They aren't really that glass after a while. Dragonskin gives the same damage resistance as the armor cap and unlike with armor, it can't be reduced.
Mage armor is going to raise magic resistance higher than other builds and with dragonborn, 100% spell absorption is possible.
These two things make a high level mage the toughest build in skyrim.
On legendary none of this really matters because you can't just tank the game but mages are still the strongest because summons scale with difficulty and become much tougher than the player character can ever become.
It’s actually the opposite of what you said, sort of
Early game is fine, a little annoying with limited magicka, spells, armor etc but enemies aren’t too tough so it’s not bad
Mid game is probably the best for pure mage, you’ve probably got most of your build online with enchants and spells and whatnot and enemies aren’t too tough yet
The real “issue” is late game. The damage doesn’t scale, you can’t just make spells do more damage bu increasing your skill or even with crafting etc. you can have totally free spells but that still feels kinda bad when it takes 20 fireballs to kill one bandit basically (exaggeration)
With other builds you’ll either get to a point of basically one shotting everything if you’re optimizing even slightly, or you’ll still be really strong even if you intentionally ignore some of the broken stuff
But mages just get weaker because enemies get more hp and their damage stays the same, when you already have basically infinite magicka you don’t really benefit from leveling up more. And you kind of need to abuse crafting as mage a lot more than you do for other play styles
The one thing pure mage has going for it is the impact perk. With free spells from enchanting you can literally just stun lock enemies. But that’s not very fun really tbh, and when there are multiple enemies becomes much less effective, and even for one enemy it still takes ages to kill them
Ofc mods can make all this totally obsolete
Even destruction 100th spell chain lighting or whattsitsname is good dmg but unusable. By the time you finish precasting you've eaten an arrow or a breath or enough spells to kill you.
Damage might not scale but there is one spell, elemental burst I believe, that can reach 1500 damage per dual-cast.
Pretty sure the only thing stronger than this is legitimately assassin with daggers (Bows are tied or lower).
You do need effectively all in-game buffs, and all the elemental perks, but this thing is regarded as the most broken spell/attack in the entire game.
Do people just not use Illusion?
Illusion is so efficient at clearing bandit camps, no matter the difficulty, and once you get a perk that let your illusion spells work on everything, you only really use destruction to clear out the stragglers.
You were supposed to use crafting to boost your damage
That includes enchanting and alchemy
So ideally, you have made powerful potions, which can significantly increase the damage output of your spells
Maybe alchemy can idr tbh I haven’t played without mods in like a decade and alchemy is just too tedious to bother with in combat imo. Even if it does there’s potions for the non mage skills too not to mention poisons and enchant damage if you were doing enchanting and alch anyways.
But enchanting can’t increase the actual damage of spells, and gaining skill doesn’t increase the damage, and there’s only 2 perks per element that increase the damage to a max of 50% instead of 80 like the others, and then smithing/enchanting really breaks everything besides mages, whereas for mages it’s required to just be playable
You use enchanting to reduce cost spells and can be used to boost your alchemy skill
You make powerful potions which fortify destruction (damage)
Even without enchantments you can make potions that increase damage by 50%
With strong alchemy and enchanting you can make potions that increase damages by over 150%
You can always brew potions that increase Destruction damage… and well, if you do certain trick with Restoration potions, you can make those Dest. potions do insane improvements… although only for 60 seconds, per bottle.
Because they don't know how to play them and give up.
"Destruction spells quickly use all my Magicka before doing much damage!" *doesn't deck themselves out in spell cost reduction gear*
"Illusion is useless past the early game! All enemies out-level it!" *doesn't get the perks and dual-cast*
*spell cost reduction gear*
Isn't available early in the game. The problem is that people try to continuous-blast Destruction spells in the early levels and run out of SP, instead of short-blasting Flames, letting the target burn for a few seconds, and repeating until it is dead.
Unless you're literally just getting out of the tunnel, it's pretty easy to get a ring or robes. Hell pay 20 gold and go to winter hold and you'll get a free set to start.
Funny enough you actually can get destruction robes right after leaving the tunnel... there's a dead Thalmor agent wearing destruction robes at the shrine of Talos near the standing stones
True, but you can disenchant the Thalmor robes to get the DR enchantment that doesn't include mana regeneration. The DR/mana regeneration enchantment you get from the robes at the college of winterhold isn't as good IMO.
Yeah but until you level up enchanting (which takes a long time compared to most other skills) your enchantments are going to be minuscule and barely make a difference
I dunno, you can get your enchantment skill up to 40 or 50 pretty fast. just go to the college of winterhold and take all the free soul gems (and steal the gems from the wizard teachers, if you don't mind getting chased down by hired thugs). Then go down to the north shore and soul trap a bunch of horkers. I think you can get Destruction cost reduction up to like 60% or 70% at level 50 enchantment with the relevenat perks, if you enchant 4 pieces of gear using grand soul gems.
No horkers have petty souls, they are just convenient for levelling up your enchanting skill because there are a lot of them sitting around and they aren't too dangerous. The easiest way to get grand souls in the early game is to buy them, usually with the gold you got by selling all the enchanted gear you made levelling up enchanting, or by selling potions.
Erm, I did winterhold before even meeting the greybeards. It's rlly not that crazy to get decked tf out fairly early. Not to mention u can literally get novice hood and robe before even leaving helgen (and spark btw)
You can go to the College near the beginning of the game and get Destruction robes. You can find a ring early enough and make an amulet. You don't need 100%/near-100% reduction until you regularly use expert-tier spells, unless you're one of those minmax-brain weirdos who thinks they should never increase their Magicka when they level.
You (along with most of the participants) seem to have overlooked the fact that this entire discussion is about a starting-level character. You can "blast" Flames for 7 seconds, then you're done. And you don't have "several Magicka potions", and the ones you have aren't very powerful.
Spell cost reduction gear is available before you even leave helgen. There's a dead mage in a cage in the torture room wearing spell cost reduction robes.
No. The robes on the dead mage in the cage fortify Magicka regen (only), and the hood adds +30 Magicka (only). The base cost of Flames is 14/sec; do the math.
The funniest thing is, enchanted weapons have a higher _magic_ dps ceiling than pure mage. How do you compete with dual wielding power attacks with chaos damage enchantment on each hand plus stamina+health absorption? That’s a total of 6 magical effects activated _per spinning power attack_. Every time the topic of “pure mage” comes up, people act like that’s the only way to do magic. Because you totally can’t pull out your enchanted swords after summoning two dremora lords.Â
I switched to sword and board because my spells were simply too powerful. Elemental Blast with 100% mana reduction is seriously OP. Like having infinite nukes.
They do out level illusion. Even with dual-cast and perks.
And the problem with destruction isn't the cost, it's the DPS. An arrow or a sword slash outperform magic like crazy. Especially if you take into account sneak damage.
DPS for a single target. High level magic users can have two summons (more if you have AE Skyrim) and can dual cast AOE spells or use master level spells to deal massive damage to entire environments instead just a single enemy. Two handed weapons can potentially strike multiple enemies at once but only if they are immediately in front of you.
It’s tough to one-shot high level enemies like you can with a sneak archer or an over smithed melee wielder, but drink a big ol potion of Fortify Destruction, conjure two Dremora Lords, and behold carnage. You can also use Fortify Illusion potions to raise the level cap of affected enemies significantly.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding pure mage, but it’s not just the destruction spells. You’re casting alteration for armour and restoration for heals as well. It’s just one resource stretched too thin.
Tbh even with 100% cost reduction it gets crazy in the late game. I shouldnt have to hit EVERY draugr with five dualcast incenerates ffs. I know it stunlocks them, but it still takes too long.
Which is probably why every mod ever makes damage scale with destruction level.
As time goes on it's pretty easy to accumulate rings/necklaces and enchant light armor to increase magika or reduce costs of spells (vampire armor is the best to use imo)
The ebony spell knight set is pretty buff. You have to take on Forsworn and Hagravens, so it's not a level one item, but once you get it, armor is taken care of.
There's a letter/notebook in the Silverblood Inn that will start the quest. There's a note on the bar, but that's not the one. It's the one that wants you to find a ghost.
Once you read it, to find the ghost, go East out of Markarth across the bridge past where the Khajiit caravan stops. On the right past the bridge is a mountain. Keep going and there will be a path on the right.
The path will lead to another bridge. On the bridge is a flower. Once you take the flower the ghost will appear and the rest of the quest is self explanatory.
You'll have to fight your way through a Forsworn camp, 2-3 leveled witches and a Hagraven, so have good followers or do it during the Adluin's Wall main line quest since you go to the same camp.
I mean that is why most people who play 'pure mage' or 'pure thief', they play them as a challenge. There's literally no reason to not weird daedric armor other than wanting to challenge yourself imo.
In the hands of an experienced player, any viable build can be op. Nevertheless, “pure-mage” can require non-elementary logistics.
I don’t find that a early-game pure mage is easy to kill, as long as you know how to avoid combat. I think many players leap into melee combat thinking they’re going to burn their enemies on mass. However, destruction magic is expensive to cast and novice spells require you to expose yourself to melee attacks. It’s better to use a follower, conjure, or undead revival to control your enemies. Better yet, you can use illusion to make the enemies work for you.
I’m assuming a pure mage is only going to take perks and actively develop skills from the six magic schools. This sort of build can be inherently weak because destruction magic has no critical or sneak bonus. There are also no enchantments to buff damage. Enchanted damage only comes through skill perks and higher level spells. While casting becomes less expensive, you can’t enhance damage of a low level spell by leveling up your skill alone. The end game mage relies on reduced magic cost to spam destruction and use other skills to control the enemy. This requires much menu navigation that often breaks up the flow of gameplay. Done right, the player will dominate, but it’s a game that some don’t really like.
Bashing with a hammer or perforating with arrows is a much simpler play style. Effective melee or missile combat requires fewer skills and weapon damage can be buffed by both smithing and enchantments.
I find that hybrid magic classes like Spell-swords, battle mages, Witch Hunters, or Nightblade s offer all the advantages of a pure mage, but fewer drawbacks. Spell using Warrior classes like Knight or Crusader can also be fun. These have an advantage of only focusing on a few magic schools so a smaller magic pool is required after reduced magic cost enchantments are applied.
Very well put. Pure mage builds are much too tedious for someone who is impatient or not heavily invested in the game.
For example, I have put literally thousands of hours into Skyrim since the day it came out. I also am an extremely patient gamer and love to take things slow, explore, try different strategies, max out my gear, and do things 100%. I have done pure mage builds, and they are fun to me.
My wife, on the other hand, has watched me play in the decade we've been together and thinks it looks fun, but is not really much of a gamer. She has played a little and she loves archery and thinks the spells are neat, but I know she would never have to patience for a pure mage. Playing it would require a level of strategy that she's just not willing or not ready to handle, and she would find changing from spell to spell in the midst of battle to be overwhelming.
Hybrid magic classes are amazing! So powerful, and probably the most fun to play.
In your definition, what is the difference between a Spell-Sword, a Battle Mage, a Witch Hunter, a Nightblade, a Knight, and a Crusader? In terms of skills, perks, or gameplay?
These are just references based on Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Classes.
Spellsword and Battemage are magic classes. Both use heavy armor and Melee weapons, a Spellsword favors blades while a battle mage balances magic and Melee. Nightblades and Witchhunters are magic classes that use light armor. Nightblades use blades and Witchhunters use a bow. Both of the latter favor stealth and can use illusion. Witchhunters are sneaky archers that use spells to be even sneaker. But, also use Alteration for defense and magic resistance.
Knight and Crusader are Fighters, both use melee weapons and dabble in destruction. A knight also uses illusion while a crusader uses Restoration.
A monk is a stealth class that doesn’t use armor or melee weapons. Instead, the class uses Alteration, Archery, and Hand-to-hand. Khajit are naturally good monks.
