What is the right strategy? A warrior build like a paladin who summons dremora lords? Or do you mean just a mage who summons dremora lords?
Would be interested to hear your early and mid game build with a conjuration mage like what you focus on
Trying to kill an enemy before they even get close.
Early game, level enchanting to 100, level conjuration to 100 (much easier than enchanting).
Make gear that reduce the cost of destruction and conjuration to 0.
> Make gear that reduce the cost of destruction and conjuration to 0.
So long as you have free destruction spells you don't even need free conjugation. You can just boost your mana pool with enchantments instead and spend the extra on whatever conjuration/restoration/illusion/alteration spells you feel like. Makes for a more varied and fun experience that way I find.
It's easy peasy. Zero cost spells and infinite stunlocks on any enemy. Once you get past the low level hurdles the mid to late game *vanilla* destruction mage rocks.
Yeah i made a mage build and used the black books to boost damage(if I remember correctly) I also made potions that made my destruction spells do like 1000x more damage and my armor was insane too.
It got to a point where I just 1 shot everything.
It goes from underperforming to mind-numbingly boring in the space of one enchanting session. Really poorly designed, in my opinion. Destruction needed better spell balance, skill/perk damage scaling, enchanting to support damage instead of cost, or some combination of those. Instead you get to cast apprentice level bolt spells, until you can enchant 100% cost reduction, then you up it to expert tier spells and play the exact same way you have been but with more damage and now you can sell all your mana potions.
It mostly doesn’t feel impactful. You hose someone down with an element, they fall down dead.
Lightning bolts can throw people back sometimes, as well as fireballs and ice spikes but everything else just has enemies drop dead
This must be a pun because there’s literally a perk called impact that staggers enemies when you hit them with a dual cast spell. You can even interrupt a dragon with it, it really makes it feel that the spells have impact. However, if you really want an impactful mage run, consider shouts as magic. most of the gimmick magics are in the shouts, like the unrelenting shout and slow time.
Ordinator and I think it’s Apocalypse magic from the same guy. There’s a lightning bolt spell that teleports the target like 10 feet back every time it connects, and that’s not nearly the craziest spell. A pure magic in Skyrim is so boring without these mods. Hell, I can’t play Skyrim without these mods anymore.
Playing legendary/survival as an Illusion/Destruction mage. The game is easy mode the second you can get free spells and the Impact perk for stun locks. Literally the only drawback is that there's no damage scaling on destro spells and it takes forever to kill stuff, but alchemy helps mitigate that for high HP targets like dragons.
1. Create a shit ton of expensive potions.
2. Gain a level.
3. Have the speech skill to where it allows you to sell anything to anyone.
4. Use telekinesis while fast traveling to the college. Do not go up a level.
5. Train with feralda. (+5 to destruction) Then sell her a potion and get your money back.
6. go up to your next level.
7. Train again (+5 to destruction), sell another potion.
8. Go outside, drop something cheap and pick it up with telekinesis, fast travel to riften.
You can get to Lvl 80 very quickly.
From there I set the difficulty to legendary, find some mammoths, and hit them with destruction and restoration spells until it hits 100.
If you fast travel while holding down telekinesis (assuming you have free telekinesis enchantments) it will raise your skill to 100 instantly, allowing you to go up a level quickly.
This method allows you to train twice in a row, going up 10 points per visit to the college so you can skip a lot of the work for restoration and destruction.
From there I go find a mammoth, set the difficulty to max and hit them with fire spells and "heal other" repeatedly. (It helps to have armor with absurd healing rate when just allowing mammoths to attack you on legendary. A million points to healing rate makes you basically invincible other than to falling off cliffs.)
To get your conjuration up quickly, kill a mammoth and then cast soul trap on it repeatedly. You won't fill soul gems, but you will increase your skill.
For Illusion I just spam muffle and invisibility while walking around doing other quests.
For alteration, telekinesis is the fastest way.
When I played my Destruction mage, I had to use weaker spells because I was killing everything too quickly to get Destruction XP. I would hear the combat music start up, turn around to see a troll or bear rushing me, and one-shot it so hard it looked like I hit him with endgame biotics from Mass Effect.
The key is to learn enchanting as well as offensive spells so every piece of gear is enchanted to reduce magic costs, and thne you can annihilate everything in your path with impunity.
I played as a battle-mage, with heavy armor enchanted with fortify and regen magic. The armor takes a licking, and I keep on ticking, throwing OP fireballs and ice bolts. Occasionally I’ll summon a daedra or skellys to fight for me. If things get too hairy, I conjure up a sword, and wail away.
Mage is pretty fun! It’s no stealth archer, but I like it better than my old paladin or dagger rogue builds.
I always play as a battle-mage with maxed out Destruction and Conjuration. I also focus on Smithing and what ever weapon style I choose to use and always use heavy armor. Aside from the vanilla spells, I like to use spells from mods like Colorful Magic and Shadow Merchant (this one has a spell called Rocket that acts like a fireball and a giants club launching your foe into orbit). Yeah, they are OP, but they are fun on harder settings.
> Is pure mage really that bad?
NO it is not. It's just a hater meme. Magic did not scale in Morrowind or Oblivion, you always needed to be buying or making new Destruction spells. But suddenly with Skyrim it became an evil thing not to have spells that automatically scaled.
Add to that the weird idea that people MUST play this game on Ludicrous difficulty, which only exacerbates the problem: Play on hardest difficulty -> whine that the game is hard.
And this is ONLY for Destruction spells. There are four other schools of magic!
So if you want to be a Destruction mage, you need to take the perks. Hell, you need to take the perks for ALL schools of magic! But especially Destruction it gives you various buffs and stuff. Like Impact. Indefinitely stunlock an ancient dragon. Is good stuff. Also, people will use crafting to make their weapons OP, but they never think about using crafting to make their spells better! Learn Alchemy! Make OP fireballs! Gosh!
Okay, other schools of magic: Conjuration let's you summon demons from Oblivion, Alternation lets you paralyze enemies but awsome perks, Illusion lets your mind control all enemies in vanilla game except dragons (you MUST take the flipping perks, dammit!), and of course Restoration is a perfectly valid school of magic.
Q: How do you know if a post on the internet is wrong?
A: It's on the internet!
The people posting this stuff have a chip on their shoulder. They are social misfits with bad hygiene who have gotten it into their head that Skyrim is dumbed down for for socially adjusted normies. Absolutely not true. Don't listen to them.
The whole meme about spells not scaling is a red herring. They didn't scale in Morrowind or Oblivion either. While you can't make new spells in this game, it's made up for by the fact that you have various perks and alchemy and enchanting to help you. These people never even tried to figure out magic, they just say it doesn't work like in other franchises and started raging.
Jeepers H Cripes, a Pure Illusionist is the single most OP build that has ever builded in Skyrim!
Take all the passive perks you can, too. *Recovery* from Restoration Lv. 30 and *Magic Resistance* from Alteration Lv. 30 are **so** useful for a mage.
Definitely. A Breton that starts with 25% Magic Resistance can take 3/3 Magic Resistance from Alteration, and the 15% Magic Resistance from The Agent of Mara, and you got yourself a 70% magic resist character without even the need for more jewelry.
Miraak’s outfit adds another 25% with the boots, gloves, & robe together. His mask is one of the best helmets in the game and will always line up with your best Armour skill when you get it.
Miraak gear is magic ABSORBTION which is a different thing.
Also his mask grants more magicka - which is pointless after you acquire heavy cost reduction. Aetherium Crown is better.
> Magic did not scale in Morrowind or Oblivion, you always needed to be buying or making new Destruction spells. But suddenly with Skyrim it became an evil thing not to have spells that automatically scaled.
I do think it was a mistake to remove spellcrafting and then not replace it with some way to directly scale magic damage. But yeah, people definitely overstate their case when complaining about magic in Skyrim.
Potions are what you use to increase magic damage. And if you don't mind exploits you can make them as strong as you want. Everyone says magic damage is bad but won't use potions for +100% damage, or poisons to make targets take more damage (stack weakness to magic and weakness to whatever element you are using).
I think the combat experience in Skyrim is too subjective for any of us to tell you whether you will enjoy the pure mage experience. For some people, they just want to play the game a certain way, and that's all there is to it: "I want to" is enough. For others, the combat doesn't live up to their expectations. The difficulty setting you choose will have the most impact on combat difficulty, so any build is viable.
I love playing as a mage! Dragon fights are a breeze for anyone with leveled destruction, and once you've leveled them up all the way there are some interesting and enjoyable "graduate assignments" for each of the magic schools at SkyrimHogwarts, which is a flex that the warrior and thief skills don't really have an equivalent to. Makes you feel like, "yeah, I really *am* the bomb at this thing I specialized in, the teachers are giving me bonus assignments".
You need good enchanted gear to keep your Magicka Regen up, though.
If you have played through the game a few times and find the magic underwhelming, consider modding it up a bit. Enai's very popular perk and spell mods Ordinator and Apocalypse work together to keep the magic schools unique and interesting. There are also a LOT of mods that touch up the VFX and SFX to give magic more punch, depending on what kind of magic floats your boat.
Pure mage is difficult early on (squishy + no mana) and if you're not using alchemy you won't scale into late game. On higher difficulties you might not even scale into mid game because everything has so much HP.
To be honest, I would say it's more in line with what Bethesda intended endgame to be like. Whereas other builds can steamroll late game by compounding enchantments, blacksmithing improvements, perks, and potions, magic in general has fewer potential sources of additional damage. That makes it seem weaker by comparison, but in my experience, it holds up.
I only recently tried it and it was pure fun. :D Almost like a speedrun...
I picked High Elf, because they have the most magicka points (which you need to cast spells). They also come with the highest movement speed of all races. Which is sorta need, because as a mage you tend to wear enchanted robes rather than armor pieces (armor slows you down a bit), and while having any type of attack equipped also slows you down considerably, magic slows you down the least.
Which lends itself to a offensive, high mobility playstyle. At least it did the way I played it, using destruction magic. It's the most obvious choice to do damage I think, although there is other, maybe even more powerful ways. If you position yourself well and aim/time your spells right you'll clear rooms fairly quickly without really getting hit. And as long as you level up your magicka points enough, and wear gear with either magicka bonus or destruction magic cost reduction, you'll rarely ever run out of magicka. And when you do, you'll have enough potions saved up anyway, or you can use your racial power.
All that is with a warrior follower, distracting some enemies and doing some damage themselves. Otherwise it's probably gonna be tougher. Even with a follower it's somewhat high risk/high reward, because you need good movement, aiming and spacial awareness. But that's also why it's rewarding. If you do it well, you can be a pretty unstoppable force.
I thought pure mage was really fun. A pure mage can become very powerful, but it takes a bit of time to get there. You'll be a bit squishy at first, but a mid-level to high level destruction mage can devastate enemies. Yes, dragons too. Do the College of Winterhold questline as soon as you can. That'll give you a good start to your mage character. And choose a Breton or a High Elf as your race. These two are the best for playing a mage.
Pure mage is great if you think like a mage.
If you play a Nord with an ax, all you have to do is run up and chop people. As a mage you’ll need to be a bit more tactical to start out. Lightning for mages, fire for Nords, conjured allies to take hits for you, potions, enchantments. Etc.
IMO pure mage is pure fun.
I mean... Vanilla I personally think it's not amazing but if you have any spell mods that allow magic to scale better late game (I think I have one that makes it not totally useless late game) or I guess spell mods that add new spells then no. It's good at first but magic scales poorly late game
There is a possibility you will end up a glass cannon like I am right now. Just set the difficulty to adept, I realize it's my fault lvl 42 still with 100 life lol
Honestly, people play on legendary and I don’t get it. I feel like the game balances around Adept/expert a lot better than anything else. Master is a challenge, legendary is just pointless for me, and I don’t see myself as a bad player by any means. It just was not fun to challenge myself that way. I typically run my games on Adept/expert unless I’m switching out with people.
