Lightning Mage Build

[Crimzin]

Coming from an Arch-mage of 100 in every magic school and has every perk that's useful in the mage trees. You are vastly underestimating the power of alchemy, enchanting, and smithing. You may be a mage but a bow or a single-handed sword are better use of your time when you're out-of-mana. The bound weapons are bad if you have access to endless Ebony weapons or Daedric weapons.

 

I prefer Staves.

 

Staves are worse if you don't have enough cheap soul gems to support using them a lot. 2x enchants on a full set of ebony armor can let a caster with nearly no points in health survive far more than it should in melee. Allowing you to change your character's play-style but continue to take full advantage of your mage perks. Draugr overlords will nearly one-shot any caster without Dragonhide on with their bows, so it's good to adapt(instead of exploiting corners). I'm all about adapting in the strongest ways possible so here's what I recommend for crafting..

 

2x Alteration and 1x Magicka regen for helm and chest. Chest gets health regen instead...

One-handed damaged and health regen for the ring and neck...

Frost resist and fire resist on your shield and just fire resist on your boots. Boots also get one-handed damage..

 

So you can play as a warrior without all the Stamina or health attributes(due to the magicka regen enchant you can cast Grand healing to fill up your stamina and health endlessly) and Paralyze a whole room or a few people and cast whatever spells afterwards.(Dragonhide is my favorite here, it's like invulnerability with the health regen) You can choose to weave spells in at whatever pace you please since you have a gazzilion mana or slash them down with your two favorite one-handers or a your shield and sword. If you use the shield, you're nearly immune to all dragon damage and fire and frost spells..

 

Not to mention it's fun mixing warrior skills with your lightning playstyle. There's a lot of fun to be had using your entire bar of mana in any way as a melee character and this is all due to an 8 perk investment...

5x of the first enchanting perk so it's 100% more powerful

1x the next one in the middle that increases skill enchantments 25%

1x the next one in the same tree that increases health/magicka/stamina enchantments 25%(Corpus)

1x the final perk in enchanting double effect

 

Smithing and Alchemy are amazing in their own right but a caster benefits from Enchanting the most. Hint: You can enchant fortify alchemy for retarded destruction potions

 

edit: Btw my personal favorite is using a bow over anything else but this new melee setup is so much fun.

Edited December 7, 2011 by Crimzin

[jdelay82]

honestly, if i want to play as a mage i will never ever consider using something else than a dagger

smithing is also no option

i am a mage! i dont have much muscles, i'm sing th power of my mind!

 

i like this build very much, mine is similar (mixing with ice)

one question: which difficulty does OP play on?

[jy02521671]

wearing morokei means you forfiet mage armor bonus, how did you manage early game? i have seen archer with light armor gets one shot by dragon, i see no reason how you would survive a dragon attack with this build

[psalmist]

Nice build. It makes a lot of sense. Thank you for posting. You could also use lightning storm. It takes a while to cast but it has a good dps per magicka ratio. To reduce your vulnerability during master casting you can use ethereal form shout while casting. Same thing with Dragon hide, and mass paralysis.

[psalmist]

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[psalmist]

wearing morokei means you forfiet mage armor bonus, how did you manage early game? i have seen archer with light armor gets one shot by dragon, i see no reason how you would survive a dragon attack with this build

Use Mage armor (alteration) and don't stand in dragon breath. It's not hard if you know how to play a mage. Your not really a tank, you have to kite.