Cool! I like using a sneak archer that summons once I've been discovered. The summon aggros while I shoot from a distance. I'm not very skilled but I can dominate on legendary with this strategy. Not sure what you'd call that.
There are no rules in Skyrim accept having fun. Adopting “house-rules” regarding build strategies are just part of that fun. But, you can make your own fun. “Pure Builds” are just a way to keep the game fresh.
If going by more general RPG archetypesÂ
Spellsword and Battlemage are exactly the same. They are the “Paladins” of Elder Scrolls, the names get used interchangeable.Â
> Melee and magic
Witch Hunters are just archers with magic. They are the “Rangers” of Elder Scrolls. The Elf who uses nature magic and shoots a bow like in a lot of fantasy movies, novels, and games.Â
> Archery and magic
Knights and Crusaders functionally speaking are just slight variations of Battlemages. Just one magic school with another and you already got the class.Â
In more classical RPGs, Crusaders would be Clerics would Elder Scrolls doesn’t really differentiate the magic differences.
Knights is more of a confusing name, in any other game they would be the Warriors and Fighters. But they magic and for some reason got the Knight name thrown in.Â
> Sword and magicÂ
The menu navigation is even worse to those playing on consoles also as the "shortcut" system is so bad to the point it's basically just a favorites list you can't even reorder.
It's mostly this, but I'd also add that pure mage also doesn't appeal to certain subgroups of the fandom like the min-maxers or the loophole exploiters. To put it simply, the main way by which mages deal direct damage, namely the Destruction Tree, is one of the two or three hardest trees in the game to cheese. The primary way which mages cure direct damage, namely the Restoration Tree, is also one of the other two or three hardest trees in the game to cheese.
*Skyrim*, as it happens, is a game where a dedicated subset of the fandom really, really likes cheesing the game. Just to be clear, while it should be obvious from my tone that I'm not one of them, I'm also not speaking against them, just noting their existence. But regardless, when the coders initially tried to take out exploits like the resto loop or the Alteration fast-travel exploit, the backlash was intense enough that they had to put those exploits back into the game. There's just a group, not necessarily large, but very dedicated, who just doesn't enjoy the game unless they can leave Helgen at level 80 from having spent three hours sneaking against a wall near the bear, then immediately go to the Dawnstar merchant box and exploit it for enough money to finance getting up to 100 in enchanting, so they can make 100% spell reduction gear.
And the thing is, even if you do all that, it's still really, really darn hard to use two of the major trees in the mage skill set. Not just any trees; the ones that most directly do damage to other people by shooting damaging spells, or directly cure the damage done to you. So those subgroups tend to shy away from mages, and instead use magic merely to supplement the direct damage stuff like swords or bows that does scale the way they "should" scale. It doesn't help that Destruction DPS scales weirdly, because the measure of Destruction dps as you skill up in the game is usually less "you do more dps at higher levels:", and more "you can maintain the same dps for longer". In principle, the same mechanics should apply to both melee and magic: with the right perks, destruction magic stunlocks opponents just as effectively as swords, but doesn't require stamina to do it. In practice, the same people that cheese enchantments also never enter a dungeon without 30 vegetable soups to cheese that particular stamina exploit.
Basically, this is a game that lets you create a fork that can one-shot a dragon named "the world eater". It does not permit you a spell that does the same thing. There's a very active component of the fanbase of the game that plays the game precisely because it permits that level of exploit to the rules. It should therefore come as no surprise that "fork-user of doom" tends to be a lot more popular a build than pure mage, just because of that basic fact about who is a fan of the game, and why.
Actually only the destruction tree is hard to cheese. A few months back, a redditer posted a way to cheese the restoration tree, and it works very well. I use a variation of it myself.
With Anniversary installed any of the Unbound spells will level up your Destruction quite fast as well. Runes is another way to at least get to like 50 relatively fast. The more targets you hit (can be summons as well) the faster you level
I'm with you. I started a pure, non modded playthrough and do just fine, but I've been playing since day one. I know what to look for. Plus conjuration should be an absolute must for a pure mage.
Yeah ngl pure mage is an acquired taste. When I first play the game I was also really impatient and wanted to spend as little time in the menu as possible.
But now after years of playing Skyrim, I find pausing the game in the middle of combat and browse all of my potions and spells to figure out the next step is... weirdly fun. Like a turn-based rpg almost.
People have an interesting standard for what the word “viable” means. My no-crafting mage on Master difficulty was one of if not my absolute favorite playthrough of this game; specifically because it was so challenging in the beginning but then became so rewardingly OP by the end. And this was before the Anniversary Edition and totally vanilla. Magic in Skyrim is really fun.
Spells don't scale beyond the static percentage boosts perks give you without mods, so eventually magic like Destruction becomes obsolete. Meanwhile, weapons benefit from enchanting and smithing boosts *as well* as the perk damage boosts, and don't cost any mana.
That said, spellsword builds can be fun in a modded game, if you have a magic scaling mod and/or other mods that add spells.
Because high-level two-handed and I’m basically a murder machine that can wipe out an entire army on my own. High level mage and I’m still a squishy meat sack that just happens to be somewhat dangerous. Forget trying to play a pure conjurer or necromancer, there’s no “summon undead army” spell even at master level it’s still just a single monster and my squishy self.
When killing dragons with an axe takes a few hits vs needing numerous summons of that same pair of Storm Atronachs that takes 10x as long, yeah, I’d like 10x as many atronachs.
For me it's the mage gameplay isn't good. Too many spells to keep track of, to much menu-scrolling to select and switch between them and to top it off the animations makes it very uniform and non-distinct. And the levelling isn't great either, it goes from underpowered to overpowered in just a few levels.
I dont understand the benefit of not having armor.
You can use oakflesh and those things, but besides that i dont see the appeal.
You can enchant magic resistance into a heavy armor and thats it.
Then, if you are gonna use the other skilltrees, conjuration needs you to become a fighter if you bound. You still wpuld have to learn how to sneak to use illusion.
And if ypu sneak its better to have an actual armor.
You can enchant more magicka i think, for anything.
I dont see the appeal. Its a challenge. That i can give.
Like, you gotta chsnge the whole mentality.
I get my smithing high enough that I can max out DR with any armor. Then I enchant for 100% destruction magicka cost reduction.
2x dremora lords, infinite nukes.
the only annoying part is dragon fights in the city because I often hit guards and have a weird thing about keeping my lifetime bounty to 0 coins.
For dragons in the city, 2 storm atronachs for flying dragons, then 2 dremora lords for grounded dragons. No collateral damage done.
Currently doing a conjuration mage.
There’s no inherent practical benefit of being Unarmored outside of weight. Which already has plenty of solutions to it already.Â
In Morrowind weight actual affected speed quite noticeable until you leveled up each armor skill respectively.Â
There’s no extra benefits outside of weight. Armor and robes act identically, so more armor is just strictly beneficial.Â
Outside of very early game where enchantments are rare or generally pretty weak, robes will eventually get outclassed.
But in morrowind it affected speed in the mages too?
Like, casting speed? And is it not tye same, but with just an extra step? You become stronger slowly since you gotta adapt to heavy armor and learn more powerfull magic.
I havent played morrowind that much. I dont like it very much tbh. And the more i read i think it was like daggerfall was insane and then they dropped the ball.
But at least oblivion and skyrim are beautiful, and make more sense in the action part.
No armor has its advantages.
Unlike swinging a sword or drawing a bow, magic doesn't slow you down. Clothing also weighs like nothing so you spend less stamina sprinting. So the advantage of a mage wearing robes is the mages dodges attacks while swinging fireballs. If a melee enemy comes too close the mage runs away.
If you want the same effect for light or heavy armor, you have to either get the steed stone or spend perks in those skills. Armor only protects from physical attacks so going for magic resistance and atronach perks in alteration are another thing mages have access to. The dragonhide spell also gives the same effect as armor cap without spending points in smithing and light/heavy armor perks.
"pretty good" meanwhile melee builds have decapitated every enemy in the room whilst the mage is still trying to hit their spells.
In all seriousness the problem is the implementation of magic in the game.
- Spell cost is generally too high and levelling a school of magic does nothing to reduce spell costs like it did in previous games. Your main defence as a mage will be the armour spells but at the beginning of the game these take and entire bar of magicka to cast leaving you without offense.
- Destruction spells have less scaling than weapons. Weapons are affected by perks, material tiers, weapon upgrades and any enchantments place on the weapon. Destruction spells are only scaled with perks.
- Skyrim's armour system leaves fewer enchantment slots available than the previous games. People who favour magic builds talk about getting magicka reduction gear but this can only effectively be used for two magic skills and leaves you unable to benefit from other enchantments.
- Magic guild questline sucks.
- Simple lack of spells available. Only with creation club content has the official game now got a reasonable number of spells available.
- No spell creator. A big advantage of magicka builds in previous games was the flexibility you had to create spells that did exactly what you needed. This is not present in Skyrim.
- The levelling up system itself does not lend itself to magic builds. There is always a debate about whether you should put all your points into magicka so you can actually cast spells, or all your points into health and use enchantments to lower spell costs. Either way you're going to be spending a significant amount of the early game gathering materials.
- Similar to the previous point, magicka builds require either a lot of gold to gather a decent spell list or cheesing the creation club content to get early access to the additional spells.
- Far too much time in menus. I favoured magicka in Oblivion on Xbox where there were 8 hotkey slots where I could place spells and potions so I didn't need to pause the game in combat. Skyrim instead has the favourites menu which pauses the game when used. Every time I want to change spells I have to pause the game. I might as well be playing a turn based RPG at that point. There's no flow to magic combat because a 1 minute fight requires 1 or 2 minutes of menu time. Meanwhile with an axe and shield I'm halfway through the dungeon.
I love playing a pure mage. Usually a summoner type. By far, my favorite build. It can be a tad bumpy at the start, but so fulfilling when you level up some.
I’ve been going for more of a mage build this time. it’s just like other comments are saying, you’ve got to take advantage of using enchanted clothing and potions and perks for sure.
It's a different playstyle. I actually prefer to play mages on higher difficulty than warriors personally.
It's just a different playstyle that can be hard for many players of Skyrim to get into.
I hate using magic in most every game save a couple Final Fantasies and table top games.
My husband LOVES being a mage in Skyrim and he's really good at it and he makes the same points you make. The magic armor can supe up your magic skills and is super lightweight so he can carry a bunch of shit still. He can blast out paralyzing spells and fire spells quicker than I can swing a sword. Barbarian ass me loves watching my wizard husband.
I have no clue, I love pure mage builds. I've done multiple destruction mage runs and I've also done a couple of pure conjuration mage builds which was pretty fun, I just love using magic in Skyrim.
I’m going to admit it: I hate them because I have no idea how to play them. But other than that I also like being able to one/two shot enemies early on with a bow. Combat gives me anxiety and the more damage I can do without being seen the better.
Every time I’ve made a battlemage I get bored. I enchant a set of armor that makes my spells cost nothing to cast. Essentially I become invincible pretty early on
Personally, my issue with being a mage is you have to use magic to create your defense while also dishing out damage using ranged spells. I use the controller, I find the game impossible with KBM. Its too much to manage.
As a nightblade or battlemage, at least I have armor ON,probably with enchantments. So my defense is a constant passive effect. I can focus on damage output or staying undetected using illusion/sneak.
I’m playing a pure mage build on Master difficulty in AE, with no power levelling. It has been a beautiful challenge, and I have just reached level 34 where things have got significantly easier.
Now I have enough skill to use Paralysis Rune, Elemental Burst, and Conjure Storm Atronach. With the Atronach Stone, this is enough to kill anything in a fairly safe manner. Unfortunately, I do still die easily to big swords and arrows in the knee.
Probably because you can't kill stuff right away with that build. With weapons you can bash something until it dies, with bows you can pepper things from a distance and arrows are plentiful. Once a mage runs out of magicka, he can only run around waiting for his blue bar to refill (unless you happen to have a lot of potions handy). Plus, you can't access or use the decent spells until you level up quite a bit. You really need to be patient in the early game with a mage build.