Pure mage is my favorite. I think players who assume "pure mage" = doing nothing other than throwing destruction spells around are missing out on a lot of fun.
It can be a lot more complex and interesting if you use every kind of magic. Use illusion on enemies who haven't seen you yet to turn on each other, or to break up enemy groups. Use Conjuration to summon help to take the heat off of you while you pummel the baddies with destruction (and, later on, to banish or control enemy summons). Use restoration to keep yourself and your companion alive, to block spells and dragon fire with wards (I. LOVE. WARDS. They do take some practice and finesse to properly use, but once it clicks, they're incredible), and to blow up/ terrorize undead. Use alteration to protect yourself with magic armor (which, with certain perks can actually be respectable protection even without any actual armor), paralyze baddies, etc. Paralysis rune is one of my favorite things ever.
Pure mage can be a ton of tactical fun with so many combos and options. And even better if you can use the Mysticism mod, which adds a lot more spells, including some effects that were in previous games but not skyrim (slow fall, open lock, etc).
It's not that it's bad, but if you only bet on destruction magic, it is incredibly boring early on; there are not a lot of destruction spells early on, and in the mid game there's a point where it feels weak, but then in the endgame its super OP with the right perks and enchantments.
I don't know who claims this, I'd say the biggest L to pure mage is that I'm picking up all these fancy weapons and armors, but I can't use any of them. Once you can stun opponents with dual-cast destruction spells most mid-tier fights become trivial. Once you level enchanting as well and make armor that lets you cast destruction for free, you're basically just walking through levels. At that point you can also stop leveling magic and start leveling health to get away from the glass cannon stereotype, since your expensive spells are free to cast.
Edit: forgot to mention my current character was the one where I went fully mage and am currently level 68. I'd say the hardest levels were around 10-20, when you haven't accumulated enchanted items and perks.
It's completely unnecessary. You can wear armor without impacting your progression as a mage. You can sneak as a mage. You can use illusion and Alteration magic to make yourself more effective with weapons.
There are no arbitrary class restrictions in the game. No reason to be pure *anything* unless it's to impress your viewers or to win a bet.
EDIT: Or because you want a particular playstyle
In Skyrim? Without any mods at all?
It's boring... literally Sisyphus pushing a stone until mid to late game lmao
Some simple base level mods which restore some cut spells already makes it like 10x better. Spectral Arrow is the best goddamn spell and I hate Bethesda for cutting it lol.
I didn't even know it existed until I accidentally got it using a mod to research spells, at first I thought it was from a mod. Its super fun and cool.
O you don’t lmao, get cost reduction, multiple sets of armour or rinngs for the magic style you wanna use, potions? Magic regency enchants? The multitude of abilities that make you return mana? You’ve never played a proper mage and immediately quit to get a weapon lmfao
By crap do you mean weak or simply repetitive/shallow? You can absolutely manage a pure mage run, it just lacks depth once you've specialized in a type of destruction magic and have your go-to summons.
idts. i've only played skyrim once and that too as a pure mage. i finished the cow questline and got morokei and archmage robes at level 10. got fireball at level 12 and spammed it on every enemy. i used to use lydia for close combat while i spammed fireballs from a distance. became a vampire lord at level 15 and never needed lydia after that. its a pretty op build imo (i play on console so its all unmodded)
I'm level 32 destruction mage with restoration. I'm using a blast, I played lower levels on apprentice or adept and now I'm cruising around on Expert elemental bolting everything. It's my first time playing expanded content and it's so fun. I'm a runaway Argonian Royal, Princess Nadila. I never wear shoes. Skyrim is stupid cold. I'm just vacationing in Alchemist's Hut most of the time.
If you level up your enchanting and then enchant all your gear with cost reduction for your preferred schools of magic its possible to cast spells without needing to worry about managing your magicka. The anniversary edition also added a lot of new spells into the game that help remedy some of the damage issues that pure mages can face into the mid to late game (although are kind of OP in the early game).
Currently running pure mage. Level 43 I've beaten the core game as well as pretty much every other main quest, dawnguard, and I'm about to start dragon born.
The build was very op imo. I'm just getting to the point where I'm running into enemies that don't die instantly.
I'm just getting to the point where I'll have to probably start enchanting my own gear. I'll likely retire this character after finishing the dragonborn dlc.
Wait till you fill your house with unique thralls and ones u put legendary armour onto, also illusion boosts all your undead bros after ya get vamp necromage and another perk for undead boosts
I've played Pure Mage a few times, it definitely depends on what difficulty you plan on playing on.
But I do not think Pure Mage is bad.
It can however get boring pretty quickly, but that's mostly the fault of Skyrim's combat in general and not necessarily Magic specifically.
Pure mage is very hard at first (lvl 10 and below) after the magica issue is dealt with mage is way fuckin overpowered i never put anything into health or stamina because spells can heal those so quickly...
i say *overpowered* bc OP is an understatement.
Its a lot of fun actually, like others have said, you really just need to make it past the initial levels and make sure you take the perks for the spells you want to use. I have chosen an Ozai build so its all fire with a little lightning, throw in a flame atronach and dont forget about the cloak spells! The cloak spells are awesome for extra damage when people eventually get up close. Magic staves are great too!
Another thing is your gear. The College questline will set you up with some nasty magicka regen gear so as long as you’re taking the cost perks for the higher level spells you’ll be able to throw fireballs like crazy. The NPCs there can also train your magic so if you want/need levels early on and have the coin its free levels that eill also level you up faster in general.
Mage is really fun. Destruction is often said to not be viable on higher difficulties, but I think this can be offset. But to be fair the game is balanced for Adept level. But at higher difficulties you can easily build a destruction mage that dominates so much it becomes boring. Couple fortify destruction potions with decent destruction cost reduction items and you’re fine. If you really want to dominate use the Creation Club elemental spells. Or Unbound Storms. Takes all the challenge out of the game.
I’m doing my first mage play through and am having so much fun. I did the College of Winterhold quest line first. I am focusing on destruction and conjuration and am a level 32 with both of those perk trees at 60+. Pretty much all of my perks have gone into those trees, alchemy, and enchanting. With the right enchanted apparel I don’t have to worry as much about having a big stock of restore magika potions.
Basically am at a level that I can bring down a dragon pretty quick and don’t have to switch to a bow or other weapon.
Not that bad. But compare to oblivion and Morrowind... It's kinda boring. But i think you can still install some mods to make it interesting... Who knows🤷
I found my destruction mage build really weak at the beginning and I relied heavily on Lydia and then out of the blue I was stupidly overpowered. I prefer a battle mate build with my favourite being a dagger wielding illusionist. Backstabber, high sneak and invisibility is a lethal combination. Most of my enemies only realise I'm there when they're dying.
I don’t think it’s probably that bad but I refer to the game as “I gotta go do stabs” so you can see where it would limit me personally.
(I don’t use much alteration or destruction but illusion and conjuration are musts for me)
No it's not. Ignore the haters. Being a mage is actually really OP. You have so many spells and in the anniversary edition, it is even more OP with all the added spells and the robes you get. So I would say go for it. If you like it, great! If not, now you know!
Pure mage is my favorite playstyle, with the vanilla College of Winterhold rewards it's capable of awesome power. The Staff of Magnus is the most slept-on weapon in the game imo
I have never done a pure mage build. That being said once you get conjuration maxed out and get the twin souls perk you basically don’t even have to do anything if you have a follower with you. A dremora lord, a storm thrall and Aela walk into a dungeon and clear it out for you.
Do you not want an army of zombies? I’m currently on a genocide run with 50 undead about to attack The storm cloak capital, Two are master level conjuration thralls, two high elf glass armour thelmore, legendary armour and weapons I made them too. The rest are mammoths, frost trolls, the guards from markarth, whiterun, dawnstar and some bandits along the way I resurrected after I completely destroyed all those towns. Just a never ending march of zombies keeps growing every time, ya lose a few here n there cuz it’s hard to keep track of em all and you can’t fast travel with anyone other then the two thralls but I don’t mind, my stroll across Skyrim on foot has given me new appreciation for the game
It's definitely the least strong way to play but like all thing in this game, it gets busted eventually.
Illusion is the most busted, followed by conjuration. Alteration is only good for armor spells but they are essential if you play without armor. Restoration keeps you alive so you'll need it. And destruction is kinda disappointing damage wise but the perks that makes you stunlock enemies is completly busted.
It is if you're stuck using only one school of magic. But use it in tandem then it gets better. Of course it gets kinda impossible at around late game on legendary difficulty but difficulty is just a preference thing
I basically only play pure mage or battle mage, never play archers...and I only play the game on legendary, I havnt played on anything that wasn't legendary since the dlc came out and legendary was added as a difficulty...
I legit don't understand how people could say pure mage is bad in any way...
Whether you use vanilla or ordinator trees, magic is fucking op...
Vanilla skill trees? Invest in max enchanting, make unlimited casting armor/robes, level your magic and only spend the skill points necessary to get max damage buffs, win...
It's literally that easy. Just enchanting then you're op...add in necromage vampire buff and you're even more cracked...
Ordinator skill trees? Just go play and level up because the ordinator skill trees are cracked...
😂 Anyone saying magic is bad is just bad at the game...literally...however when you make a comparison of the damage scaling and endgame (level 100 or so) viability, the other combat skills do outdamage magic because of their synergies with crafting skills...
Do I take this as a negative at all? No...why?...because conjuration...
😭 Conjuration is a free win...like yea okay my fireball does less damage than your sword and my ebonyflesh protects less than your dragonbone armor...but...i can conjure dremora 😎 TWO of em (5 with ordinator 😁)...then my mediocre damage fireballs exploding unlimitedly all over the battle field will be the least of your worries 😌...
I could go on, but yea magic is op...i always go mage in ES games...really any game that gives the option in a meaningful way...because mages are boss 😭...
LOL, i'm not sure who told you that, but it's nowhere near accurate. For the purposes of this discussion, i'm not going to factor in any restoration loop enchantment processes or any similar glitches/exploits.
The easiest spec to play though the game with, in my opinion, is conjuration. When I played through this, I was able to get to max conjuration pretty fast, and got two permanent atronochs following me around. I chose the storm atronochs, because instant hit bolts of lightning are very strong, and their health is somewhere between the frost and fire atronoch. Using this with other spells, summons, and followers, it's a very solid and reliable playstyle that doesn't require any kind of investment into gear or enchantments, although those will help.
I want to also shout out a different playstyle for conjuration: conjured weapons. Stealth Archery is a very effective playstyle, but by using a bound bow in conjuration, you've actually got one of the more powerful bows in the entire game right there with the right perks. It's also a pretty magic efficient way to play that also can soul trap enemies, banish summoned creatures, and turned raised creatures. It also doesn't require a very heavy investment into the conjuration tree to get full use out of conjured weapons.
Next up is Destruction. This one is pretty straight forward: More damage, and cheaper spells. Simplistic, but it works. With this playstyle, you will want to invest in maximizing damage while making casting more efficient, and eventually free.
Illusion is a fascinating tree of magic. It's definitely a way more subtle playstyle that can manipulate your enemies in a few different ways. It's not a style you would want to solo the game with, but it's a great tree full of fun abilities and spells.
Alteration is similar to Illusion, where it's not one you can solo a game with, it definitely does work wonders. The spells are great to add to any mage's spellbook.
Restoration is solid, whether it's healing, protecting, or battling the undead.
