to grind Alteration and get Dragonhide kicking. Once you get that active it doesn't really matter what you are wearing and it's fairly simple to shore up the short expiration time with a mid-level Fortify Alteration potion.

 

[Kalin of High Rock]

That's my go-to light armor. Love that stuff. Did you know that the bone hawk necklace head fits right in that chest piece? I just noticed that recently, looks really cool.

That's exactly what I use!

 

[Hildolfr]

This thread has me struggling to get the idea of doing a pure mage out of my head. I'll lower the difficulty to Adept simply because I don't really know what I'm doing.

- snip -

Ok. Wow. That's amazing info. I am missing a big thing, though... Why would you need magic resistance? Wouldn't you want resistance from physical attacks? I would imagine I should be more afraid of a Skeever's bite than their spell casting (they do it with their tails, obvs). Or is it a case where I want to avoid being hit at all cost?

I need to look up some mage perk trees... So how people are distributing their levels. I imagine it's a smattering all across the board.

 

[HappyFaceClown]

This thread has me struggling to get the idea of doing a pure mage out of my head. I'll lower the difficulty to Adept simply because I don't really know what I'm doing.

- snip -

Ok. Wow. That's amazing info. I am missing a big thing, though... Why would you need magic resistance? Wouldn't you want resistance from physical attacks? I would imagine I should be more afraid of a Skeever's bite than their spell casting (they do it with their tails, obvs). Or is it a case where I want to avoid being hit at all cost?

I need to look up some mage perk trees... So how people are distributing their levels. I imagine it's a smattering all across the board.

on a mage character you definately want to avoid getting hit by ANYTHING.. they're certainly not brawling characters and pure mages with robes take skill out the ass to survive with.. as i mentioned in an earlier post, i personally have only done it once and it was one of the hardest things i've ever done on a game.
you want magic resistance on any character, warrior's included cause armor doesn't mean jack to mages, spells go right thru it and if you have no magic resistance at all, high level enemy mages will strait up embarrass you, especially when they're in groups.. rather than go for a specific element resistance i personally use "magic" resistance, the word plural.. this enchantment works against ALL elements instead of just one, and even tho you won't be able to get it as high its still the best one imo cause it provides decent protection against ALL magic types.

 

[Vaga8ond]

I want that Necromage perk, however I like most people end up using potions to heal so leveling restoration becomes a bit of a chore. There are some really good perks in the restoration tree but most of them are fairly high level. I love using wards with any magic based character as I'm more of a defensive minded player.

 

[Daelon DuLac]

I generally work with a ward spell in my left hand. Because nothing makes me feel more like a boss-level badass than holding out my palm and blocking a gout of dragon-fire.

You shall not pass!

Then of course the beautifully broken necromage perk

Oh my, but I'd have to be a vampire to take full advantage of something like that.

>_>
<_<

You're not with the vigil of stendarr, are you?

And just how much magicka do you have and your regeneration speed? I never use wards as they simply suck the magicka away and it serves no purpose when I can just run away or dodge and no use magicka.

 

[Kalin of High Rock]

And just how much magicka do you have and your regeneration speed? I never use wards as they simply suck the magicka away and it serves no purpose when I can just run away or dodge and no use magicka.

Most of my gear is enchanted towards my ward-heavy tendencies. Restoration costs are usually cut by 75, if not 100%. I have several sets of gear depending on how I feel like playing at that moment.

Wards can also be perked out to -restore- magika when they absorb a spell. Once your enchanting skill is up, magika costs become a trifling matter. You'll enchant your gear to make the spells in your play-style low or no cost.

And running and dodging, Sir? How vulgar. A mage could twist an ankle capering about in such an uncivilized manner.

 

[AS88]

Wards can also be perked out to restore magicka when they absorb a spell. Once your enchanting skill is up, magika costs become a trifling matter. You'll enchant your gear to make the spells in your play-style low or no cost.

And running and dodging, Sir? How vulgar. A mage could twist an ankle capering about in such an uncivilized manner.

OMG yes to the above.

 

[sticky runes]

i have a character who is focused on Restoration, and I always buy the strongest restoration spells when they becomes available, including healing spells and anti-undead spells, as well as the ones that became available with Dawnguard. I finally got guardian circle so I don't need to tit around with scrolls any more, but it still seems to take forever to level up in this school.

 

[Daelon DuLac]

And just how much magicka do you have and your regeneration speed? I never use wards as they simply suck the magicka away and it serves no purpose when I can just run away or dodge and no use magicka.

Most of my gear is enchanted towards my ward-heavy tendencies. Restoration costs are usually cut by 75, if not 100%. I have several sets of gear depending on how I feel like playing at that moment.

Wards can also be perked out to -restore- magika when they absorb a spell. Once your enchanting skill is up, magika costs become a trifling matter. You'll enchant your gear to make the spells in your play-style low or no cost.

And running and dodging, Sir? How vulgar. A mage could twist an ankle capering about in such an uncivilized manner.

My Altmer acts like a Bosmer most of the time anyhow (if she's not acting like a Falmer!). She really should get some dignity!

Thanks for the tips. I do perk everything up by about level 40 and you're right, the cost does become negligible, but I have never used Alteration, other than Transmute. I should give it a try.

 

[AS88]

Re: Wards

http://theskyrimblog.ning.com/group...ehensive-treatise-on-wards?xg_source=activity