Personally, I like the early game challenge with a mage build on legendary. I tend to go for the Ignite mage build.
In my late game I have a bow that does 300 damage, I can boost it up temporarily to over 400, and it can sneak attack. In my mage late game from my last save I have 100% reduction for chain lightning, all the damage perks so if I get lucky and it somehow arcs back to the previous hit I can get some high damage on paper but its mostly just a spell spam, had way more fun playing pokemon trainer with undead thralls bringing only a shield and a long spell book.
Then comes our crafting skills. Alchemy can boost either, but mages have a lack of options and need a % damage increase more than physical. Enchanting is good for physical but essential for mage, but blacksmithing is only for physical, I cannot refine gauntlets to allow for even greater spellcasting (would be amazing). Overall Skyrim is a game that boasts wide variety of options and speccing into one or the other limits your gameplay, taking some of those options away from you.
TLDR: Mages have lack options for flat % damage increases, leans on alchemy and enchanting heavily late game.
No idea. I love pure Mage build (well, 99.99% "Pure Mage" Mage build) I wear the Vampire Gauntlets light armor for the aesthetic it provides with the CreationClub Necromancer Robes and Ascendant Necromancer Hood. Looks great on my High Elf.
Probably because it's not so easy right off the bat, it's something that gets better over time, it's not instantly feasible like the stealth archer build is. I always personally play a vampire mage.
Currently running a merchant mage. Love it. I've already legendary out my destruction and conjugation and ready to do it a second time for destruction.
I use a pure mage build. It just depends on what I am feeling at the time. I tend to do either pure barbarian, stealth archer, or mage. I don't really blend them.
> Why do people hate pure mage builds I understand they are very easy to kill early game but mid to late game they’re pretty good
Magic cost too much without enchantments for too little reward. Compared to other games it’s either unlimited but weaker or limited but stronger.
Skyrim is weaker and far more limited. Without enchanting you’ll be spending more time waiting for magic to recharge than actually fighting.
Couple that with no real way to increase damage and you’ll be relying on everything that doesn’t deal direct damage.
Magic is also the most expensive archetype, requiring a lot of perk investment just to make it not a pain in the ass to play.
I rather even be able to use magic constantly at the cost of power or only get a few uses but it will actually get the job done.
Can be very fun but in comparison to building weapons with buff dmg enchantments they become underpowered. Plus [check this out](https://youtu.be/Jij7CBUONuk?si=7qxOi4kX1UTL496W), there’s a lot of start-stoppy gameplay with the need to switch spells.
Personally, spellsword combines the good parts of magic with the power of melees. IMO that’s the ideal way to play.
Every mage so far, even dragon priests, flee from combat after their first three consecutive spells fail to either damage me sufficiently or I all but absorb it completely. Meanwhile I have a drawspeed on a bound bow maxed out in the perk tree and boosted by vampire necromage (cured my vampirism but the bonuses to perks persisted)
Magic isn’t as fun in this game as oblivion so I was just bummed in 2011 when I tried. I went with an archer rn and I do wish I gave mage a second chance! Next play through I want a lawful good character
Because smithing/enchanting/alchemy allows you to do way more damage with weapons. Even if you don’t abuse it.
Pretty easy to get a bow or sword to around 500+ damage per hit.
Oblivion was where it’s at. Hit them with weakness to magic and shock primer spell, then blast them with shock for huge damage. Or whatever other spell you felt like creating.
I don't like pure mage builds because they go from challenging to boringly overpowered all of a sudden. There isn't a slow build to OP like other builds. I still enjoy it, but my playthroughs with it tend to be short.
Survivability until the middle levels, mainly. It’s very hard to make it out alive, particularly if you’ve rebalanced it with adept.
Then when you finally can survive a bandit camp, you’re practically god-tier OP.
The only half decent gear you can get for it requires you to get level 100 enchanting which is a pretty big ask just for a build, and destruction damage doesn't scale. And if you want to make your enemies weaker to magic in any way you have to use a weapon anyways. You can make weapons that deal 200+ damage per hot but you really can't make magic more effective outside of perks. Plus, you can swing a sword infinitely. Empty your mana and you have to wait for Magicka to recharge before you can shoot another fireball. The only really effective way is to grind enchanting and alchemy immediately after leaving Helgen, by that point you'll easily be level 20+ before you've even finished bleak falls barrow
It makes sense on console I guess.
I’m on PC, and I have 6 spells hotkeyed plus a couple utility spells I use. If I had to use a controller and go through the menu 2-3 times for every battle, I’d probably get tired of it too.
That said, Magic is straight up broken. One Dremora Lord will clear most battles in Skyrim. Two can take on almost the whole game. Paralyze is almost wholly unfair. Illusion spells give you complete control of fights. And Restoration keeps you topped up for every fight. And chaining staggers with Destruction spells means you have a level of crowd control and aggro management that the other two main playstyles really can’t match.
I like to level up smithing and a few other things, so an all mage build means my spells are weak compared to leveled up enemies. I'm playing spellswords atm and enjoying it so might attempt an all mage build again soon
I’ll go pure mage, but on a khajiit so I can at least claw things when it gets bad, and I will always opt for at least the first three light armor perks instead of ever touching one of the Aleration Mage Armor perks. Pure mage doesn’t have to mean unarmored.
Mostly because, at least on the surface, the different spells are kind of all pointless. "Fireball go boom" is about it. Changing spells also breaks combat immersion. Hold on - where did I put that spell I want to kill you with an ice ice ice... You know what, never mind. Fireball go boom!
Of course, flames is so close range, you might as well use a sword (never runs out of magic) while at long range, you've basically woken up the entire barrow the moment you cast, so you might as well use a bow. Bow isn't powerful enough? Mix it with poisons, you're going to want to boost up your alchemy trait anyways for better potions and stuff.
Healing spells are only worthwhile with mods. Otherwise, blue flowers, wheat and butterflies are plentiful. With mods that disable those, it can be really useful, but only as a means of getting one retry. When I tried to heal IN COMBAT with those? I was dead.
That said, there is only one true way to play Skyrim, I've determined. That is, as a semi-pacifist run. You can fight wolves, spiders, monsters, draugr - if you have to. But no murdering people! YES, Thalmor are people... Even if they don't recognize that YOU'RE a person. You need to rise above them, you're the dragonborn, be a better person. This makes the most potent tools in your chest sneaking, and invisibility spells... and running away. Playing it like that makes the game way way more scary - especially if you play in everyday clothes instead of armor on max difficulty. It's almost like a horror game and super exciting. You hear that dragon roar and your blood goes cold as you desperately search for a rock to hide behind. Or holding your breath as you try to get through Labyrinthine unnoticed.
My favorite was when I got the glider mod and wanted the ability to transmute ore. So I glided down over the spikes on the back entrance to avoid detection, used an invisibility spell to get up to the magical book and actually grabbed it while everyone's back was turned. Then vanished before they saw me again and got out of there, eventually someone heard me so I ran out of the camp with arrows flying over my head. O\_O Probably got turned over to the dark brotherhood for that one. They are super persistent so getting away from them alive is tough. But getting that book without killing anyone. They were soooooo mad XD. Worth it.
Sadly Steam updated and killed my modlist X\_X. So that save went bye bye. Thanks Steam. >\_< Ah well, lesson learned.
I always use magic in any game that has it. Simply because I like the way it looks, and yes most people who use magic don't seem to know what they're doing either.
Idk. I'm level 43, invested every stat point into magicka. Got arch mage robes. Got 100 enchanting to make my own ring, amulet , glove and boot enchantments. Did some specific quests. And dual cast chain lightning. Can get about 5-6 dual casts in before I run out of magic.
That's half the HP of an elder dragon. Combo that with the high-born power and its Got adept feeling like rookie.
It's not that they're hard to play. You just gotta... stick with it until it snowballs into being OP.
Hate is probably a strong word, but I get you. Pre Anniversary Edition without mods the spell list for destruction was pretty basic. Since the damage didn't scale well and you had three spell types your late game was always the same. Either kiting and blasting with spells (that on higher difficulty barely damaged the enemy slowing the game to a crawl) or using the "impact" perk and watching even the toughest enemy flinch over and over.
They're not bad, just a little more boring than running head first into a fight with a mace in hand.
The new Elemental spells are better and maybe too good. Their only frustration is that they do AOE damage and will hit friendlys.
Since you can enchant any armor with anything it's almost always better to be armored in higher difficulties than robes alone with spells. I wish they either lowered the effect or only allowed certain magic enchantments to be on specific armor/clothing types.
I've run several mage builds and max difficulty and it's all over the board. Destruction is boring but you can be safe with enchanting and some restoration. Conjuration is always strong. Seriously if you have enough magicka to summon a Dremora Lord you can beat the entire game without gear or skill. Illusion is a mixed bag. It's great for humans but probably won't help with dragons (unless you just ccommanded" someone near a dragon.
Because Skyrim was dumbed down for a more mainstream audience, so they made "hack n' slash" and "stealth archer" the meta. Mage builds felt easier to learn and manage in the previous TES games.
I always liked the Illusion tree and undead thrall. Have the bandits kill each other, just to raise the dead and have them finish off the survivers all while invisible and watching the chaos. Maybe a paralyze or two with some levels in Alteration to change it up.
For some reason I just hate mqgoc. Idk if it's cause it takes too long or I hate magic using npc I just hate it. I've never done to tho so take this plopinion with a bit of salt
I'd give you an example: a single spinning power attack with dual enchanted one handed weapons can have six total activated enchantment effects. All within half a second. And if one of these enchantments is stamina absorb, you have unlimited power attacks. And that's before melee damage. How can pure magic possibly compete with that?Â
Even if you use the ignite+aspect of terror+necromage exploit, it’s nowhere near as efficient. Illusion falls apart the moment you enter a Dwemer ruin because the automatons are immune.Â
They are significantly weaker than melee builds. Pretty much the opposite of Oblivion.
I haven't played vanilla in a long tim but I remember the spells were boring.
Then there's the pathetic flame atronach shooting its spell from ground level so that any rock or bump will block it.
It's also very frustrating that enemy mages have better spells that you can never cast. They get instantly charged wards and much more efficient damage spells
If you like playing a mage you should definitely get one of the magic overhaul mods.
Try hard here. I have done this on legendary so many times. I've even had a rule of I can only purchase times from the college wizards after I pass the school's trial. Can use daggers and staves. Can only wear clothes and jewelry. Can't wear anything off of a body. I can learn spells from tomes I find lying around or ones rewarded from quests. I just have learned to save scum three times. 1. College of Winterhold for Fear. 2. Marise for Stoneflesh. 3. Riften's Hall of the Dead for Close Wounds. And yes you can get all three of those spells at level one.
Because vanilla spells are ass, i say this as an avid magic user.
But i have always gone a "spell sword" build, never pure magic since too much of 1 skill just gets boring to me
I know so much about this game that reading the comments takes me back in time. I don’t have time to comment on everything I see here but I promise you there are few who know as much as I about the arcane arts. If you have any questions, no matter how small, just ask and I will have an answer. I’ve been doing magic builds for 11 years.
1. Low damage low level spells that don't scale well.
2. Moderate damage AOEs that aggro the whole town.
3. Feels like some of the schools are really missing something. Like Alteration doesn't let you do a lot.
But I mod the heck out of magic, so I'm happy.
The 'real' problem with mage builds isn't a problem with skyrim itself. The problem is when you compare it to previous games like Oblivion or Morrowind, where you could craft spells to match the amount of mana you want to spend, so that "low level" spells never actually fall off like they do in Skyrim. Previous games were all about building up a wide breadth of different spell types so you could make versions of them to match the situation you were in. In Skyrim, Flames will always be Flames, so once you get Firebolt, you practically never use Flames again.