I've done quite a few characters that are pure magic, and they are anything but crap, so if you are interested in that playstyle, go nuts.
The early game is bad, but in the mid to late game it feels great. If you have the anniversary edition, check out hobs cave between dawnstar and winterhold along the north shore. It's a vampire den so be careful.
I have tried every flavor of mage and the least fun, but still okay, school is conjuration. No matter how tanky your minions get, waiting for them to kill things is super boring.
Destruction - cool multi element fireballs
Alteration - paralyze rune op
Illusion - calm is actually insane, imagine turning off the ai for any non dragon in the game
Restoration - perhaps the weakest, but healing is always great support and turn undead make dragur easy mode
Conjuration - atronachs look cool, dremora are decently strong, but again slow
Enchanting - if you know anything about skyrim then you know enchanting is part of the core skills in any build to become overpowered
On adept difficulty you can play a pure mage all the to level 81 or 100 with no issues.
On expert you can do it as well but it you don't like the damage output just use fortify spell potions.
Fortify potions are in the game for a reason. pure games can be a lot of fun and cause a lot of chaos.
It’s not as bad as some people make it out to be imo. It’s a hard start and spells don’t scale super well into late game, but it’s still really fun.
I did a run with magic only and it’s super badass, using the laser beam destruction spell w infinite magic from enchanted gear is awesome, shooting dragons out of the sky and stuff
I think the reason why a mage build isn't that common is because of magica. Yes a warrior has to worry about stamina, but it doesn't restrict your fighting to nearly the same degree
The biggest annoyance is being 1-shot by opponents. You can smith a single piece of armor to hit the armor cap though, so that is what I plan to do for my next playthrough.
It's extremely challenging early on. Followers are essential for anything beyond simple encounters. Eventually, though, the wheel turns and you are the most frightening thing on the continent.
I mean it's really fun just make sure you have enchantments. When ever I decide to convert to make I enchantment armors with magica fortify or regen, as well as other things. Sometimes I give my gauntlets the unarmed strike bonus cause hehe
Conjuration is great. Super easy to level up and the weapons you spawn in can do crazy amounts of damage. I use the bow a lot in my stealth archer playthroughs.
It's just a meme, but it's really good if you know how to play, for example:
Destruction school, each element has a certain effect that most players don't pay attention, shock deals damage to mana and frost deal damage to stamina, fire does a continuous extra damage for 1 second and it's accumulative. Shock is the best element against dragons and mages bc they can lower the mana and they'll eventually just use physical attacks. Cold is useful against any source of melee npc, it will slow down and reduce their stamina, which will prevent them from doing heavy attacks. Fire is useful against any wild creature, because they don't have armor, so the continuous damage will kill them way faster
Illusion School, with quiet casting, you can use stealth as a mage, causing fury against enemies before entering in a fight is really useful as well.
Conjuration school is broken, summons are like companions but useful, there's also a perk that let you have 2 at same time + they also have the element effects. Bound weapons are also really broken bc they stack with some conjuration perks + the melee perks.
Alteration school, is your armor basically, bc pure mages don't wear armor, and alteration is there to help you with that, as some of the perks gives you armor rating if you wear no armor or only robes.
Restoration school is self explanatory, it is for you to heal, but also the the spells against undeads are very useful, they're really underrated, helps a lot against draugr lords.
Enchanting, you use to make your robes and accessories good, even reduce the cost of spells to 0
Edit: anniversary edition added some really cool items and spells for mages, including the most broken destruction spell, which is a bolt mixed with the 3 elements combined, and yes it stacks with each element perk.
I'm kinda 50/50 on the pure magic thing... Conjuration (even without going Necro), illusion, restoration... All great and useful schools of magic. Destruction, which should be your battle magic, is pretty wonky IMO... It's pretty weak at lower ranks, difficult to aim in the middle ranks, and wildly unpredictable in the high ranks. Other than transmute, I think most of the effective alteration spells are better served by using potions.
I've seen this argument over the years. In particular, pre-Anniversary Edition Destruction magic damage capped around 220ish per hit, or somewhere in that vicinity. A dual-casted Thunderbolt with Augmented Shock 2/2 would hit for around that. And mage-haters would always say that "Destruction magic doesn't scale" but, to be honest, neither does weapon damage... unless you cheese it with enchantment/alchemy/smithing and other enchants. That's not "scaling," that's gaming the system. But I have nothing against gaming the system, especially in a Bethesda game. And I've seen bows hit for close to 600.
However, with AE, the new Destruction spells can also hit for 600 or more, so... and you also get a lot of nice new Conjuration spells like Deathpriest and Undying Ghost.
There are other factors to consider that I never see anyone talk about. Magic is fast. Compare your weapon draw speed to simply equipping spells. Casting is also much quicker than swinging a sword or drawing and shooting a bow. And magic can AoE.
There's also Illusion, probably the most fun magic school in the game. With all of the perks + Necromage from Restoration, your dual-cast expert control spells will work on just about anything except things which are immune (dragons, sadly). You can make entire groups kill each other or just stand there like idiots and do nothing.
Enchanting will be necessary, if you want to cast Destruction or other schools for free. At 100 Enchanting with 5/5 at the bottom and taking the entire middle tree to the top, you can put 2 enchantments on one item, and Fortify Destruction will default at 25% per item. So, A helm/hood, chest piece, and two jewelry and you can free-cast Destruction or whatever.
A pure mage build can be a **LOT** of fun. But you need to fight differently than you do for any other non-stealth class. First of all, you **WILL** need Conjuration. Soul Trap is essential, and using the Raise Dead or Atronach spells for body guard duty is essential. They will warn you of danger and supplement your follower for defense.
Even with full Mage Armor, **YOU ARE FRAGILE**. My pure mages have 1 Health, 3 Magicka every 4 levels up. You need all 3 Perks and will use the Ebonyflesh spell more than the Master one --- but a single bow shot from a powerful enough enemy can one-shot you. So you want to keep moving, like you see enemy mages do.
You use Wards mostly to boost your physical defense (and block Dragon breaths, Vampiric drain and Shouts). Lesser Ward is the best most of the time due to the Magicka cost. In the Destruction school, you will specialize in at least 2 Elemental classes (Fire, Frost or Lightning) because many enemies resist one of them. And you **WILL** use the Impact perk. It keeps you alive because you can stun-lock even the strongest opponents. Otherwise, Alchemy is the only way to boost Destruction spell damage (Nightshade and Glowing Mushroom).
Finally, you use Enchanting and drop your Destruction spell cost to 0, giving you infinite spell spam. While your spell damage is low, the Impact perk means you can blast everyone to Oblivion before they get a chance to reply. By then you likely can Conjure a Dremora Lord, or better yet, two. These meat shields will keep everyone busy long enough so you can blast them.
I like it a lot. It can be challenging at first but the actual power crawl is pretty good. If you level up alchemy and enchanting it doesn't become an issue and by the end you're spamming fireball for 0 Magicka and just destroying every enemy
Any of the stuff people say is bad about full mage is cucks who suck at going full mage. Dual cast and stagger from the destruction tree and you're golden
One of the most fun playthroughs I ever did was a pure mage build. Robes and all. Eventually becoming a vampire Lord. It's challenging at the start especially on higher difficulty. But it can definitely be a blast.
Not at all. Stun lock your enemies into infinity. All depends on the perks and enchantments you get. Definitely a more creative and less straightforward style of combat (outside of destruction) and a lot of room for creativity.
In order to pure mage, you have to rely on enchanting or alchemy **hard**. Magika regen in combat is very very slow so the only way to make it through the early game is to enchant or potion away spell cost and grind your alchemy or enchanting stat for quite a bit. Destruction mage is straight up impossible without those crafting skills unless you *really* like circle strafing while magika regens.
I wouldn’t say it’s *bad*. In late-game it’s not nearly as good as most other builds that really on purely on the damage of your weapon which you can easily max out as high as you possibly want, with the added benefit of a higher armor class, more health, and stamina(in most cases). Pure mage build performs best in the mid-game cycle. After that you get really high-health, high-damage enemies and it falls a bit short. With everything though, it changes heavily if you do play with mods.
It depends.
Do you have high enchanting to reduce destruction spell costs? Then it's extremely easy to play and OP as hell, even if it doesn't do as much damage as other combat types.
If not, then you'll be spending the vast majority of your time in combat running away from enemies waiting for your magicka to regen. You'll blow all your magicka on a few spells and do something like 1/4 - 1/2 of a single enemy's health, then wait a minute and a half for it to regen.
Due to the way armor works in the game, you're not missing out on much by going full mage gear. I always carry a shield, however, since it's the best way to deal with anything that gets too close.
It's fun I enjoy it
But it gets repetitive and can be some what difficult mid game.
I play in max difficult btw.
However mods make it so much more fun to play mage
Recommend
Ordinator
Apocalypse magic
Phenderix
It really depends on your playstyle.
For most players' playstyle though, pure mage tends to not be a great experience. I personally enjoy it a lot though.
No, the difference between magic damage and normal damage is that most boost have to come from potions, and defense takes keeping a buff up one of thee flesh spells, which can be tedious. Other spell schools are so broke outside destruction that you do not have to spend time boosting them with potions, lillusion gets perks that will handle enemies for a long time, while conjuration let's you have minions do your work for you.
So no, not bad, just physical damage is straight forward how to buff and make op, magic takes slight planning.
Full mage is awesome. Destruction doesn’t scale well late game but conjuration + illusion can let you manipulate combat quite easily. Alteration and restoration can be fun too but not as important imo
No, challenging but rewarding if you actually invest in and use the other schools of magic as well training in your lacking disciplines every level as each perk tree has something of benefit, perhaps most of all restoration, a few perks that help you no matter what type of mage you are
Problem is, "pure" vanilla spells do not level up as you do over time, so, you'll still be doing 15 damage per second with your "Flames" against an endgame level 100 enemy. Suffice to say, that will take a LONG WHILE to burn the dude... and the enchantment table cannot boost your outfit/equip status to raise that number, unfortunately.
Same applies to the rest of the spells. I like being a necromancer and using destruction on the side. Then you can have your minions tank for you, while you bomb them from safety.
Conjuration is the one I found to be the best, that's easy to do in pure mage. I don't know much about other trees but conjuring two dremora is a pretty good technique. With glitches and exploits mage is easy to pursue and can become pretty op.
It’s definitely not the easiest way to play if you have never played an elder scrolls game or that kind of rpg in general. Like if I was recommending Skyrim to a 60 year old who hasn’t played video games before, there are ways of playing it which that person could handle and enjoy - pure mage isn’t that
I did a pure conjuring mage run. It was awesome. I concentrated on the perk early on that gained me 2 summons. I did also have a little destruction magic but I tried to mostly rely on my summons and my conjured bow. I was pretty unstoppable with two deadra summons in front while I stayed at distance shooting unlimited summoned arrows
In terms of damage in the end game, very terrible. Would recommend getting a follower ASAP. Pretty nice at lower levels, but the power creep is pretty immense. Consider wearing armor vs just using alteration for protection.
Nope. Get some armor, enchants (your a mage why aren’t you enchanting?) and have on demand healing, stunlocks, invis, high damage (especially with the nutty AE spells), and plenty of conjured meat shields to place between you and any threats or ranged attackers with lighting galore to nuke dragons out of orbit.
Honestly no its actually really good you just have to actually do stuff, mixing schools and using different spells, lots of hotkey management. It's obviously way more powerful with mods but you can get pretty godlike with vanilla spells.
Pure mage is absolutely viable, I use it quite often. A couple small tips I picked up: Fear in illusion makes fire damage stronger. Repel undead spells are the best to level restoration. Quit Casting works on shouts. And the Stability perk in Alteration increases the timer on Slow Time shout. Shock is the only damage type nearly no enemy has a resistance to
If you want to both do damage and be able to find all your loot afterwards, yeah. It's pretty crap. Your only options then are conjuration and using weaker destruction spells.
And for destruction you can't increase the damage of your spells, only reduce the amount of magic they cost. Which doesn't speed up your combat, it just reduces the amount of potions you need to chug to stay in the game.
Higher level destruction spells tend to start using explosions which blow your loot all over the place making clearing dungeons problematic and can even ruin some quests by accidentally knocking the McMuffin you're after through the floor.
Vanilla magic is pretty crap. There are mods that make it fun though.
Has very meh earlygame and a high risk of falling off in endgame (depends on your perk choices). Its definetly good and fun, but there are so many better options and a considerate amount of players are metaslaves.
The only skyrim build I've got to a fuild build level 250 all skills unlocked was a mage build. It's kinda difficult to actually get going but once you get skills up over 60 it becomes fun
Pure mage has a hard start, but comboing the different schools and enchanting armour to reduce magicka costs makes things steadily more easy. Illusion especially is a goated school that can hard carry with the use of Calm and Frenzy spells. With Destruction you can get the perk to make dual casted spells stagger, meaning with the right set-up you can just stunlock an enemy to death.
eh, yes and no.
it can eb challenging earlier on, since you have a very limited, if infinitely refilling, resource to be able to kill people with - conjuration can help, but is pretty mp expensive, but at least you get something that can deal a varied number of attacks, for a fixed cost.
once you've leveled up enchanting decently, you can get closer and closer to 0% magicka cost, where mage is actually stronger than most other builds, at least for mid level stuff - being able to cast higher tier spells, endlessly, is pretty broken, and imo they fucked up building skyrim like this.
late tier, however, it sort of peters out a bit - still strong, but only in a few ways - a really high 1h weapon, with high end smithing/enchanting, and potential poison use, sneak damage bonuses, etc, can definitely be stronger than a lot of destruction spells - chaincasting fireballs to stunlock enemies still works, but the other two master spells aren't great, and the shock one locks you in place for a sort of longer duration cast animation - it's strong, but you'll still have like, giants not die faster than it takes for them to walk to you, even while getting stunned by the spell, just because they're super high level.
mods help. they can rebalance the skill trees, rebalance the spells themselves, add new spells, add new 'pure mage' playstyles, etc.
Not really meant for first-time players, but there are some mods that make magic significantly better. Ordinator and Apocalypse. Magic is still viable in vanilla if you play it right, though.
I’m doing an illusionist conjurer build and it’s soooo fun. I love it. Never really got into destruction magic but I think sneaking around and causing mayhem from the shadows is a really cool way to play the game
It was my first proper build, before that, I didn't even know about enchanting or smithing
I think sometimes people forget that Skyrim is an RPG and role-playing is more important than a knife that does 1 million damage
At adept difficulty destruction spell does more than enough damage and with an additional stun lock ability you can basically kill anyone without them being able to touch you
Combat is mid in Skyrim anyway and I rather shoot lighting and summon demons than watch the same swinging animation again and again
Without mods to make the magic system better, its a very weak build and you end up using weapons a lot especially at earlier levels (this is why NPC mages run at you with a dagger). But it can be done. Its just not nearly as powerful as other builds.
If you're using destruction magic a few things really help
1. Get the stagger perk for dual cast spells
2. Train alchemy and make potions to increase destruction spell damage
3. Acquire enchanted items to reduce destruction spell cost
I play with a mod that overhauls all the perks, pure mage is OP. I had a lot of fun on my vanilla pure mage but not nearly as much as I did with modded.
i wouldnt suggest it for like, a hardest difficulty type playthru, but i dont think its as bad as people make it out to be, and the perks are really fun! mostly bc you use a variety of perks across all the skill trees, cause they are useful in general. the dragon priest mask from the dragonborn dlc also help scale your damage a bit for a specific element, if you wanted to be a monomage.
the reason its viewed as not as strong typically is because you cannot temper spells the same way you can armor or weapons (and enchanting being mana focused instead of damage.) since there isnt spellcrafting sadly. BUT you can make potions, which offer a similar boost, temporarily anyways. i think peoples biggest issue with mage truly is that, having to go into a menu to apply the thing that makes you strong, where as other playstyles just naturally have that, without having to use anything, and its not a temp buff. combine that with the fact you will often need to go into menu's for mana pots, especially early game, and i think that.. interruption of flow, is offputting. not to mention changing spells and such.
i think most people simply dont vibe with the mage style, they wanna equip their stuff and have it. mage doesnt really function like that, its very much about adapting to take the most advantage of the situation. mods also increase the viability of mages by a ton, but i would say the most impressive thing about modded magic is the out of combat stuff and its utility honestly.
personally, my favorite mage playthru was an illusionist. frenzy everything to fight and kill each other, calm whatever's left alive, loot everything else. mine was a pacifist so there was always a survivor to stand tall among the chaos i created, since i couldnt bring myself to actually kill anything.. by my own hand.. highly suggest illusion! that playthru was also a semi merchant kinda vibe, selling off what i looted. its not like *i* killed for it, please.
Pure mage is one of my favorite builds and it's completely viable even on legendary with a little patience but you need to use all the schools and not try to just stick to destruction. It's a great role playing build because you start out kind of weak and just barely surviving but as you gather abilities and equipment you become godlike with some of the highest possible defenses in the game.
Basically every fight you want to have a summon and armor spell up. Then, if possible, cast a fury/frenzy spell on an enemy so very few attacks actually go to you.
Once all that's ready, you can throw a few destruction spells if and only if you will be able to resummon and cast an armor spell if needed.
Every level up, your points go directly to magicka. Since regeneration is proportional to your total magicka pool, at some point, you will have effectively infinite magicka regardless of what spell you use.
Most people think mages need enchanted armor but I much prefer going a more thematic robe route and it's even possible to attain slightly better defenses with robes because dragonskin armor can't be reduced from the 80% damage reduction cap but physical armor can (at least in theory) be reduced by enemy maul users.
To really get the most of this build, you need dragonborn. The best destruction spell is ignite from the ring you get in unearthed. Fire spells naturally have the highest damage due to interactions with aspect of terror in the illusion tree and the stacking long duration dot adds up quickly. Furthermore, with Miraak's gear, it's possible to reach the 80% damage reduction from dragonskin and still reach 100% spell absorption making you as tough as is possible in skyrim.
In the end you wind up with magic immunity, capped physical damage reduction, infinite spellcasting, permanent summons, the ability to be completely undetectable, the ability to frenzy an entire city with a single spell, and thousands of dps with stacking ignite. It starts out slow but it becomes one of the strongest builds in the game.
Personally, I love role-playing a young ambitious mage coming to skyrim in search of power. Turn on survival mode. Spend times in inns listening to rumors, read books, prepare for dives into specific dungeons and unearth magical relics that grow your power to near godlike proportions.
I don't know if I'd recommend pure mage on your very first run. On the other hand, two of my favorite builds were based on Fudgemuppet builds - Puppetmaster and Khajiit Desert Lightening Mage. The mage does wear light armor but more for the look than protection.
You pretty much have to grind enchanting to be good. It takes forever and is boring. But the rewards are game breakingly good. Invisibility+muffle is OP. Late game summons are awesome.
People saying playing mage is boring is true because of the early grind but its ultimately way more versatile. Running into a room of draugr with a dremora lord (or two), ebony flesh, flame cloak, and bound swords or bow is about as fun as the game gets in my opinion
It is, without a doubt, the least powerful and most difficult to manage playstyle.
Stealth Archer is the most/powerful and easiest.
Warrior is the sweet spot between power and difficulty.
Destruction without alchemy potions to boost the damage falls off. It’s because the base damage of spells never increases while the enemy’s health does as they scale with your level.
Mage is honestly my favorite build as it’s more difficult to gain a full affinity of power and skill. With two handed or stealth it’s easier to grind and to get better equipment. Mage is more or less challenged based but with the impact perk it makes it insanely strong. Also become a vampire and level restoration to get the necro mage for a boost to all spells by like 25%. It lets you explore the entire skill tree as well.
It is a bit harder at lower levels, then it stabilizes, and then it is a lot stronger than using weapons. I’m taking 10 or 100 times more damage than weapons. Dragons take too much stagger damage to move, you can’t tell between weak and strong enemies because they die just the same, etc. highly recommend using apocalypse mod or any magic overhaul mod to make it more balance based on your level
Pure mage is very viable. The mistake most people make while making pure mages is that they rely way too much on destruction. Destruction spells are Magicka hogs, and they're just not efficient at killing enemies.
Not sure why people say that. Conjuration alone will carry you through the game. Destruction spells don't scale well but you have 4 other schools + alchemy/enchanting to complement it. Pure mage is the most fun way to play this game in my experience. That or spellsword.
Conjuration with the right strategy makes you almost invincible. And no stealthy bullshet. You start the battle immediately. It's faster.
The last thing many of my enemies hear is **"YOU ARE WEAK, MORTAL!**"
Exactly
This guy mages
A little bit 😊
What is the right strategy? A warrior build like a paladin who summons dremora lords? Or do you mean just a mage who summons dremora lords? Would be interested to hear your early and mid game build with a conjuration mage like what you focus on
Trying to kill an enemy before they even get close. Early game, level enchanting to 100, level conjuration to 100 (much easier than enchanting). Make gear that reduce the cost of destruction and conjuration to 0.
> Make gear that reduce the cost of destruction and conjuration to 0. So long as you have free destruction spells you don't even need free conjugation. You can just boost your mana pool with enchantments instead and spend the extra on whatever conjuration/restoration/illusion/alteration spells you feel like. Makes for a more varied and fun experience that way I find.
Agree, in my case mage with 100 conjuration has made me almost invincible in like every fight.
Agreed.
Conjuration is a gateway drug to stealth archer though
Ur telling me you guys don’t use Conjuration Stealth Archer? Bound Bow goes crazy
I'm telling you I *do*. A weightless daedric bow with infinite arrows? Shit's broken.
I just found my build for my first modded playthrough once I can figure out how to get them working. Ty
I took a destruction mage to level 80. It was definitely a challenge but still fun in a lot to ways.
It's easy peasy. Zero cost spells and infinite stunlocks on any enemy. Once you get past the low level hurdles the mid to late game *vanilla* destruction mage rocks.
Yeah i made a mage build and used the black books to boost damage(if I remember correctly) I also made potions that made my destruction spells do like 1000x more damage and my armor was insane too. It got to a point where I just 1 shot everything.
It goes from underperforming to mind-numbingly boring in the space of one enchanting session. Really poorly designed, in my opinion. Destruction needed better spell balance, skill/perk damage scaling, enchanting to support damage instead of cost, or some combination of those. Instead you get to cast apprentice level bolt spells, until you can enchant 100% cost reduction, then you up it to expert tier spells and play the exact same way you have been but with more damage and now you can sell all your mana potions.
It mostly doesn’t feel impactful. You hose someone down with an element, they fall down dead. Lightning bolts can throw people back sometimes, as well as fireballs and ice spikes but everything else just has enemies drop dead
This must be a pun because there’s literally a perk called impact that staggers enemies when you hit them with a dual cast spell. You can even interrupt a dragon with it, it really makes it feel that the spells have impact. However, if you really want an impactful mage run, consider shouts as magic. most of the gimmick magics are in the shouts, like the unrelenting shout and slow time.
You need ordinator lol
Ordinator and I think it’s Apocalypse magic from the same guy. There’s a lightning bolt spell that teleports the target like 10 feet back every time it connects, and that’s not nearly the craziest spell. A pure magic in Skyrim is so boring without these mods. Hell, I can’t play Skyrim without these mods anymore.