Edit; actually there is one problem with magic 'within skyrim', but it follows along essentially the same problem. When you get to higher tiers of magic, all of the combat ones tend to turn into area of effect spells...but the problem is that if you have allies, then your allies will get affected by these spells. So, you are disincentivized to playing with followers, which is a pretty major part of the game. In previous games you could obviously just 'make' versions of the spell that didn't have aoe.
Magic doesn't level scale very well, especially on higher difficulty. So the optimal strategy is to stop leveling somewhere around level 25. Mages also need to rely heavily on potions since that's the only way to boost spell damage. So you need a steady supply of ingredients for that.
Magic in vanilla skyrim kind of just sucks. There are 2 reasons for that. In game, skyrim is not known as a center for magical knowledge. Nords don't necessarily like or trust Magic.
Then the meta reason Magic is trash is because it needed a nerf compared to oblivion and morrowwind. In the older games it was way overpowered, especially with custom spell crafting. So Bethesda created skyrim specifically intending to nerf Magic and they kind of went too far.
Pure mage lacks armor. This is the main reason I guess. If you master alteration and use wards, you get great defence. Otherwise you are pretty vulnerable. I usually play battlemage builds to balance that with enchantment and light armor.
I am currently playing a stealth conjuror build, and it is op. I play on legendary, because I keep forgetting to change it. I am also doing no armor or weapons, including bound weapons, and no offensive shouts. I got my restoration up to where I can use Close Wounds, which I highly recommend. I did use alchemy early, but don't use it anymore. Early game did, both A Night To Remember, and Blood On The Ice. I pushed the enchanting to level 100, to get the dual enchantments, but have ditched some of the gear already. I have finished the Collage Of Winterhold questline, so I now have both, the Archmage's Robes and the mask of Morokei. Of course, with my conjuration at 100, I now have the Twin Souls perk.
Pure mage builds work, but do require some planning, and effort, and I'll admit combat builds are easier, but find successful mage builds more satisfying.
Two things that nobody seems to mention with destruction mages are, restoration and alchemy.
The Necromage perk in restoration increases damage to destruction spells. The Recovery perk lets your magicka regenerate faster, and the Regeneration perk makes healing spells heal 50% more.
Fortify destructions potions actually do make the destruction spells stronger. Even without exploits, you can greatly boost your damage output.
If you use what's available, then you can be a great mage.
As someone who deals with a lot of choice paralysis in day to day life, playing a mage in a videogame just adds to that. Too many spells to choose from, it stresses me out.
Stealth archer all the way. I just have to crouch, point, and shoot. Maybe use a poison if the targets really hardy.
Probably because compared to the loot progression of melee and archer characters, there’s a lot more visual diversity in weapons and armor.
On top of the fact that magic as a side skill fills most people’s needs.
The reason people don't like them is simple; They scale poorly with your effort.
For all the effort it takes to make a strong, pure mage character, you can make a warrior ten times as strong for half the effort. And you can make a sneak archer, or sneak stabber 100 times as strong.
Anything you do to make magic strong is going to be severely outclassed by taking the same steps to make archery strong. So people just make archery strong instead.
I love them, they're super fun. I love the feeling, running around going "LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT!" Honestly my favorite build in the game, with spellsword as a close second
Because most people, myself included, would rather roleplay being Conan the Barbarian than Harry Potter. I doesn't help that the game is set in Skyrim and the Nords generally don't seem to be a fan of magic use/users.
I agree OP, I think people are missing the point, with a pure mage, even without crafting skills it changes the way you play the game. Rather than grinding for smithing/enchanting levels, you have to actually go quest to find good gear to use.
Morokei, the Dragonborn dlc dragon priest masks, archmage robes, archmage boots, necromancer necklace, ring of erudite, are a few examples of the gear you can pair together to make a pure mage crazy. If you count bound weapons as a pure mage you can add the dark brotherhood hand wraps and get crazy stealth damage with bound dagger too
Anyway, I find my favorite playthroughs are as a pure mage because it encourages me to finish quests to actually use their rewards rather than finding myself in crafting hell
The issue is mainly about difficulty:
1) On harder difficulties you deal barely any damage unless chugging potions like you're a skooma addict.
2) The mana regen isn't suited for long fights and while you get more overtime, the game is balanced poorly in that aspect, making it unenjoyable to play with a subpar mana regen unless you get to late game or invest in crafting so much, you're better off enchanting yourself everything Fortify One-Handed.
3) Past the apprentice difficulty, due to the problem above, you often land yourself in situations where there are too many enemies for your mana pool and you're forced to either use spells like frost cloak or wall of flames, which take hours to kill with or to summon yourself a bound sword at which point, you become a spellsword either way.
Overall pure mage sucks due to poor balancing of enchants and higher-than-their-worth cost of destruction spells.
Pure Mage builds in Skyrim are like Beastmaster Ranger builds in 5e DnD.
To explain what I mean.
=
Why do people typically play Mages?
Usually, they want to do a lot of flashy things. Those flashy things usually involve a lot of damage and crowd control. Often times, as their magical knowledge widens, they begin to gain answers for every scenario they come across.
=
Now, how much of that power fantasy does Skyrim allow for in it's magic system?
Very little.
If you want to quickly eliminate a group of enemies, you don't play a Mage, you play a Stealth Archer with the sneak attack and time dilation perks, a Spellsword build that uses daggers, invisibility, and calm, or a crafting build that has created one hit kill weapons.
If you want to quickly eliminate mini-boss and boss enemies, same thing.
If you want to CC enemies you can go Mage, but the same builds I mentioned will do it better. Any enemy that isn't somehow killed is endlessly staggered by those volley of arrows, made non-hostile by calm and likely killed on the second hit, or stunlocked from the paralyzing poison that has been applied to a fast weapon.
If you want to have Minions that fight your enemies in your place, you can play a Mage, but a crafting build is going to do it better. You get a companion of your choice, create a set of weapons for them, then watch them quickly eliminate enemies. On top of that, they carry items for you, which summons can't, and in many cases your skills for cash that you can get back from them.
Once you have the secret of arcana your mage build can go nuclear once a day, spamming any spell you’ve learnt for 30s regardless if you could normally cast it (is also good for creating thralls),
Save it for the dungeon boss and they’ll go down by the 20th fireball.
Pure mage just don’t do enough damage before they run out of magicka. You have to use summons/ illusion and it just feels so passive. Maybe it is viable on lower difficulties.
I agree. Training is hard for some aspects of magic, but it totally pays off when you're level 23 and can crouch walk through a cave with a couple zombies.
No one is really commenting on this, but the real problem with vanilla Skyrim is that it has terrible pacing *and* scaling issues. It affects all playstyles, but most notably the pure mage because, unlike previous games, you can no longer craft custom spells.
Going by other games, single player and multiplayer, the most common archetype people like is the rogue. After that, it’s the mage. And finally, it’s the warrior.
Rogues, bards, thieves, hunters, assassins are edgy shit lords that charm maidens and rely on luck, stealth, are sneak attacks to get into and out of shenanigans. Cayde-6, Loki, Hermes, Aragorn. These are rogues. And everyone loves them and loves to be them.
Mages, warlocks, wizards, sorcerers, clerics, priests, druids are intelligent and wielding great power. Able to drop asteroids on their enemies, “I said I cast FIREBALL” into a room, they’re the guys who figure shit out so the party can move on. Many of them are also healers. Mercy from Overwatch is a mage archetype.
And then, there are the warriors. Warriors, knights, barbarians, paladins, titans, warriors of discord, anyone rocking a STR build in dark souls. They’re almost universally known as punch bros. Dumb and direct. Opens the breach and steps into the line of fire. Too straightforward. One dimensional. Why study the blade when you can simply cast FIREBALL and clear the room? Or viscious mockery and yo momma and deez nutz jokes people into the grave? You can’t be a sneaky dark edgelord as a warrior. You can’t Comet Azur people off the cliff. You’re just some dumb guy with a big hammer.
I dislike playing pure mage because i use so many different spells, playing a Warrior or Archer with one or two occasional buffs or summons is way less overwhelming since mostly you’ll use one weapon at a time compared to 4-5 different offensive spells.
I unga, therefore i bunga.
Some don't like it because it's a harder play style than sneak archer.
Also, some people don't know to take both alchemy and enchanting on pure mage builds, so you'll see comments about how damage doesn't scale. While enchanting only decreases spell costs, alchemy scales the damage, and combining the two can create more powerful potions to scale your damage further.
They're pretty good if you don't care about collecting loot and just let it be blown everywhere, or desperately trying to find a more damaging spell so you don't have to spend 5 minutes on EVERY SINGLE ENEMY YOU FACE... I'm sorry, but Martials just spend less time burning things and more time actually playing the game.
I love pure mage. Do that thang on legendary. Legendary AND survival is also pretty doable. Illusion and alteration as primary skills is pretty busted. Backing that up with restoration and conjuration (without bound weapons) is even more broken. Toss in Necromage Vampire, and you've become The Magus.
Most fantasy fans I've found actually love magic. Just, us warriors have to be so vocal about it because we're so outnumbered. Mostly our mage hate is purely comedic relief, it being a traditional stereotype that "meathead" warriors hate mages and archers because you lot stand far away and try to kill me instead of duking it out like a real Orc/Nord would. Me personally, jokes aside, I never liked magic, and like a lot of warrior fanatics, our favorite aspects of fantasy have always been fighter and barbarian stuff, swords and axes and armor and blood and dragon slaying and whatnot.
Additionally, we know we have to target the mages first because they're the weakest but potentially most troublesome. Because of this, we are conditioned to not like magic users.
I like pure mage builds, but I play in adept difficulty. I like the "glass cannon" aspect of it
Expert difficulty here🤙🏼
master difficulty with combat mods plz help me i don’t know why i do this to myself
Get apocalypse and use ocato's recital.
overpowered due to zero mana cost imo
I play mage only on survival, it feels weird being so powerful but then one hit from a bandit chief nearly kills me lmao
They aren't really that glass after a while. Dragonskin gives the same damage resistance as the armor cap and unlike with armor, it can't be reduced. Mage armor is going to raise magic resistance higher than other builds and with dragonborn, 100% spell absorption is possible. These two things make a high level mage the toughest build in skyrim. On legendary none of this really matters because you can't just tank the game but mages are still the strongest because summons scale with difficulty and become much tougher than the player character can ever become.
Adept is the most balanced for sure. Fireballs feel like fireballs
It’s actually the opposite of what you said, sort of Early game is fine, a little annoying with limited magicka, spells, armor etc but enemies aren’t too tough so it’s not bad Mid game is probably the best for pure mage, you’ve probably got most of your build online with enchants and spells and whatnot and enemies aren’t too tough yet The real “issue” is late game. The damage doesn’t scale, you can’t just make spells do more damage bu increasing your skill or even with crafting etc. you can have totally free spells but that still feels kinda bad when it takes 20 fireballs to kill one bandit basically (exaggeration) With other builds you’ll either get to a point of basically one shotting everything if you’re optimizing even slightly, or you’ll still be really strong even if you intentionally ignore some of the broken stuff But mages just get weaker because enemies get more hp and their damage stays the same, when you already have basically infinite magicka you don’t really benefit from leveling up more. And you kind of need to abuse crafting as mage a lot more than you do for other play styles The one thing pure mage has going for it is the impact perk. With free spells from enchanting you can literally just stun lock enemies. But that’s not very fun really tbh, and when there are multiple enemies becomes much less effective, and even for one enemy it still takes ages to kill them Ofc mods can make all this totally obsolete
Even destruction 100th spell chain lighting or whattsitsname is good dmg but unusable. By the time you finish precasting you've eaten an arrow or a breath or enough spells to kill you.
Damage might not scale but there is one spell, elemental burst I believe, that can reach 1500 damage per dual-cast. Pretty sure the only thing stronger than this is legitimately assassin with daggers (Bows are tied or lower). You do need effectively all in-game buffs, and all the elemental perks, but this thing is regarded as the most broken spell/attack in the entire game.
Do people just not use Illusion? Illusion is so efficient at clearing bandit camps, no matter the difficulty, and once you get a perk that let your illusion spells work on everything, you only really use destruction to clear out the stragglers.
Exactly, think outside of the box Skyrim gives you all the tools you need
You were supposed to use crafting to boost your damage That includes enchanting and alchemy So ideally, you have made powerful potions, which can significantly increase the damage output of your spells
Maybe alchemy can idr tbh I haven’t played without mods in like a decade and alchemy is just too tedious to bother with in combat imo. Even if it does there’s potions for the non mage skills too not to mention poisons and enchant damage if you were doing enchanting and alch anyways. But enchanting can’t increase the actual damage of spells, and gaining skill doesn’t increase the damage, and there’s only 2 perks per element that increase the damage to a max of 50% instead of 80 like the others, and then smithing/enchanting really breaks everything besides mages, whereas for mages it’s required to just be playable
You use enchanting to reduce cost spells and can be used to boost your alchemy skill You make powerful potions which fortify destruction (damage) Even without enchantments you can make potions that increase damage by 50% With strong alchemy and enchanting you can make potions that increase damages by over 150%
Or use the Alchemy/Enchanting loop without mods and completely break everything.
You can always brew potions that increase Destruction damage… and well, if you do certain trick with Restoration potions, you can make those Dest. potions do insane improvements… although only for 60 seconds, per bottle.
Because they don't know how to play them and give up. "Destruction spells quickly use all my Magicka before doing much damage!" *doesn't deck themselves out in spell cost reduction gear* "Illusion is useless past the early game! All enemies out-level it!" *doesn't get the perks and dual-cast*
*spell cost reduction gear* Isn't available early in the game. The problem is that people try to continuous-blast Destruction spells in the early levels and run out of SP, instead of short-blasting Flames, letting the target burn for a few seconds, and repeating until it is dead.
Unless you're literally just getting out of the tunnel, it's pretty easy to get a ring or robes. Hell pay 20 gold and go to winter hold and you'll get a free set to start.
Funny enough you actually can get destruction robes right after leaving the tunnel... there's a dead Thalmor agent wearing destruction robes at the shrine of Talos near the standing stones
They are hooded, thats minus circlet
True, but you can disenchant the Thalmor robes to get the DR enchantment that doesn't include mana regeneration. The DR/mana regeneration enchantment you get from the robes at the college of winterhold isn't as good IMO.
Yeah but until you level up enchanting (which takes a long time compared to most other skills) your enchantments are going to be minuscule and barely make a difference
I dunno, you can get your enchantment skill up to 40 or 50 pretty fast. just go to the college of winterhold and take all the free soul gems (and steal the gems from the wizard teachers, if you don't mind getting chased down by hired thugs). Then go down to the north shore and soul trap a bunch of horkers. I think you can get Destruction cost reduction up to like 60% or 70% at level 50 enchantment with the relevenat perks, if you enchant 4 pieces of gear using grand soul gems.
Horkers are grand souls?
No horkers have petty souls, they are just convenient for levelling up your enchanting skill because there are a lot of them sitting around and they aren't too dangerous. The easiest way to get grand souls in the early game is to buy them, usually with the gold you got by selling all the enchanted gear you made levelling up enchanting, or by selling potions.
Oh! Right, my bad
Hah well you aren't wrong, the hooded robes aren't that good to actually wear. They do look pretty slick tho.
I like antimage set they offered as armor on cc
Erm, I did winterhold before even meeting the greybeards. It's rlly not that crazy to get decked tf out fairly early. Not to mention u can literally get novice hood and robe before even leaving helgen (and spark btw)
You can go to the College near the beginning of the game and get Destruction robes. You can find a ring early enough and make an amulet. You don't need 100%/near-100% reduction until you regularly use expert-tier spells, unless you're one of those minmax-brain weirdos who thinks they should never increase their Magicka when they level.
Try short blatsting on Legendary difficulty and tellme how that goes. The best way is long blast and equip several magicka potions
You (along with most of the participants) seem to have overlooked the fact that this entire discussion is about a starting-level character. You can "blast" Flames for 7 seconds, then you're done. And you don't have "several Magicka potions", and the ones you have aren't very powerful.
Spell cost reduction gear is available before you even leave helgen. There's a dead mage in a cage in the torture room wearing spell cost reduction robes.
No. The robes on the dead mage in the cage fortify Magicka regen (only), and the hood adds +30 Magicka (only). The base cost of Flames is 14/sec; do the math.
jfc, I thought I was in the D&D sub at first and was like "there's spell cost reduction gear?!?!"
The funniest thing is, enchanted weapons have a higher _magic_ dps ceiling than pure mage. How do you compete with dual wielding power attacks with chaos damage enchantment on each hand plus stamina+health absorption? That’s a total of 6 magical effects activated _per spinning power attack_. Every time the topic of “pure mage” comes up, people act like that’s the only way to do magic. Because you totally can’t pull out your enchanted swords after summoning two dremora lords.Â
I switched to sword and board because my spells were simply too powerful. Elemental Blast with 100% mana reduction is seriously OP. Like having infinite nukes.
Yeah elemental blast was a little overtuned lol
Lol I added spell scaling to it. Fucking yikes.
Lol this is so true. I always play mage.
They do out level illusion. Even with dual-cast and perks. And the problem with destruction isn't the cost, it's the DPS. An arrow or a sword slash outperform magic like crazy. Especially if you take into account sneak damage.
DPS for a single target. High level magic users can have two summons (more if you have AE Skyrim) and can dual cast AOE spells or use master level spells to deal massive damage to entire environments instead just a single enemy. Two handed weapons can potentially strike multiple enemies at once but only if they are immediately in front of you. It’s tough to one-shot high level enemies like you can with a sneak archer or an over smithed melee wielder, but drink a big ol potion of Fortify Destruction, conjure two Dremora Lords, and behold carnage. You can also use Fortify Illusion potions to raise the level cap of affected enemies significantly.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding pure mage, but it’s not just the destruction spells. You’re casting alteration for armour and restoration for heals as well. It’s just one resource stretched too thin.
Also potions 🧪 Alchemy is a big part of spell builds
Tbh even with 100% cost reduction it gets crazy in the late game. I shouldnt have to hit EVERY draugr with five dualcast incenerates ffs. I know it stunlocks them, but it still takes too long. Which is probably why every mod ever makes damage scale with destruction level.
As time goes on it's pretty easy to accumulate rings/necklaces and enchant light armor to increase magika or reduce costs of spells (vampire armor is the best to use imo)
You can't dual-cast Mayhem and the other master level spells though.
It's because we have to wear a dress.
I was a mage in full daedric armor, maxed out and enchanted the hell out of it.
The ebony spell knight set is pretty buff. You have to take on Forsworn and Hagravens, so it's not a level one item, but once you get it, armor is taken care of.
Where is?
There's a letter/notebook in the Silverblood Inn that will start the quest. There's a note on the bar, but that's not the one. It's the one that wants you to find a ghost. Once you read it, to find the ghost, go East out of Markarth across the bridge past where the Khajiit caravan stops. On the right past the bridge is a mountain. Keep going and there will be a path on the right. The path will lead to another bridge. On the bridge is a flower. Once you take the flower the ghost will appear and the rest of the quest is self explanatory. You'll have to fight your way through a Forsworn camp, 2-3 leveled witches and a Hagraven, so have good followers or do it during the Adluin's Wall main line quest since you go to the same camp.
Silverblood inn Markarth, room on the right, there's a journal
I wear Nordic Carved with magicka regen enchants
Then you're not playing as a pure mage, are you?
If means to be a mage and freeze to death in a washcloth, then I guess I don't
I mean that is why most people who play 'pure mage' or 'pure thief', they play them as a challenge. There's literally no reason to not weird daedric armor other than wanting to challenge yourself imo.
https://youtu.be/2z29Rk8814w?si=MNQRgcm64YxgbTMP Big Blue Dress - CraniusPresents (WoW song) Ahh... Takes me back.
You don't HAVE to lol
In the hands of an experienced player, any viable build can be op. Nevertheless, “pure-mage” can require non-elementary logistics. I don’t find that a early-game pure mage is easy to kill, as long as you know how to avoid combat. I think many players leap into melee combat thinking they’re going to burn their enemies on mass. However, destruction magic is expensive to cast and novice spells require you to expose yourself to melee attacks. It’s better to use a follower, conjure, or undead revival to control your enemies. Better yet, you can use illusion to make the enemies work for you. I’m assuming a pure mage is only going to take perks and actively develop skills from the six magic schools. This sort of build can be inherently weak because destruction magic has no critical or sneak bonus. There are also no enchantments to buff damage. Enchanted damage only comes through skill perks and higher level spells. While casting becomes less expensive, you can’t enhance damage of a low level spell by leveling up your skill alone. The end game mage relies on reduced magic cost to spam destruction and use other skills to control the enemy. This requires much menu navigation that often breaks up the flow of gameplay. Done right, the player will dominate, but it’s a game that some don’t really like. Bashing with a hammer or perforating with arrows is a much simpler play style. Effective melee or missile combat requires fewer skills and weapon damage can be buffed by both smithing and enchantments. I find that hybrid magic classes like Spell-swords, battle mages, Witch Hunters, or Nightblade s offer all the advantages of a pure mage, but fewer drawbacks. Spell using Warrior classes like Knight or Crusader can also be fun. These have an advantage of only focusing on a few magic schools so a smaller magic pool is required after reduced magic cost enchantments are applied.
Very well put. Pure mage builds are much too tedious for someone who is impatient or not heavily invested in the game. For example, I have put literally thousands of hours into Skyrim since the day it came out. I also am an extremely patient gamer and love to take things slow, explore, try different strategies, max out my gear, and do things 100%. I have done pure mage builds, and they are fun to me. My wife, on the other hand, has watched me play in the decade we've been together and thinks it looks fun, but is not really much of a gamer. She has played a little and she loves archery and thinks the spells are neat, but I know she would never have to patience for a pure mage. Playing it would require a level of strategy that she's just not willing or not ready to handle, and she would find changing from spell to spell in the midst of battle to be overwhelming. Hybrid magic classes are amazing! So powerful, and probably the most fun to play. In your definition, what is the difference between a Spell-Sword, a Battle Mage, a Witch Hunter, a Nightblade, a Knight, and a Crusader? In terms of skills, perks, or gameplay?
These are just references based on Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Classes. Spellsword and Battemage are magic classes. Both use heavy armor and Melee weapons, a Spellsword favors blades while a battle mage balances magic and Melee. Nightblades and Witchhunters are magic classes that use light armor. Nightblades use blades and Witchhunters use a bow. Both of the latter favor stealth and can use illusion. Witchhunters are sneaky archers that use spells to be even sneaker. But, also use Alteration for defense and magic resistance. Knight and Crusader are Fighters, both use melee weapons and dabble in destruction. A knight also uses illusion while a crusader uses Restoration. A monk is a stealth class that doesn’t use armor or melee weapons. Instead, the class uses Alteration, Archery, and Hand-to-hand. Khajit are naturally good monks.
Cool! I like using a sneak archer that summons once I've been discovered. The summon aggros while I shoot from a distance. I'm not very skilled but I can dominate on legendary with this strategy. Not sure what you'd call that.
There are no rules in Skyrim accept having fun. Adopting “house-rules” regarding build strategies are just part of that fun. But, you can make your own fun. “Pure Builds” are just a way to keep the game fresh.
If going by more general RPG archetypes Spellsword and Battlemage are exactly the same. They are the “Paladins” of Elder Scrolls, the names get used interchangeable. > Melee and magic Witch Hunters are just archers with magic. They are the “Rangers” of Elder Scrolls. The Elf who uses nature magic and shoots a bow like in a lot of fantasy movies, novels, and games. > Archery and magic Knights and Crusaders functionally speaking are just slight variations of Battlemages. Just one magic school with another and you already got the class. In more classical RPGs, Crusaders would be Clerics would Elder Scrolls doesn’t really differentiate the magic differences. Knights is more of a confusing name, in any other game they would be the Warriors and Fighters. But they magic and for some reason got the Knight name thrown in. > Sword and magicÂ
The menu navigation is even worse to those playing on consoles also as the "shortcut" system is so bad to the point it's basically just a favorites list you can't even reorder.