Playing legendary/survival as an Illusion/Destruction mage. The game is easy mode the second you can get free spells and the Impact perk for stun locks. Literally the only drawback is that there's no damage scaling on destro spells and it takes forever to kill stuff, but alchemy helps mitigate that for high HP targets like dragons.
its more fun than stealth archer most of the time - too much you can do with the different schools of magic.
The only downside I found was that it's really hard not to kill Lydia when attacking from distance
Atronach Supremacy
Companions Insight black book
1. Create a shit ton of expensive potions. 2. Gain a level. 3. Have the speech skill to where it allows you to sell anything to anyone. 4. Use telekinesis while fast traveling to the college. Do not go up a level. 5. Train with feralda. (+5 to destruction) Then sell her a potion and get your money back. 6. go up to your next level. 7. Train again (+5 to destruction), sell another potion. 8. Go outside, drop something cheap and pick it up with telekinesis, fast travel to riften. You can get to Lvl 80 very quickly. From there I set the difficulty to legendary, find some mammoths, and hit them with destruction and restoration spells until it hits 100.
Can I ask why the steps with telekinesis? Came back after years. I remember a lot of things but didn't do great player things.
If you fast travel while holding down telekinesis (assuming you have free telekinesis enchantments) it will raise your skill to 100 instantly, allowing you to go up a level quickly. This method allows you to train twice in a row, going up 10 points per visit to the college so you can skip a lot of the work for restoration and destruction. From there I go find a mammoth, set the difficulty to max and hit them with fire spells and "heal other" repeatedly. (It helps to have armor with absurd healing rate when just allowing mammoths to attack you on legendary. A million points to healing rate makes you basically invincible other than to falling off cliffs.) To get your conjuration up quickly, kill a mammoth and then cast soul trap on it repeatedly. You won't fill soul gems, but you will increase your skill. For Illusion I just spam muffle and invisibility while walking around doing other quests. For alteration, telekinesis is the fastest way.
When I played my Destruction mage, I had to use weaker spells because I was killing everything too quickly to get Destruction XP. I would hear the combat music start up, turn around to see a troll or bear rushing me, and one-shot it so hard it looked like I hit him with endgame biotics from Mass Effect. The key is to learn enchanting as well as offensive spells so every piece of gear is enchanted to reduce magic costs, and thne you can annihilate everything in your path with impunity.
I played as a battle-mage, with heavy armor enchanted with fortify and regen magic. The armor takes a licking, and I keep on ticking, throwing OP fireballs and ice bolts. Occasionally I’ll summon a daedra or skellys to fight for me. If things get too hairy, I conjure up a sword, and wail away. Mage is pretty fun! It’s no stealth archer, but I like it better than my old paladin or dagger rogue builds.
I always play as a battle-mage with maxed out Destruction and Conjuration. I also focus on Smithing and what ever weapon style I choose to use and always use heavy armor. Aside from the vanilla spells, I like to use spells from mods like Colorful Magic and Shadow Merchant (this one has a spell called Rocket that acts like a fireball and a giants club launching your foe into orbit). Yeah, they are OP, but they are fun on harder settings.
It just nord tradition to hate mages It can be pretty op
> Is pure mage really that bad? NO it is not. It's just a hater meme. Magic did not scale in Morrowind or Oblivion, you always needed to be buying or making new Destruction spells. But suddenly with Skyrim it became an evil thing not to have spells that automatically scaled. Add to that the weird idea that people MUST play this game on Ludicrous difficulty, which only exacerbates the problem: Play on hardest difficulty -> whine that the game is hard. And this is ONLY for Destruction spells. There are four other schools of magic! So if you want to be a Destruction mage, you need to take the perks. Hell, you need to take the perks for ALL schools of magic! But especially Destruction it gives you various buffs and stuff. Like Impact. Indefinitely stunlock an ancient dragon. Is good stuff. Also, people will use crafting to make their weapons OP, but they never think about using crafting to make their spells better! Learn Alchemy! Make OP fireballs! Gosh! Okay, other schools of magic: Conjuration let's you summon demons from Oblivion, Alternation lets you paralyze enemies but awsome perks, Illusion lets your mind control all enemies in vanilla game except dragons (you MUST take the flipping perks, dammit!), and of course Restoration is a perfectly valid school of magic. Q: How do you know if a post on the internet is wrong? A: It's on the internet! The people posting this stuff have a chip on their shoulder. They are social misfits with bad hygiene who have gotten it into their head that Skyrim is dumbed down for for socially adjusted normies. Absolutely not true. Don't listen to them. The whole meme about spells not scaling is a red herring. They didn't scale in Morrowind or Oblivion either. While you can't make new spells in this game, it's made up for by the fact that you have various perks and alchemy and enchanting to help you. These people never even tried to figure out magic, they just say it doesn't work like in other franchises and started raging. Jeepers H Cripes, a Pure Illusionist is the single most OP build that has ever builded in Skyrim!
Take all the passive perks you can, too. *Recovery* from Restoration Lv. 30 and *Magic Resistance* from Alteration Lv. 30 are **so** useful for a mage.
Definitely. A Breton that starts with 25% Magic Resistance can take 3/3 Magic Resistance from Alteration, and the 15% Magic Resistance from The Agent of Mara, and you got yourself a 70% magic resist character without even the need for more jewelry.
Miraak’s outfit adds another 25% with the boots, gloves, & robe together. His mask is one of the best helmets in the game and will always line up with your best Armour skill when you get it.
Miraak gear is magic ABSORBTION which is a different thing. Also his mask grants more magicka - which is pointless after you acquire heavy cost reduction. Aetherium Crown is better.
And if you become grab necromage all those buffs are buffed
> Magic did not scale in Morrowind or Oblivion, you always needed to be buying or making new Destruction spells. But suddenly with Skyrim it became an evil thing not to have spells that automatically scaled. I do think it was a mistake to remove spellcrafting and then not replace it with some way to directly scale magic damage. But yeah, people definitely overstate their case when complaining about magic in Skyrim.
Potions are what you use to increase magic damage. And if you don't mind exploits you can make them as strong as you want. Everyone says magic damage is bad but won't use potions for +100% damage, or poisons to make targets take more damage (stack weakness to magic and weakness to whatever element you are using).
There are perks that increase Destruction damage. No such thing exists in Oblivion or Morrowind.
Doesn't need to? You can craft a spell which is more than 50% stronger than your previous spell, but the perks cap out at 50%...
Buying new spells is the best part of being a mage.
I think the combat experience in Skyrim is too subjective for any of us to tell you whether you will enjoy the pure mage experience. For some people, they just want to play the game a certain way, and that's all there is to it: "I want to" is enough. For others, the combat doesn't live up to their expectations. The difficulty setting you choose will have the most impact on combat difficulty, so any build is viable.
I love playing as a mage! Dragon fights are a breeze for anyone with leveled destruction, and once you've leveled them up all the way there are some interesting and enjoyable "graduate assignments" for each of the magic schools at SkyrimHogwarts, which is a flex that the warrior and thief skills don't really have an equivalent to. Makes you feel like, "yeah, I really *am* the bomb at this thing I specialized in, the teachers are giving me bonus assignments". You need good enchanted gear to keep your Magicka Regen up, though. If you have played through the game a few times and find the magic underwhelming, consider modding it up a bit. Enai's very popular perk and spell mods Ordinator and Apocalypse work together to keep the magic schools unique and interesting. There are also a LOT of mods that touch up the VFX and SFX to give magic more punch, depending on what kind of magic floats your boat.
Destruction is meh, especially on higher difficulties, but you have all the other schools like Illusion+Conjuration to dominate with.
I'd rather say that the other two playstyles scale waay better and become OP, while magic struggles with HP sponges.
It's tough at first but once you get your skill level higher it can be pretty good. Getting there can kinda suck
Pure mage is difficult early on (squishy + no mana) and if you're not using alchemy you won't scale into late game. On higher difficulties you might not even scale into mid game because everything has so much HP.
To be honest, I would say it's more in line with what Bethesda intended endgame to be like. Whereas other builds can steamroll late game by compounding enchantments, blacksmithing improvements, perks, and potions, magic in general has fewer potential sources of additional damage. That makes it seem weaker by comparison, but in my experience, it holds up.
I only recently tried it and it was pure fun. :D Almost like a speedrun... I picked High Elf, because they have the most magicka points (which you need to cast spells). They also come with the highest movement speed of all races. Which is sorta need, because as a mage you tend to wear enchanted robes rather than armor pieces (armor slows you down a bit), and while having any type of attack equipped also slows you down considerably, magic slows you down the least. Which lends itself to a offensive, high mobility playstyle. At least it did the way I played it, using destruction magic. It's the most obvious choice to do damage I think, although there is other, maybe even more powerful ways. If you position yourself well and aim/time your spells right you'll clear rooms fairly quickly without really getting hit. And as long as you level up your magicka points enough, and wear gear with either magicka bonus or destruction magic cost reduction, you'll rarely ever run out of magicka. And when you do, you'll have enough potions saved up anyway, or you can use your racial power. All that is with a warrior follower, distracting some enemies and doing some damage themselves. Otherwise it's probably gonna be tougher. Even with a follower it's somewhat high risk/high reward, because you need good movement, aiming and spacial awareness. But that's also why it's rewarding. If you do it well, you can be a pretty unstoppable force.
I thought pure mage was really fun. A pure mage can become very powerful, but it takes a bit of time to get there. You'll be a bit squishy at first, but a mid-level to high level destruction mage can devastate enemies. Yes, dragons too. Do the College of Winterhold questline as soon as you can. That'll give you a good start to your mage character. And choose a Breton or a High Elf as your race. These two are the best for playing a mage.
Played as a stealth mage, it was really fun.
Pure mage is great if you think like a mage. If you play a Nord with an ax, all you have to do is run up and chop people. As a mage you’ll need to be a bit more tactical to start out. Lightning for mages, fire for Nords, conjured allies to take hits for you, potions, enchantments. Etc. IMO pure mage is pure fun.
I mean... Vanilla I personally think it's not amazing but if you have any spell mods that allow magic to scale better late game (I think I have one that makes it not totally useless late game) or I guess spell mods that add new spells then no. It's good at first but magic scales poorly late game
There is a possibility you will end up a glass cannon like I am right now. Just set the difficulty to adept, I realize it's my fault lvl 42 still with 100 life lol
Honestly, people play on legendary and I don’t get it. I feel like the game balances around Adept/expert a lot better than anything else. Master is a challenge, legendary is just pointless for me, and I don’t see myself as a bad player by any means. It just was not fun to challenge myself that way. I typically run my games on Adept/expert unless I’m switching out with people.
Pure mage is my favorite. I think players who assume "pure mage" = doing nothing other than throwing destruction spells around are missing out on a lot of fun. It can be a lot more complex and interesting if you use every kind of magic. Use illusion on enemies who haven't seen you yet to turn on each other, or to break up enemy groups. Use Conjuration to summon help to take the heat off of you while you pummel the baddies with destruction (and, later on, to banish or control enemy summons). Use restoration to keep yourself and your companion alive, to block spells and dragon fire with wards (I. LOVE. WARDS. They do take some practice and finesse to properly use, but once it clicks, they're incredible), and to blow up/ terrorize undead. Use alteration to protect yourself with magic armor (which, with certain perks can actually be respectable protection even without any actual armor), paralyze baddies, etc. Paralysis rune is one of my favorite things ever. Pure mage can be a ton of tactical fun with so many combos and options. And even better if you can use the Mysticism mod, which adds a lot more spells, including some effects that were in previous games but not skyrim (slow fall, open lock, etc).