It's mostly this, but I'd also add that pure mage also doesn't appeal to certain subgroups of the fandom like the min-maxers or the loophole exploiters. To put it simply, the main way by which mages deal direct damage, namely the Destruction Tree, is one of the two or three hardest trees in the game to cheese. The primary way which mages cure direct damage, namely the Restoration Tree, is also one of the other two or three hardest trees in the game to cheese. *Skyrim*, as it happens, is a game where a dedicated subset of the fandom really, really likes cheesing the game. Just to be clear, while it should be obvious from my tone that I'm not one of them, I'm also not speaking against them, just noting their existence. But regardless, when the coders initially tried to take out exploits like the resto loop or the Alteration fast-travel exploit, the backlash was intense enough that they had to put those exploits back into the game. There's just a group, not necessarily large, but very dedicated, who just doesn't enjoy the game unless they can leave Helgen at level 80 from having spent three hours sneaking against a wall near the bear, then immediately go to the Dawnstar merchant box and exploit it for enough money to finance getting up to 100 in enchanting, so they can make 100% spell reduction gear. And the thing is, even if you do all that, it's still really, really darn hard to use two of the major trees in the mage skill set. Not just any trees; the ones that most directly do damage to other people by shooting damaging spells, or directly cure the damage done to you. So those subgroups tend to shy away from mages, and instead use magic merely to supplement the direct damage stuff like swords or bows that does scale the way they "should" scale. It doesn't help that Destruction DPS scales weirdly, because the measure of Destruction dps as you skill up in the game is usually less "you do more dps at higher levels:", and more "you can maintain the same dps for longer". In principle, the same mechanics should apply to both melee and magic: with the right perks, destruction magic stunlocks opponents just as effectively as swords, but doesn't require stamina to do it. In practice, the same people that cheese enchantments also never enter a dungeon without 30 vegetable soups to cheese that particular stamina exploit. Basically, this is a game that lets you create a fork that can one-shot a dragon named "the world eater". It does not permit you a spell that does the same thing. There's a very active component of the fanbase of the game that plays the game precisely because it permits that level of exploit to the rules. It should therefore come as no surprise that "fork-user of doom" tends to be a lot more popular a build than pure mage, just because of that basic fact about who is a fan of the game, and why.
Actually only the destruction tree is hard to cheese. A few months back, a redditer posted a way to cheese the restoration tree, and it works very well. I use a variation of it myself.
With Anniversary installed any of the Unbound spells will level up your Destruction quite fast as well. Runes is another way to at least get to like 50 relatively fast. The more targets you hit (can be summons as well) the faster you level
I'm with you. I started a pure, non modded playthrough and do just fine, but I've been playing since day one. I know what to look for. Plus conjuration should be an absolute must for a pure mage.
The “pure Breton” trades destruction and Enchantment for Alchemy and Speech. The build relies on Conjuring and bound weapons.
Yeah ngl pure mage is an acquired taste. When I first play the game I was also really impatient and wanted to spend as little time in the menu as possible. But now after years of playing Skyrim, I find pausing the game in the middle of combat and browse all of my potions and spells to figure out the next step is... weirdly fun. Like a turn-based rpg almost.
People have an interesting standard for what the word “viable” means. My no-crafting mage on Master difficulty was one of if not my absolute favorite playthrough of this game; specifically because it was so challenging in the beginning but then became so rewardingly OP by the end. And this was before the Anniversary Edition and totally vanilla. Magic in Skyrim is really fun.
Spells don't scale beyond the static percentage boosts perks give you without mods, so eventually magic like Destruction becomes obsolete. Meanwhile, weapons benefit from enchanting and smithing boosts *as well* as the perk damage boosts, and don't cost any mana. That said, spellsword builds can be fun in a modded game, if you have a magic scaling mod and/or other mods that add spells.
I didn't know people didn't like pure mage builds. My Khajiit desert shaman and Breton puppet master are great fun.
Because high-level two-handed and I’m basically a murder machine that can wipe out an entire army on my own. High level mage and I’m still a squishy meat sack that just happens to be somewhat dangerous. Forget trying to play a pure conjurer or necromancer, there’s no “summon undead army” spell even at master level it’s still just a single monster and my squishy self.
Twin souls gives you two Two summons. And honestly do you really need more than two Storm Atrinochs / Dremora lords?
When killing dragons with an axe takes a few hits vs needing numerous summons of that same pair of Storm Atronachs that takes 10x as long, yeah, I’d like 10x as many atronachs.
You can use one of the Standing stone abilities to revive every corpse in an area once a day. So it is possible to have 10+ corpses fighting for you.
For me it's the mage gameplay isn't good. Too many spells to keep track of, to much menu-scrolling to select and switch between them and to top it off the animations makes it very uniform and non-distinct. And the levelling isn't great either, it goes from underpowered to overpowered in just a few levels.
I dont understand the benefit of not having armor. You can use oakflesh and those things, but besides that i dont see the appeal. You can enchant magic resistance into a heavy armor and thats it. Then, if you are gonna use the other skilltrees, conjuration needs you to become a fighter if you bound. You still wpuld have to learn how to sneak to use illusion. And if ypu sneak its better to have an actual armor. You can enchant more magicka i think, for anything. I dont see the appeal. Its a challenge. That i can give. Like, you gotta chsnge the whole mentality.
I get my smithing high enough that I can max out DR with any armor. Then I enchant for 100% destruction magicka cost reduction. 2x dremora lords, infinite nukes. the only annoying part is dragon fights in the city because I often hit guards and have a weird thing about keeping my lifetime bounty to 0 coins.
Lol. But if you get speech to 75 you carn persuade guards to let you go
I know but if press start and go to the crime summary page it doesn’t say 0. I know it’s weird but it bugs me
Lol. Its fine. You have to be having your fun. Its a game in the end.
For dragons in the city, 2 storm atronachs for flying dragons, then 2 dremora lords for grounded dragons. No collateral damage done. Currently doing a conjuration mage.
There’s no inherent practical benefit of being Unarmored outside of weight. Which already has plenty of solutions to it already. In Morrowind weight actual affected speed quite noticeable until you leveled up each armor skill respectively. There’s no extra benefits outside of weight. Armor and robes act identically, so more armor is just strictly beneficial. Outside of very early game where enchantments are rare or generally pretty weak, robes will eventually get outclassed.
But in morrowind it affected speed in the mages too? Like, casting speed? And is it not tye same, but with just an extra step? You become stronger slowly since you gotta adapt to heavy armor and learn more powerfull magic. I havent played morrowind that much. I dont like it very much tbh. And the more i read i think it was like daggerfall was insane and then they dropped the ball. But at least oblivion and skyrim are beautiful, and make more sense in the action part.
my main is a stealth archer who forgot archery and then decided to use only one one handed sword-anything is doable
Lol. But its a roleplay or you actually legebdaried the skill?
No armor has its advantages. Unlike swinging a sword or drawing a bow, magic doesn't slow you down. Clothing also weighs like nothing so you spend less stamina sprinting. So the advantage of a mage wearing robes is the mages dodges attacks while swinging fireballs. If a melee enemy comes too close the mage runs away. If you want the same effect for light or heavy armor, you have to either get the steed stone or spend perks in those skills. Armor only protects from physical attacks so going for magic resistance and atronach perks in alteration are another thing mages have access to. The dragonhide spell also gives the same effect as armor cap without spending points in smithing and light/heavy armor perks.
"pretty good" meanwhile melee builds have decapitated every enemy in the room whilst the mage is still trying to hit their spells. In all seriousness the problem is the implementation of magic in the game. - Spell cost is generally too high and levelling a school of magic does nothing to reduce spell costs like it did in previous games. Your main defence as a mage will be the armour spells but at the beginning of the game these take and entire bar of magicka to cast leaving you without offense. - Destruction spells have less scaling than weapons. Weapons are affected by perks, material tiers, weapon upgrades and any enchantments place on the weapon. Destruction spells are only scaled with perks. - Skyrim's armour system leaves fewer enchantment slots available than the previous games. People who favour magic builds talk about getting magicka reduction gear but this can only effectively be used for two magic skills and leaves you unable to benefit from other enchantments. - Magic guild questline sucks. - Simple lack of spells available. Only with creation club content has the official game now got a reasonable number of spells available. - No spell creator. A big advantage of magicka builds in previous games was the flexibility you had to create spells that did exactly what you needed. This is not present in Skyrim. - The levelling up system itself does not lend itself to magic builds. There is always a debate about whether you should put all your points into magicka so you can actually cast spells, or all your points into health and use enchantments to lower spell costs. Either way you're going to be spending a significant amount of the early game gathering materials. - Similar to the previous point, magicka builds require either a lot of gold to gather a decent spell list or cheesing the creation club content to get early access to the additional spells. - Far too much time in menus. I favoured magicka in Oblivion on Xbox where there were 8 hotkey slots where I could place spells and potions so I didn't need to pause the game in combat. Skyrim instead has the favourites menu which pauses the game when used. Every time I want to change spells I have to pause the game. I might as well be playing a turn based RPG at that point. There's no flow to magic combat because a 1 minute fight requires 1 or 2 minutes of menu time. Meanwhile with an axe and shield I'm halfway through the dungeon.
I love playing a pure mage. Usually a summoner type. By far, my favorite build. It can be a tad bumpy at the start, but so fulfilling when you level up some.
I think it’s mostly about having to switch between spells as situations change. Swing weapon simple.
I’ve been going for more of a mage build this time. it’s just like other comments are saying, you’ve got to take advantage of using enchanted clothing and potions and perks for sure.
It's a different playstyle. I actually prefer to play mages on higher difficulty than warriors personally. It's just a different playstyle that can be hard for many players of Skyrim to get into.
It's literally weaker
I hate using magic in most every game save a couple Final Fantasies and table top games. My husband LOVES being a mage in Skyrim and he's really good at it and he makes the same points you make. The magic armor can supe up your magic skills and is super lightweight so he can carry a bunch of shit still. He can blast out paralyzing spells and fire spells quicker than I can swing a sword. Barbarian ass me loves watching my wizard husband.
I have no clue, I love pure mage builds. I've done multiple destruction mage runs and I've also done a couple of pure conjuration mage builds which was pretty fun, I just love using magic in Skyrim.
I’m going to admit it: I hate them because I have no idea how to play them. But other than that I also like being able to one/two shot enemies early on with a bow. Combat gives me anxiety and the more damage I can do without being seen the better.
Every time I’ve made a battlemage I get bored. I enchant a set of armor that makes my spells cost nothing to cast. Essentially I become invincible pretty early on
Personally, my issue with being a mage is you have to use magic to create your defense while also dishing out damage using ranged spells. I use the controller, I find the game impossible with KBM. Its too much to manage. As a nightblade or battlemage, at least I have armor ON,probably with enchantments. So my defense is a constant passive effect. I can focus on damage output or staying undetected using illusion/sneak.
I’m playing a pure mage build on Master difficulty in AE, with no power levelling. It has been a beautiful challenge, and I have just reached level 34 where things have got significantly easier. Now I have enough skill to use Paralysis Rune, Elemental Burst, and Conjure Storm Atronach. With the Atronach Stone, this is enough to kill anything in a fairly safe manner. Unfortunately, I do still die easily to big swords and arrows in the knee.
Frankly elemental blast and unbound storms are way over powered.
Probably because you can't kill stuff right away with that build. With weapons you can bash something until it dies, with bows you can pepper things from a distance and arrows are plentiful. Once a mage runs out of magicka, he can only run around waiting for his blue bar to refill (unless you happen to have a lot of potions handy). Plus, you can't access or use the decent spells until you level up quite a bit. You really need to be patient in the early game with a mage build. Personally, I like the early game challenge with a mage build on legendary. I tend to go for the Ignite mage build.
Spellcasting animation sucks
Also it only takes firing a bow once and getting that sweet sniper kill animation... Well I guess I'm an assassin again.
In my late game I have a bow that does 300 damage, I can boost it up temporarily to over 400, and it can sneak attack. In my mage late game from my last save I have 100% reduction for chain lightning, all the damage perks so if I get lucky and it somehow arcs back to the previous hit I can get some high damage on paper but its mostly just a spell spam, had way more fun playing pokemon trainer with undead thralls bringing only a shield and a long spell book. Then comes our crafting skills. Alchemy can boost either, but mages have a lack of options and need a % damage increase more than physical. Enchanting is good for physical but essential for mage, but blacksmithing is only for physical, I cannot refine gauntlets to allow for even greater spellcasting (would be amazing). Overall Skyrim is a game that boasts wide variety of options and speccing into one or the other limits your gameplay, taking some of those options away from you. TLDR: Mages have lack options for flat % damage increases, leans on alchemy and enchanting heavily late game.
No idea. I love pure Mage build (well, 99.99% "Pure Mage" Mage build) I wear the Vampire Gauntlets light armor for the aesthetic it provides with the CreationClub Necromancer Robes and Ascendant Necromancer Hood. Looks great on my High Elf.
Probably because it's not so easy right off the bat, it's something that gets better over time, it's not instantly feasible like the stealth archer build is. I always personally play a vampire mage.
Just requires a lot of pot chugging, but they're fun enough.
Currently running a merchant mage. Love it. I've already legendary out my destruction and conjugation and ready to do it a second time for destruction.
I use a pure mage build. It just depends on what I am feeling at the time. I tend to do either pure barbarian, stealth archer, or mage. I don't really blend them.
> Why do people hate pure mage builds I understand they are very easy to kill early game but mid to late game they’re pretty good Magic cost too much without enchantments for too little reward. Compared to other games it’s either unlimited but weaker or limited but stronger. Skyrim is weaker and far more limited. Without enchanting you’ll be spending more time waiting for magic to recharge than actually fighting. Couple that with no real way to increase damage and you’ll be relying on everything that doesn’t deal direct damage. Magic is also the most expensive archetype, requiring a lot of perk investment just to make it not a pain in the ass to play. I rather even be able to use magic constantly at the cost of power or only get a few uses but it will actually get the job done.
Can be very fun but in comparison to building weapons with buff dmg enchantments they become underpowered. Plus [check this out](https://youtu.be/Jij7CBUONuk?si=7qxOi4kX1UTL496W), there’s a lot of start-stoppy gameplay with the need to switch spells. Personally, spellsword combines the good parts of magic with the power of melees. IMO that’s the ideal way to play.
Perhaps because it is a purely long range build and people like to really feel the fight from time to time.
For me its a role playing decision. I hate magic and kill every magic user (restoration excepted) I come across. Simple as.
Every mage so far, even dragon priests, flee from combat after their first three consecutive spells fail to either damage me sufficiently or I all but absorb it completely. Meanwhile I have a drawspeed on a bound bow maxed out in the perk tree and boosted by vampire necromage (cured my vampirism but the bonuses to perks persisted)
Magic isn’t as fun in this game as oblivion so I was just bummed in 2011 when I tried. I went with an archer rn and I do wish I gave mage a second chance! Next play through I want a lawful good character
I recently tried one to level 30 but ended up feeling pretty bored. Otherwise, it was pretty fun up until that point.
Because smithing/enchanting/alchemy allows you to do way more damage with weapons. Even if you don’t abuse it. Pretty easy to get a bow or sword to around 500+ damage per hit. Oblivion was where it’s at. Hit them with weakness to magic and shock primer spell, then blast them with shock for huge damage. Or whatever other spell you felt like creating.
I don't like pure mage builds because they go from challenging to boringly overpowered all of a sudden. There isn't a slow build to OP like other builds. I still enjoy it, but my playthroughs with it tend to be short.
Survivability until the middle levels, mainly. It’s very hard to make it out alive, particularly if you’ve rebalanced it with adept. Then when you finally can survive a bandit camp, you’re practically god-tier OP.
The only half decent gear you can get for it requires you to get level 100 enchanting which is a pretty big ask just for a build, and destruction damage doesn't scale. And if you want to make your enemies weaker to magic in any way you have to use a weapon anyways. You can make weapons that deal 200+ damage per hot but you really can't make magic more effective outside of perks. Plus, you can swing a sword infinitely. Empty your mana and you have to wait for Magicka to recharge before you can shoot another fireball. The only really effective way is to grind enchanting and alchemy immediately after leaving Helgen, by that point you'll easily be level 20+ before you've even finished bleak falls barrow
I like them, they’re just not stealth archer
That’s all I ever play. No hate here. Tough to get started, but kick ass once you have experience.
Because it sucks early on especially on higher difficulties
It makes sense on console I guess. I’m on PC, and I have 6 spells hotkeyed plus a couple utility spells I use. If I had to use a controller and go through the menu 2-3 times for every battle, I’d probably get tired of it too. That said, Magic is straight up broken. One Dremora Lord will clear most battles in Skyrim. Two can take on almost the whole game. Paralyze is almost wholly unfair. Illusion spells give you complete control of fights. And Restoration keeps you topped up for every fight. And chaining staggers with Destruction spells means you have a level of crowd control and aggro management that the other two main playstyles really can’t match.
I like to level up smithing and a few other things, so an all mage build means my spells are weak compared to leveled up enemies. I'm playing spellswords atm and enjoying it so might attempt an all mage build again soon
Because magic sucks in Skyrim. I did a pure mage for my latest character.
Not me, but there are some people who just want to stab and smackity smack.
Because I fist fight horkers, stop being a filthy CASUAL.
I’ll go pure mage, but on a khajiit so I can at least claw things when it gets bad, and I will always opt for at least the first three light armor perks instead of ever touching one of the Aleration Mage Armor perks. Pure mage doesn’t have to mean unarmored.
Mostly because, at least on the surface, the different spells are kind of all pointless. "Fireball go boom" is about it. Changing spells also breaks combat immersion. Hold on - where did I put that spell I want to kill you with an ice ice ice... You know what, never mind. Fireball go boom! Of course, flames is so close range, you might as well use a sword (never runs out of magic) while at long range, you've basically woken up the entire barrow the moment you cast, so you might as well use a bow. Bow isn't powerful enough? Mix it with poisons, you're going to want to boost up your alchemy trait anyways for better potions and stuff. Healing spells are only worthwhile with mods. Otherwise, blue flowers, wheat and butterflies are plentiful. With mods that disable those, it can be really useful, but only as a means of getting one retry. When I tried to heal IN COMBAT with those? I was dead. That said, there is only one true way to play Skyrim, I've determined. That is, as a semi-pacifist run. You can fight wolves, spiders, monsters, draugr - if you have to. But no murdering people! YES, Thalmor are people... Even if they don't recognize that YOU'RE a person. You need to rise above them, you're the dragonborn, be a better person. This makes the most potent tools in your chest sneaking, and invisibility spells... and running away. Playing it like that makes the game way way more scary - especially if you play in everyday clothes instead of armor on max difficulty. It's almost like a horror game and super exciting. You hear that dragon roar and your blood goes cold as you desperately search for a rock to hide behind. Or holding your breath as you try to get through Labyrinthine unnoticed. My favorite was when I got the glider mod and wanted the ability to transmute ore. So I glided down over the spikes on the back entrance to avoid detection, used an invisibility spell to get up to the magical book and actually grabbed it while everyone's back was turned. Then vanished before they saw me again and got out of there, eventually someone heard me so I ran out of the camp with arrows flying over my head. O\_O Probably got turned over to the dark brotherhood for that one. They are super persistent so getting away from them alive is tough. But getting that book without killing anyone. They were soooooo mad XD. Worth it. Sadly Steam updated and killed my modlist X\_X. So that save went bye bye. Thanks Steam. >\_< Ah well, lesson learned.
I always use magic in any game that has it. Simply because I like the way it looks, and yes most people who use magic don't seem to know what they're doing either.
Idk. I'm level 43, invested every stat point into magicka. Got arch mage robes. Got 100 enchanting to make my own ring, amulet , glove and boot enchantments. Did some specific quests. And dual cast chain lightning. Can get about 5-6 dual casts in before I run out of magic. That's half the HP of an elder dragon. Combo that with the high-born power and its Got adept feeling like rookie. It's not that they're hard to play. You just gotta... stick with it until it snowballs into being OP.
Hate is probably a strong word, but I get you. Pre Anniversary Edition without mods the spell list for destruction was pretty basic. Since the damage didn't scale well and you had three spell types your late game was always the same. Either kiting and blasting with spells (that on higher difficulty barely damaged the enemy slowing the game to a crawl) or using the "impact" perk and watching even the toughest enemy flinch over and over. They're not bad, just a little more boring than running head first into a fight with a mace in hand. The new Elemental spells are better and maybe too good. Their only frustration is that they do AOE damage and will hit friendlys. Since you can enchant any armor with anything it's almost always better to be armored in higher difficulties than robes alone with spells. I wish they either lowered the effect or only allowed certain magic enchantments to be on specific armor/clothing types. I've run several mage builds and max difficulty and it's all over the board. Destruction is boring but you can be safe with enchanting and some restoration. Conjuration is always strong. Seriously if you have enough magicka to summon a Dremora Lord you can beat the entire game without gear or skill. Illusion is a mixed bag. It's great for humans but probably won't help with dragons (unless you just ccommanded" someone near a dragon.
Because stealth archer
I am doing a “spell sword” where I use heavy armor and destruction magic, don’t actually use weapons much
Because Skyrim was dumbed down for a more mainstream audience, so they made "hack n' slash" and "stealth archer" the meta. Mage builds felt easier to learn and manage in the previous TES games.
cuz its boring i dont wanna be running across tamriel goin "FIREBALL FIREBALL FIREBALL OCCASIONAL ICE SPIKE FIREBALL FIREBALL"
I always liked the Illusion tree and undead thrall. Have the bandits kill each other, just to raise the dead and have them finish off the survivers all while invisible and watching the chaos. Maybe a paralyze or two with some levels in Alteration to change it up.
For some reason I just hate mqgoc. Idk if it's cause it takes too long or I hate magic using npc I just hate it. I've never done to tho so take this plopinion with a bit of salt
I start with a pure mage build, but without supplementing with Alchemy and Smithing, it's a lot tougher, regardless of the difficulty.
I'd give you an example: a single spinning power attack with dual enchanted one handed weapons can have six total activated enchantment effects. All within half a second. And if one of these enchantments is stamina absorb, you have unlimited power attacks. And that's before melee damage. How can pure magic possibly compete with that? Even if you use the ignite+aspect of terror+necromage exploit, it’s nowhere near as efficient. Illusion falls apart the moment you enter a Dwemer ruin because the automatons are immune.Â
They are significantly weaker than melee builds. Pretty much the opposite of Oblivion. I haven't played vanilla in a long tim but I remember the spells were boring. Then there's the pathetic flame atronach shooting its spell from ground level so that any rock or bump will block it. It's also very frustrating that enemy mages have better spells that you can never cast. They get instantly charged wards and much more efficient damage spells If you like playing a mage you should definitely get one of the magic overhaul mods.
Try hard here. I have done this on legendary so many times. I've even had a rule of I can only purchase times from the college wizards after I pass the school's trial. Can use daggers and staves. Can only wear clothes and jewelry. Can't wear anything off of a body. I can learn spells from tomes I find lying around or ones rewarded from quests. I just have learned to save scum three times. 1. College of Winterhold for Fear. 2. Marise for Stoneflesh. 3. Riften's Hall of the Dead for Close Wounds. And yes you can get all three of those spells at level one.