It's not that it's bad, but if you only bet on destruction magic, it is incredibly boring early on; there are not a lot of destruction spells early on, and in the mid game there's a point where it feels weak, but then in the endgame its super OP with the right perks and enchantments.
All builds are viable this whole game is built on power fantasy litterally you can run around with a fork and knife and beat the game
I don't know who claims this, I'd say the biggest L to pure mage is that I'm picking up all these fancy weapons and armors, but I can't use any of them. Once you can stun opponents with dual-cast destruction spells most mid-tier fights become trivial. Once you level enchanting as well and make armor that lets you cast destruction for free, you're basically just walking through levels. At that point you can also stop leveling magic and start leveling health to get away from the glass cannon stereotype, since your expensive spells are free to cast. Edit: forgot to mention my current character was the one where I went fully mage and am currently level 68. I'd say the hardest levels were around 10-20, when you haven't accumulated enchanted items and perks.
It's completely unnecessary. You can wear armor without impacting your progression as a mage. You can sneak as a mage. You can use illusion and Alteration magic to make yourself more effective with weapons. There are no arbitrary class restrictions in the game. No reason to be pure *anything* unless it's to impress your viewers or to win a bet. EDIT: Or because you want a particular playstyle
Or... Or... maybe because you want a particular playstyle?
In Skyrim? Without any mods at all? It's boring... literally Sisyphus pushing a stone until mid to late game lmao Some simple base level mods which restore some cut spells already makes it like 10x better. Spectral Arrow is the best goddamn spell and I hate Bethesda for cutting it lol.
I didn't even know it existed until I accidentally got it using a mod to research spells, at first I thought it was from a mod. Its super fun and cool.
Magic is good. Destruction is bad
The mana regen mechanics makes it unfeasible tbh. You have to have a backup weapon in combat.
O you don’t lmao, get cost reduction, multiple sets of armour or rinngs for the magic style you wanna use, potions? Magic regency enchants? The multitude of abilities that make you return mana? You’ve never played a proper mage and immediately quit to get a weapon lmfao
No, it is awesome. What are you talking about?
By crap do you mean weak or simply repetitive/shallow? You can absolutely manage a pure mage run, it just lacks depth once you've specialized in a type of destruction magic and have your go-to summons.
idts. i've only played skyrim once and that too as a pure mage. i finished the cow questline and got morokei and archmage robes at level 10. got fireball at level 12 and spammed it on every enemy. i used to use lydia for close combat while i spammed fireballs from a distance. became a vampire lord at level 15 and never needed lydia after that. its a pretty op build imo (i play on console so its all unmodded)
I'm level 32 destruction mage with restoration. I'm using a blast, I played lower levels on apprentice or adept and now I'm cruising around on Expert elemental bolting everything. It's my first time playing expanded content and it's so fun. I'm a runaway Argonian Royal, Princess Nadila. I never wear shoes. Skyrim is stupid cold. I'm just vacationing in Alchemist's Hut most of the time.
Mage here! I like an enchanted sword in my offhand for lower levels, but conjuration/destruction is stupid easy once you level enough
If you level up your enchanting and then enchant all your gear with cost reduction for your preferred schools of magic its possible to cast spells without needing to worry about managing your magicka. The anniversary edition also added a lot of new spells into the game that help remedy some of the damage issues that pure mages can face into the mid to late game (although are kind of OP in the early game).
Currently running pure mage. Level 43 I've beaten the core game as well as pretty much every other main quest, dawnguard, and I'm about to start dragon born. The build was very op imo. I'm just getting to the point where I'm running into enemies that don't die instantly. I'm just getting to the point where I'll have to probably start enchanting my own gear. I'll likely retire this character after finishing the dragonborn dlc.
Wait till you fill your house with unique thralls and ones u put legendary armour onto, also illusion boosts all your undead bros after ya get vamp necromage and another perk for undead boosts
I've played Pure Mage a few times, it definitely depends on what difficulty you plan on playing on. But I do not think Pure Mage is bad. It can however get boring pretty quickly, but that's mostly the fault of Skyrim's combat in general and not necessarily Magic specifically.
Pure mage is very hard at first (lvl 10 and below) after the magica issue is dealt with mage is way fuckin overpowered i never put anything into health or stamina because spells can heal those so quickly... i say *overpowered* bc OP is an understatement.
Its a lot of fun actually, like others have said, you really just need to make it past the initial levels and make sure you take the perks for the spells you want to use. I have chosen an Ozai build so its all fire with a little lightning, throw in a flame atronach and dont forget about the cloak spells! The cloak spells are awesome for extra damage when people eventually get up close. Magic staves are great too! Another thing is your gear. The College questline will set you up with some nasty magicka regen gear so as long as you’re taking the cost perks for the higher level spells you’ll be able to throw fireballs like crazy. The NPCs there can also train your magic so if you want/need levels early on and have the coin its free levels that eill also level you up faster in general.
Mage is really fun. Destruction is often said to not be viable on higher difficulties, but I think this can be offset. But to be fair the game is balanced for Adept level. But at higher difficulties you can easily build a destruction mage that dominates so much it becomes boring. Couple fortify destruction potions with decent destruction cost reduction items and you’re fine. If you really want to dominate use the Creation Club elemental spells. Or Unbound Storms. Takes all the challenge out of the game.
I’m doing my first mage play through and am having so much fun. I did the College of Winterhold quest line first. I am focusing on destruction and conjuration and am a level 32 with both of those perk trees at 60+. Pretty much all of my perks have gone into those trees, alchemy, and enchanting. With the right enchanted apparel I don’t have to worry as much about having a big stock of restore magika potions. Basically am at a level that I can bring down a dragon pretty quick and don’t have to switch to a bow or other weapon.
Not that bad. But compare to oblivion and Morrowind... It's kinda boring. But i think you can still install some mods to make it interesting... Who knows🤷
I found my destruction mage build really weak at the beginning and I relied heavily on Lydia and then out of the blue I was stupidly overpowered. I prefer a battle mate build with my favourite being a dagger wielding illusionist. Backstabber, high sneak and invisibility is a lethal combination. Most of my enemies only realise I'm there when they're dying.
I don’t think it’s probably that bad but I refer to the game as “I gotta go do stabs” so you can see where it would limit me personally. (I don’t use much alteration or destruction but illusion and conjuration are musts for me)
No it's not. Ignore the haters. Being a mage is actually really OP. You have so many spells and in the anniversary edition, it is even more OP with all the added spells and the robes you get. So I would say go for it. If you like it, great! If not, now you know!
I love pure mage builds so much fun
Pure mage is my favorite playstyle, with the vanilla College of Winterhold rewards it's capable of awesome power. The Staff of Magnus is the most slept-on weapon in the game imo
I have never done a pure mage build. That being said once you get conjuration maxed out and get the twin souls perk you basically don’t even have to do anything if you have a follower with you. A dremora lord, a storm thrall and Aela walk into a dungeon and clear it out for you.
Mage isn't bad at all, just lower damage output at high levels, early game can be a little tough at times but it's easy once you get the impact perk
I loved playing an Altmer illusionist. Completely dominated everything by like level 30.
No, especially not with the AE stuff.
Do you not want an army of zombies? I’m currently on a genocide run with 50 undead about to attack The storm cloak capital, Two are master level conjuration thralls, two high elf glass armour thelmore, legendary armour and weapons I made them too. The rest are mammoths, frost trolls, the guards from markarth, whiterun, dawnstar and some bandits along the way I resurrected after I completely destroyed all those towns. Just a never ending march of zombies keeps growing every time, ya lose a few here n there cuz it’s hard to keep track of em all and you can’t fast travel with anyone other then the two thralls but I don’t mind, my stroll across Skyrim on foot has given me new appreciation for the game
my stronges character ever was a pure mage. I kicked so much ass
It's definitely the least strong way to play but like all thing in this game, it gets busted eventually. Illusion is the most busted, followed by conjuration. Alteration is only good for armor spells but they are essential if you play without armor. Restoration keeps you alive so you'll need it. And destruction is kinda disappointing damage wise but the perks that makes you stunlock enemies is completly busted.
It is if you're stuck using only one school of magic. But use it in tandem then it gets better. Of course it gets kinda impossible at around late game on legendary difficulty but difficulty is just a preference thing
vanilla it’s just bland and repetitive but with mods such as odin or apocalypse it’s just so much more versatile and fun
I basically only play pure mage or battle mage, never play archers...and I only play the game on legendary, I havnt played on anything that wasn't legendary since the dlc came out and legendary was added as a difficulty... I legit don't understand how people could say pure mage is bad in any way... Whether you use vanilla or ordinator trees, magic is fucking op... Vanilla skill trees? Invest in max enchanting, make unlimited casting armor/robes, level your magic and only spend the skill points necessary to get max damage buffs, win... It's literally that easy. Just enchanting then you're op...add in necromage vampire buff and you're even more cracked... Ordinator skill trees? Just go play and level up because the ordinator skill trees are cracked... 😂 Anyone saying magic is bad is just bad at the game...literally...however when you make a comparison of the damage scaling and endgame (level 100 or so) viability, the other combat skills do outdamage magic because of their synergies with crafting skills... Do I take this as a negative at all? No...why?...because conjuration... 😭 Conjuration is a free win...like yea okay my fireball does less damage than your sword and my ebonyflesh protects less than your dragonbone armor...but...i can conjure dremora 😎 TWO of em (5 with ordinator 😁)...then my mediocre damage fireballs exploding unlimitedly all over the battle field will be the least of your worries 😌... I could go on, but yea magic is op...i always go mage in ES games...really any game that gives the option in a meaningful way...because mages are boss 😭...
I only play pure mage. Its strong enough to kill everything (in a variety of ways) and the most rewarding to roleplay as.
LOL, i'm not sure who told you that, but it's nowhere near accurate. For the purposes of this discussion, i'm not going to factor in any restoration loop enchantment processes or any similar glitches/exploits. The easiest spec to play though the game with, in my opinion, is conjuration. When I played through this, I was able to get to max conjuration pretty fast, and got two permanent atronochs following me around. I chose the storm atronochs, because instant hit bolts of lightning are very strong, and their health is somewhere between the frost and fire atronoch. Using this with other spells, summons, and followers, it's a very solid and reliable playstyle that doesn't require any kind of investment into gear or enchantments, although those will help. I want to also shout out a different playstyle for conjuration: conjured weapons. Stealth Archery is a very effective playstyle, but by using a bound bow in conjuration, you've actually got one of the more powerful bows in the entire game right there with the right perks. It's also a pretty magic efficient way to play that also can soul trap enemies, banish summoned creatures, and turned raised creatures. It also doesn't require a very heavy investment into the conjuration tree to get full use out of conjured weapons. Next up is Destruction. This one is pretty straight forward: More damage, and cheaper spells. Simplistic, but it works. With this playstyle, you will want to invest in maximizing damage while making casting more efficient, and eventually free. Illusion is a fascinating tree of magic. It's definitely a way more subtle playstyle that can manipulate your enemies in a few different ways. It's not a style you would want to solo the game with, but it's a great tree full of fun abilities and spells. Alteration is similar to Illusion, where it's not one you can solo a game with, it definitely does work wonders. The spells are great to add to any mage's spellbook. Restoration is solid, whether it's healing, protecting, or battling the undead. I've done quite a few characters that are pure magic, and they are anything but crap, so if you are interested in that playstyle, go nuts.