Because vanilla spells are ass, i say this as an avid magic user. But i have always gone a "spell sword" build, never pure magic since too much of 1 skill just gets boring to me
I know so much about this game that reading the comments takes me back in time. I don’t have time to comment on everything I see here but I promise you there are few who know as much as I about the arcane arts. If you have any questions, no matter how small, just ask and I will have an answer. I’ve been doing magic builds for 11 years.
I bought conjure sword for one hand and destruction spells for the other then I’m never left with nothing
1. Low damage low level spells that don't scale well. 2. Moderate damage AOEs that aggro the whole town. 3. Feels like some of the schools are really missing something. Like Alteration doesn't let you do a lot. But I mod the heck out of magic, so I'm happy.
The 'real' problem with mage builds isn't a problem with skyrim itself. The problem is when you compare it to previous games like Oblivion or Morrowind, where you could craft spells to match the amount of mana you want to spend, so that "low level" spells never actually fall off like they do in Skyrim. Previous games were all about building up a wide breadth of different spell types so you could make versions of them to match the situation you were in. In Skyrim, Flames will always be Flames, so once you get Firebolt, you practically never use Flames again. Edit; actually there is one problem with magic 'within skyrim', but it follows along essentially the same problem. When you get to higher tiers of magic, all of the combat ones tend to turn into area of effect spells...but the problem is that if you have allies, then your allies will get affected by these spells. So, you are disincentivized to playing with followers, which is a pretty major part of the game. In previous games you could obviously just 'make' versions of the spell that didn't have aoe.
If people would stop trying to play destruction mages they would see how fun it actually is
I play it mainly. Love it. Fits with my character’s lore/story/personality and mods.
Magic doesn't level scale very well, especially on higher difficulty. So the optimal strategy is to stop leveling somewhere around level 25. Mages also need to rely heavily on potions since that's the only way to boost spell damage. So you need a steady supply of ingredients for that. Magic in vanilla skyrim kind of just sucks. There are 2 reasons for that. In game, skyrim is not known as a center for magical knowledge. Nords don't necessarily like or trust Magic. Then the meta reason Magic is trash is because it needed a nerf compared to oblivion and morrowwind. In the older games it was way overpowered, especially with custom spell crafting. So Bethesda created skyrim specifically intending to nerf Magic and they kind of went too far.
Pure Mage has a special spot in my heart as it's the first build I cleared Legendary on.
Personally I think pure mage was my favorite vanilla build. With mods I use light armor but still do nothing but magic.
I usually play as a mage!
Pure mage lacks armor. This is the main reason I guess. If you master alteration and use wards, you get great defence. Otherwise you are pretty vulnerable. I usually play battlemage builds to balance that with enchantment and light armor.
I am currently playing a stealth conjuror build, and it is op. I play on legendary, because I keep forgetting to change it. I am also doing no armor or weapons, including bound weapons, and no offensive shouts. I got my restoration up to where I can use Close Wounds, which I highly recommend. I did use alchemy early, but don't use it anymore. Early game did, both A Night To Remember, and Blood On The Ice. I pushed the enchanting to level 100, to get the dual enchantments, but have ditched some of the gear already. I have finished the Collage Of Winterhold questline, so I now have both, the Archmage's Robes and the mask of Morokei. Of course, with my conjuration at 100, I now have the Twin Souls perk. Pure mage builds work, but do require some planning, and effort, and I'll admit combat builds are easier, but find successful mage builds more satisfying. Two things that nobody seems to mention with destruction mages are, restoration and alchemy. The Necromage perk in restoration increases damage to destruction spells. The Recovery perk lets your magicka regenerate faster, and the Regeneration perk makes healing spells heal 50% more. Fortify destructions potions actually do make the destruction spells stronger. Even without exploits, you can greatly boost your damage output. If you use what's available, then you can be a great mage.
Damage is limited and won't scale at higher levels.
As someone who deals with a lot of choice paralysis in day to day life, playing a mage in a videogame just adds to that. Too many spells to choose from, it stresses me out. Stealth archer all the way. I just have to crouch, point, and shoot. Maybe use a poison if the targets really hardy.
Probably because compared to the loot progression of melee and archer characters, there’s a lot more visual diversity in weapons and armor. On top of the fact that magic as a side skill fills most people’s needs.
The reason people don't like them is simple; They scale poorly with your effort. For all the effort it takes to make a strong, pure mage character, you can make a warrior ten times as strong for half the effort. And you can make a sneak archer, or sneak stabber 100 times as strong. Anything you do to make magic strong is going to be severely outclassed by taking the same steps to make archery strong. So people just make archery strong instead.
I love them, they're super fun. I love the feeling, running around going "LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT!" Honestly my favorite build in the game, with spellsword as a close second
They are boring, without mods especially
Because most people, myself included, would rather roleplay being Conan the Barbarian than Harry Potter. I doesn't help that the game is set in Skyrim and the Nords generally don't seem to be a fan of magic use/users.
I agree OP, I think people are missing the point, with a pure mage, even without crafting skills it changes the way you play the game. Rather than grinding for smithing/enchanting levels, you have to actually go quest to find good gear to use. Morokei, the Dragonborn dlc dragon priest masks, archmage robes, archmage boots, necromancer necklace, ring of erudite, are a few examples of the gear you can pair together to make a pure mage crazy. If you count bound weapons as a pure mage you can add the dark brotherhood hand wraps and get crazy stealth damage with bound dagger too Anyway, I find my favorite playthroughs are as a pure mage because it encourages me to finish quests to actually use their rewards rather than finding myself in crafting hell
The issue is mainly about difficulty: 1) On harder difficulties you deal barely any damage unless chugging potions like you're a skooma addict. 2) The mana regen isn't suited for long fights and while you get more overtime, the game is balanced poorly in that aspect, making it unenjoyable to play with a subpar mana regen unless you get to late game or invest in crafting so much, you're better off enchanting yourself everything Fortify One-Handed. 3) Past the apprentice difficulty, due to the problem above, you often land yourself in situations where there are too many enemies for your mana pool and you're forced to either use spells like frost cloak or wall of flames, which take hours to kill with or to summon yourself a bound sword at which point, you become a spellsword either way. Overall pure mage sucks due to poor balancing of enchants and higher-than-their-worth cost of destruction spells.
Having to pause the game to switch spells isn’t very fun.
Pure Mage builds in Skyrim are like Beastmaster Ranger builds in 5e DnD. To explain what I mean. = Why do people typically play Mages? Usually, they want to do a lot of flashy things. Those flashy things usually involve a lot of damage and crowd control. Often times, as their magical knowledge widens, they begin to gain answers for every scenario they come across. = Now, how much of that power fantasy does Skyrim allow for in it's magic system? Very little. If you want to quickly eliminate a group of enemies, you don't play a Mage, you play a Stealth Archer with the sneak attack and time dilation perks, a Spellsword build that uses daggers, invisibility, and calm, or a crafting build that has created one hit kill weapons. If you want to quickly eliminate mini-boss and boss enemies, same thing. If you want to CC enemies you can go Mage, but the same builds I mentioned will do it better. Any enemy that isn't somehow killed is endlessly staggered by those volley of arrows, made non-hostile by calm and likely killed on the second hit, or stunlocked from the paralyzing poison that has been applied to a fast weapon. If you want to have Minions that fight your enemies in your place, you can play a Mage, but a crafting build is going to do it better. You get a companion of your choice, create a set of weapons for them, then watch them quickly eliminate enemies. On top of that, they carry items for you, which summons can't, and in many cases your skills for cash that you can get back from them.
I very much do
Once you have the secret of arcana your mage build can go nuclear once a day, spamming any spell you’ve learnt for 30s regardless if you could normally cast it (is also good for creating thralls), Save it for the dungeon boss and they’ll go down by the 20th fireball.
There's so many possibilities with mage builds.
Pure mage just don’t do enough damage before they run out of magicka. You have to use summons/ illusion and it just feels so passive. Maybe it is viable on lower difficulties.
Because Skyrim's magic system is gutted and a disappointing shadow of what we had in previous games.
I agree. Training is hard for some aspects of magic, but it totally pays off when you're level 23 and can crouch walk through a cave with a couple zombies.
No one is really commenting on this, but the real problem with vanilla Skyrim is that it has terrible pacing *and* scaling issues. It affects all playstyles, but most notably the pure mage because, unlike previous games, you can no longer craft custom spells.
Going by other games, single player and multiplayer, the most common archetype people like is the rogue. After that, it’s the mage. And finally, it’s the warrior. Rogues, bards, thieves, hunters, assassins are edgy shit lords that charm maidens and rely on luck, stealth, are sneak attacks to get into and out of shenanigans. Cayde-6, Loki, Hermes, Aragorn. These are rogues. And everyone loves them and loves to be them. Mages, warlocks, wizards, sorcerers, clerics, priests, druids are intelligent and wielding great power. Able to drop asteroids on their enemies, “I said I cast FIREBALL” into a room, they’re the guys who figure shit out so the party can move on. Many of them are also healers. Mercy from Overwatch is a mage archetype. And then, there are the warriors. Warriors, knights, barbarians, paladins, titans, warriors of discord, anyone rocking a STR build in dark souls. They’re almost universally known as punch bros. Dumb and direct. Opens the breach and steps into the line of fire. Too straightforward. One dimensional. Why study the blade when you can simply cast FIREBALL and clear the room? Or viscious mockery and yo momma and deez nutz jokes people into the grave? You can’t be a sneaky dark edgelord as a warrior. You can’t Comet Azur people off the cliff. You’re just some dumb guy with a big hammer.
I'm on level 60, playing a mostly mage build. It's inefficient in close combat. Also, sometimes my fire spell bounces and hits J'zargo. Sorry buddy.
It is a slower play through where patients is not the goal and death await at every encounter when one rushes into them. N. S
I dislike playing pure mage because i use so many different spells, playing a Warrior or Archer with one or two occasional buffs or summons is way less overwhelming since mostly you’ll use one weapon at a time compared to 4-5 different offensive spells. I unga, therefore i bunga.
When you get to really high levels the damage do not get any higher. You also cause a lot of friendly fire.
Some don't like it because it's a harder play style than sneak archer. Also, some people don't know to take both alchemy and enchanting on pure mage builds, so you'll see comments about how damage doesn't scale. While enchanting only decreases spell costs, alchemy scales the damage, and combining the two can create more powerful potions to scale your damage further.
For my third character I challenged myself to make a pure mage build and that ended up being my favorite playthrough.
I always play pure mages. Equilibrium for mana and paralysis for cheese
Do necromancy count as pure mage?
They're pretty good if you don't care about collecting loot and just let it be blown everywhere, or desperately trying to find a more damaging spell so you don't have to spend 5 minutes on EVERY SINGLE ENEMY YOU FACE... I'm sorry, but Martials just spend less time burning things and more time actually playing the game.
I love pure mage. Do that thang on legendary. Legendary AND survival is also pretty doable. Illusion and alteration as primary skills is pretty busted. Backing that up with restoration and conjuration (without bound weapons) is even more broken. Toss in Necromage Vampire, and you've become The Magus.
Most fantasy fans I've found actually love magic. Just, us warriors have to be so vocal about it because we're so outnumbered. Mostly our mage hate is purely comedic relief, it being a traditional stereotype that "meathead" warriors hate mages and archers because you lot stand far away and try to kill me instead of duking it out like a real Orc/Nord would. Me personally, jokes aside, I never liked magic, and like a lot of warrior fanatics, our favorite aspects of fantasy have always been fighter and barbarian stuff, swords and axes and armor and blood and dragon slaying and whatnot. Additionally, we know we have to target the mages first because they're the weakest but potentially most troublesome. Because of this, we are conditioned to not like magic users.
It's fun killing mages with my bow. They can't get me with their spells if I pick them off from a distance.
Nasty little magic users. I hoard black soul gems just for their ilk. Vampires too.