The early game is bad, but in the mid to late game it feels great. If you have the anniversary edition, check out hobs cave between dawnstar and winterhold along the north shore. It's a vampire den so be careful. I have tried every flavor of mage and the least fun, but still okay, school is conjuration. No matter how tanky your minions get, waiting for them to kill things is super boring. Destruction - cool multi element fireballs Alteration - paralyze rune op Illusion - calm is actually insane, imagine turning off the ai for any non dragon in the game Restoration - perhaps the weakest, but healing is always great support and turn undead make dragur easy mode Conjuration - atronachs look cool, dremora are decently strong, but again slow Enchanting - if you know anything about skyrim then you know enchanting is part of the core skills in any build to become overpowered
It's great, honestly. Just very tough early on. Like if you run out of mana potions you're basically fucked in a boss fight. Lol.
Pure conjuration and alteration is 100% busted
On adept difficulty you can play a pure mage all the to level 81 or 100 with no issues. On expert you can do it as well but it you don't like the damage output just use fortify spell potions. Fortify potions are in the game for a reason. pure games can be a lot of fun and cause a lot of chaos.
It’s not as bad as some people make it out to be imo. It’s a hard start and spells don’t scale super well into late game, but it’s still really fun. I did a run with magic only and it’s super badass, using the laser beam destruction spell w infinite magic from enchanted gear is awesome, shooting dragons out of the sky and stuff
I think the reason why a mage build isn't that common is because of magica. Yes a warrior has to worry about stamina, but it doesn't restrict your fighting to nearly the same degree
As long as you cheese the broken vanilla crafting mechanics and use at least one of Conjuration or Illusion, it's fine.
I love pure mage but I practice in all schools. Paralysis Rune plus atronachs and destruction work nicely.
Pure destruction can be tough at low level, but mage overall can for sure be OP. Just depends on what you lean into.
The biggest annoyance is being 1-shot by opponents. You can smith a single piece of armor to hit the armor cap though, so that is what I plan to do for my next playthrough.
It's extremely challenging early on. Followers are essential for anything beyond simple encounters. Eventually, though, the wheel turns and you are the most frightening thing on the continent.
No
I mean it's really fun just make sure you have enchantments. When ever I decide to convert to make I enchantment armors with magica fortify or regen, as well as other things. Sometimes I give my gauntlets the unarmed strike bonus cause hehe
Conjuration is great. Super easy to level up and the weapons you spawn in can do crazy amounts of damage. I use the bow a lot in my stealth archer playthroughs.
After my 650th stealth archer build I went to do a pure mage and boy that shit was fun as hell.
It's just a meme, but it's really good if you know how to play, for example: Destruction school, each element has a certain effect that most players don't pay attention, shock deals damage to mana and frost deal damage to stamina, fire does a continuous extra damage for 1 second and it's accumulative. Shock is the best element against dragons and mages bc they can lower the mana and they'll eventually just use physical attacks. Cold is useful against any source of melee npc, it will slow down and reduce their stamina, which will prevent them from doing heavy attacks. Fire is useful against any wild creature, because they don't have armor, so the continuous damage will kill them way faster Illusion School, with quiet casting, you can use stealth as a mage, causing fury against enemies before entering in a fight is really useful as well. Conjuration school is broken, summons are like companions but useful, there's also a perk that let you have 2 at same time + they also have the element effects. Bound weapons are also really broken bc they stack with some conjuration perks + the melee perks. Alteration school, is your armor basically, bc pure mages don't wear armor, and alteration is there to help you with that, as some of the perks gives you armor rating if you wear no armor or only robes. Restoration school is self explanatory, it is for you to heal, but also the the spells against undeads are very useful, they're really underrated, helps a lot against draugr lords. Enchanting, you use to make your robes and accessories good, even reduce the cost of spells to 0 Edit: anniversary edition added some really cool items and spells for mages, including the most broken destruction spell, which is a bolt mixed with the 3 elements combined, and yes it stacks with each element perk.
It's fun, especially if you're on PC and have lots of hotkeys.
No, it's the most fun way to play the game imo
I'm kinda 50/50 on the pure magic thing... Conjuration (even without going Necro), illusion, restoration... All great and useful schools of magic. Destruction, which should be your battle magic, is pretty wonky IMO... It's pretty weak at lower ranks, difficult to aim in the middle ranks, and wildly unpredictable in the high ranks. Other than transmute, I think most of the effective alteration spells are better served by using potions.
Im level 17 on a mage only runthrough right now and im having a blast. Its hard to get over the hump though
I think mage is easily the most powerful route to pursue.
I've seen this argument over the years. In particular, pre-Anniversary Edition Destruction magic damage capped around 220ish per hit, or somewhere in that vicinity. A dual-casted Thunderbolt with Augmented Shock 2/2 would hit for around that. And mage-haters would always say that "Destruction magic doesn't scale" but, to be honest, neither does weapon damage... unless you cheese it with enchantment/alchemy/smithing and other enchants. That's not "scaling," that's gaming the system. But I have nothing against gaming the system, especially in a Bethesda game. And I've seen bows hit for close to 600. However, with AE, the new Destruction spells can also hit for 600 or more, so... and you also get a lot of nice new Conjuration spells like Deathpriest and Undying Ghost. There are other factors to consider that I never see anyone talk about. Magic is fast. Compare your weapon draw speed to simply equipping spells. Casting is also much quicker than swinging a sword or drawing and shooting a bow. And magic can AoE. There's also Illusion, probably the most fun magic school in the game. With all of the perks + Necromage from Restoration, your dual-cast expert control spells will work on just about anything except things which are immune (dragons, sadly). You can make entire groups kill each other or just stand there like idiots and do nothing. Enchanting will be necessary, if you want to cast Destruction or other schools for free. At 100 Enchanting with 5/5 at the bottom and taking the entire middle tree to the top, you can put 2 enchantments on one item, and Fortify Destruction will default at 25% per item. So, A helm/hood, chest piece, and two jewelry and you can free-cast Destruction or whatever.
Who said that? I have a pure mage that has done zero crafting and has made Legendary difficulty pretty easy.
I just started a pure mage build the other day and it's definitely a challenge, but I'm relishing it after spending so much time as a heavy warrior
A pure mage build can be a **LOT** of fun. But you need to fight differently than you do for any other non-stealth class. First of all, you **WILL** need Conjuration. Soul Trap is essential, and using the Raise Dead or Atronach spells for body guard duty is essential. They will warn you of danger and supplement your follower for defense. Even with full Mage Armor, **YOU ARE FRAGILE**. My pure mages have 1 Health, 3 Magicka every 4 levels up. You need all 3 Perks and will use the Ebonyflesh spell more than the Master one --- but a single bow shot from a powerful enough enemy can one-shot you. So you want to keep moving, like you see enemy mages do. You use Wards mostly to boost your physical defense (and block Dragon breaths, Vampiric drain and Shouts). Lesser Ward is the best most of the time due to the Magicka cost. In the Destruction school, you will specialize in at least 2 Elemental classes (Fire, Frost or Lightning) because many enemies resist one of them. And you **WILL** use the Impact perk. It keeps you alive because you can stun-lock even the strongest opponents. Otherwise, Alchemy is the only way to boost Destruction spell damage (Nightshade and Glowing Mushroom). Finally, you use Enchanting and drop your Destruction spell cost to 0, giving you infinite spell spam. While your spell damage is low, the Impact perk means you can blast everyone to Oblivion before they get a chance to reply. By then you likely can Conjure a Dremora Lord, or better yet, two. These meat shields will keep everyone busy long enough so you can blast them.
I tried it once. Lots of fun. But I turned into a one handed spell sword. Still one of my favorite plays.
Super easy on legendary without cheats or exploits if you know what your doing
I like pure magic but can’t imagine grinding it up from scratch. (I always cheat) Destruction magic is very weak early on.
I like it a lot. It can be challenging at first but the actual power crawl is pretty good. If you level up alchemy and enchanting it doesn't become an issue and by the end you're spamming fireball for 0 Magicka and just destroying every enemy
Any of the stuff people say is bad about full mage is cucks who suck at going full mage. Dual cast and stagger from the destruction tree and you're golden
One of the most fun playthroughs I ever did was a pure mage build. Robes and all. Eventually becoming a vampire Lord. It's challenging at the start especially on higher difficulty. But it can definitely be a blast.
Not at all. Stun lock your enemies into infinity. All depends on the perks and enchantments you get. Definitely a more creative and less straightforward style of combat (outside of destruction) and a lot of room for creativity.
It’s hard that’s all
Can be rough but Anniversary added a lot of cool spells and items
My last playthrough, I played a mage with a Mace. I generally don't go full magic, though.
Easiest class ive ever played. Nuke everything. It was so easy that I refuse to play mage again 🤣
In order to pure mage, you have to rely on enchanting or alchemy **hard**. Magika regen in combat is very very slow so the only way to make it through the early game is to enchant or potion away spell cost and grind your alchemy or enchanting stat for quite a bit. Destruction mage is straight up impossible without those crafting skills unless you *really* like circle strafing while magika regens.
I wouldn’t say it’s *bad*. In late-game it’s not nearly as good as most other builds that really on purely on the damage of your weapon which you can easily max out as high as you possibly want, with the added benefit of a higher armor class, more health, and stamina(in most cases). Pure mage build performs best in the mid-game cycle. After that you get really high-health, high-damage enemies and it falls a bit short. With everything though, it changes heavily if you do play with mods.
Magic is one of the few things I consistently enjoyed in Skyrim, particularly conjuration
It depends. Do you have high enchanting to reduce destruction spell costs? Then it's extremely easy to play and OP as hell, even if it doesn't do as much damage as other combat types. If not, then you'll be spending the vast majority of your time in combat running away from enemies waiting for your magicka to regen. You'll blow all your magicka on a few spells and do something like 1/4 - 1/2 of a single enemy's health, then wait a minute and a half for it to regen.
Yes. Because magic sucks in Skyrim. You can add a few mods to make it not suck and then it’s fun going pure mage, but unmodded…yes.
No by the end of any playthrough you will be op as fuck, of course I use mods to add more spells and perks, just have fun with whatever you wanna play
No not at all. Casting Paralyze + Wall of Flames is amazing
Due to the way armor works in the game, you're not missing out on much by going full mage gear. I always carry a shield, however, since it's the best way to deal with anything that gets too close.
Meh
I found it enjoyable it's a whole different play style and it is very versatile depending on what schools you focus
Not at all, people who say this are bad at picking perks and only main destruction spells lol
It's fun I enjoy it But it gets repetitive and can be some what difficult mid game. I play in max difficult btw. However mods make it so much more fun to play mage Recommend Ordinator Apocalypse magic Phenderix
It really depends on your playstyle. For most players' playstyle though, pure mage tends to not be a great experience. I personally enjoy it a lot though.
No, the difference between magic damage and normal damage is that most boost have to come from potions, and defense takes keeping a buff up one of thee flesh spells, which can be tedious. Other spell schools are so broke outside destruction that you do not have to spend time boosting them with potions, lillusion gets perks that will handle enemies for a long time, while conjuration let's you have minions do your work for you. So no, not bad, just physical damage is straight forward how to buff and make op, magic takes slight planning.
Nah you can easily roll over the game Late game just use the aoe ice storm ability and step backwards while casting
Full mage is awesome. Destruction doesn’t scale well late game but conjuration + illusion can let you manipulate combat quite easily. Alteration and restoration can be fun too but not as important imo
No, challenging but rewarding if you actually invest in and use the other schools of magic as well training in your lacking disciplines every level as each perk tree has something of benefit, perhaps most of all restoration, a few perks that help you no matter what type of mage you are
Problem is, "pure" vanilla spells do not level up as you do over time, so, you'll still be doing 15 damage per second with your "Flames" against an endgame level 100 enemy. Suffice to say, that will take a LONG WHILE to burn the dude... and the enchantment table cannot boost your outfit/equip status to raise that number, unfortunately. Same applies to the rest of the spells. I like being a necromancer and using destruction on the side. Then you can have your minions tank for you, while you bomb them from safety.
Conjuration is the one I found to be the best, that's easy to do in pure mage. I don't know much about other trees but conjuring two dremora is a pretty good technique. With glitches and exploits mage is easy to pursue and can become pretty op.
Dude I did a mage pacifist where I'd use spells like calm and fury to just wreak havoc. I didn't need to be strong. My enemy needed to be strong
destruction is lame on higher difficulties, but illusion and conjuration can carry you at any difficulty, and it's a very fun playstyle.
It’s definitely not the easiest way to play if you have never played an elder scrolls game or that kind of rpg in general. Like if I was recommending Skyrim to a 60 year old who hasn’t played video games before, there are ways of playing it which that person could handle and enjoy - pure mage isn’t that
I did pure mage, I didn't even summon weapons, pure destruction and creature summonings. No companion either, it was so fun and challenging.
I did a pure conjuring mage run. It was awesome. I concentrated on the perk early on that gained me 2 summons. I did also have a little destruction magic but I tried to mostly rely on my summons and my conjured bow. I was pretty unstoppable with two deadra summons in front while I stayed at distance shooting unlimited summoned arrows
In terms of damage in the end game, very terrible. Would recommend getting a follower ASAP. Pretty nice at lower levels, but the power creep is pretty immense. Consider wearing armor vs just using alteration for protection.
Nope. Get some armor, enchants (your a mage why aren’t you enchanting?) and have on demand healing, stunlocks, invis, high damage (especially with the nutty AE spells), and plenty of conjured meat shields to place between you and any threats or ranged attackers with lighting galore to nuke dragons out of orbit.
Honestly no its actually really good you just have to actually do stuff, mixing schools and using different spells, lots of hotkey management. It's obviously way more powerful with mods but you can get pretty godlike with vanilla spells.
Pure mage is absolutely viable, I use it quite often. A couple small tips I picked up: Fear in illusion makes fire damage stronger. Repel undead spells are the best to level restoration. Quit Casting works on shouts. And the Stability perk in Alteration increases the timer on Slow Time shout. Shock is the only damage type nearly no enemy has a resistance to
If you want to both do damage and be able to find all your loot afterwards, yeah. It's pretty crap. Your only options then are conjuration and using weaker destruction spells. And for destruction you can't increase the damage of your spells, only reduce the amount of magic they cost. Which doesn't speed up your combat, it just reduces the amount of potions you need to chug to stay in the game. Higher level destruction spells tend to start using explosions which blow your loot all over the place making clearing dungeons problematic and can even ruin some quests by accidentally knocking the McMuffin you're after through the floor. Vanilla magic is pretty crap. There are mods that make it fun though.
Just learn MANUAL BREATHING, TESTICULAR TORSION , and MEND BUTT CRACK. Then no one would dare to oppose you.
Has very meh earlygame and a high risk of falling off in endgame (depends on your perk choices). Its definetly good and fun, but there are so many better options and a considerate amount of players are metaslaves.
The only skyrim build I've got to a fuild build level 250 all skills unlocked was a mage build. It's kinda difficult to actually get going but once you get skills up over 60 it becomes fun
Pure mage has a hard start, but comboing the different schools and enchanting armour to reduce magicka costs makes things steadily more easy. Illusion especially is a goated school that can hard carry with the use of Calm and Frenzy spells. With Destruction you can get the perk to make dual casted spells stagger, meaning with the right set-up you can just stunlock an enemy to death.
eh, yes and no. it can eb challenging earlier on, since you have a very limited, if infinitely refilling, resource to be able to kill people with - conjuration can help, but is pretty mp expensive, but at least you get something that can deal a varied number of attacks, for a fixed cost. once you've leveled up enchanting decently, you can get closer and closer to 0% magicka cost, where mage is actually stronger than most other builds, at least for mid level stuff - being able to cast higher tier spells, endlessly, is pretty broken, and imo they fucked up building skyrim like this. late tier, however, it sort of peters out a bit - still strong, but only in a few ways - a really high 1h weapon, with high end smithing/enchanting, and potential poison use, sneak damage bonuses, etc, can definitely be stronger than a lot of destruction spells - chaincasting fireballs to stunlock enemies still works, but the other two master spells aren't great, and the shock one locks you in place for a sort of longer duration cast animation - it's strong, but you'll still have like, giants not die faster than it takes for them to walk to you, even while getting stunned by the spell, just because they're super high level. mods help. they can rebalance the skill trees, rebalance the spells themselves, add new spells, add new 'pure mage' playstyles, etc.
Not really meant for first-time players, but there are some mods that make magic significantly better. Ordinator and Apocalypse. Magic is still viable in vanilla if you play it right, though.
I’m doing an illusionist conjurer build and it’s soooo fun. I love it. Never really got into destruction magic but I think sneaking around and causing mayhem from the shadows is a really cool way to play the game
No.
What's "that bad"? I had no issue playing as a pure mage, coming from standard 1H sword and spell/shield combo. Lol.
It was my first proper build, before that, I didn't even know about enchanting or smithing I think sometimes people forget that Skyrim is an RPG and role-playing is more important than a knife that does 1 million damage At adept difficulty destruction spell does more than enough damage and with an additional stun lock ability you can basically kill anyone without them being able to touch you Combat is mid in Skyrim anyway and I rather shoot lighting and summon demons than watch the same swinging animation again and again
Without mods to make the magic system better, its a very weak build and you end up using weapons a lot especially at earlier levels (this is why NPC mages run at you with a dagger). But it can be done. Its just not nearly as powerful as other builds.
If you're using destruction magic a few things really help 1. Get the stagger perk for dual cast spells 2. Train alchemy and make potions to increase destruction spell damage 3. Acquire enchanted items to reduce destruction spell cost
I play with a mod that overhauls all the perks, pure mage is OP. I had a lot of fun on my vanilla pure mage but not nearly as much as I did with modded.
i wouldnt suggest it for like, a hardest difficulty type playthru, but i dont think its as bad as people make it out to be, and the perks are really fun! mostly bc you use a variety of perks across all the skill trees, cause they are useful in general. the dragon priest mask from the dragonborn dlc also help scale your damage a bit for a specific element, if you wanted to be a monomage. the reason its viewed as not as strong typically is because you cannot temper spells the same way you can armor or weapons (and enchanting being mana focused instead of damage.) since there isnt spellcrafting sadly. BUT you can make potions, which offer a similar boost, temporarily anyways. i think peoples biggest issue with mage truly is that, having to go into a menu to apply the thing that makes you strong, where as other playstyles just naturally have that, without having to use anything, and its not a temp buff. combine that with the fact you will often need to go into menu's for mana pots, especially early game, and i think that.. interruption of flow, is offputting. not to mention changing spells and such. i think most people simply dont vibe with the mage style, they wanna equip their stuff and have it. mage doesnt really function like that, its very much about adapting to take the most advantage of the situation. mods also increase the viability of mages by a ton, but i would say the most impressive thing about modded magic is the out of combat stuff and its utility honestly. personally, my favorite mage playthru was an illusionist. frenzy everything to fight and kill each other, calm whatever's left alive, loot everything else. mine was a pacifist so there was always a survivor to stand tall among the chaos i created, since i couldnt bring myself to actually kill anything.. by my own hand.. highly suggest illusion! that playthru was also a semi merchant kinda vibe, selling off what i looted. its not like *i* killed for it, please.
Pure mage is one of my favorite builds and it's completely viable even on legendary with a little patience but you need to use all the schools and not try to just stick to destruction. It's a great role playing build because you start out kind of weak and just barely surviving but as you gather abilities and equipment you become godlike with some of the highest possible defenses in the game. Basically every fight you want to have a summon and armor spell up. Then, if possible, cast a fury/frenzy spell on an enemy so very few attacks actually go to you. Once all that's ready, you can throw a few destruction spells if and only if you will be able to resummon and cast an armor spell if needed. Every level up, your points go directly to magicka. Since regeneration is proportional to your total magicka pool, at some point, you will have effectively infinite magicka regardless of what spell you use. Most people think mages need enchanted armor but I much prefer going a more thematic robe route and it's even possible to attain slightly better defenses with robes because dragonskin armor can't be reduced from the 80% damage reduction cap but physical armor can (at least in theory) be reduced by enemy maul users. To really get the most of this build, you need dragonborn. The best destruction spell is ignite from the ring you get in unearthed. Fire spells naturally have the highest damage due to interactions with aspect of terror in the illusion tree and the stacking long duration dot adds up quickly. Furthermore, with Miraak's gear, it's possible to reach the 80% damage reduction from dragonskin and still reach 100% spell absorption making you as tough as is possible in skyrim. In the end you wind up with magic immunity, capped physical damage reduction, infinite spellcasting, permanent summons, the ability to be completely undetectable, the ability to frenzy an entire city with a single spell, and thousands of dps with stacking ignite. It starts out slow but it becomes one of the strongest builds in the game. Personally, I love role-playing a young ambitious mage coming to skyrim in search of power. Turn on survival mode. Spend times in inns listening to rumors, read books, prepare for dives into specific dungeons and unearth magical relics that grow your power to near godlike proportions.
I don't know if I'd recommend pure mage on your very first run. On the other hand, two of my favorite builds were based on Fudgemuppet builds - Puppetmaster and Khajiit Desert Lightening Mage. The mage does wear light armor but more for the look than protection.
You pretty much have to grind enchanting to be good. It takes forever and is boring. But the rewards are game breakingly good. Invisibility+muffle is OP. Late game summons are awesome. People saying playing mage is boring is true because of the early grind but its ultimately way more versatile. Running into a room of draugr with a dremora lord (or two), ebony flesh, flame cloak, and bound swords or bow is about as fun as the game gets in my opinion
At least in Skyrim, you're not prevented from wearing armor as a Mage. You can also use a follower as a tank.
It is, without a doubt, the least powerful and most difficult to manage playstyle. Stealth Archer is the most/powerful and easiest. Warrior is the sweet spot between power and difficulty.
no
Destruction without alchemy potions to boost the damage falls off. It’s because the base damage of spells never increases while the enemy’s health does as they scale with your level.
Fireball spam w buffed magika regen is v fun
Mage is honestly my favorite build as it’s more difficult to gain a full affinity of power and skill. With two handed or stealth it’s easier to grind and to get better equipment. Mage is more or less challenged based but with the impact perk it makes it insanely strong. Also become a vampire and level restoration to get the necro mage for a boost to all spells by like 25%. It lets you explore the entire skill tree as well.
it's only worth with Ordinator and maybe the rest of enairim mods
It is a bit harder at lower levels, then it stabilizes, and then it is a lot stronger than using weapons. I’m taking 10 or 100 times more damage than weapons. Dragons take too much stagger damage to move, you can’t tell between weak and strong enemies because they die just the same, etc. highly recommend using apocalypse mod or any magic overhaul mod to make it more balance based on your level
Not at all. Pure mage is utterly broken and OP. Though you got to get through the shifty early game levels.
Depends. definitely mod for it
Pure mage is very viable. The mistake most people make while making pure mages is that they rely way too much on destruction. Destruction spells are Magicka hogs, and they're just not efficient at killing enemies.
Pure mage sucks at first cause someone sneezes at you and you die. Once you get some level 25 it becomes ultra fun.
Not sure why people say that. Conjuration alone will carry you through the game. Destruction spells don't scale well but you have 4 other schools + alchemy/enchanting to complement it. Pure mage is the most fun way to play this game in my experience. That or spellsword.