Schools of magic

[Whisky312]

What is the best school of magic to follow? i played as a dark elf using mainly destructruction maagic and as a breton using mainly illiusion but neither of these two styles seemed to be very effective

[Matth85]

You don't use 1 school of magic, you use them all. Destruction alone is useless at higher levels, alteration alone is only defensive, conjuration is OK mid level alone, illusion is useless at higher level and restoration is useless alone.

I would suggest either:

 

A) Everything. Together they form something quite usefull. Of course, only fitting for 100% pure mage.

B) Conjuration, Restoration and Destruction. Your summon, companion and dog does all your work, while you heal them and send out a few fireballs here and there.

or lastly

C) Destruction, Alteration,Restoration and Illusion. Now you do all the hard work, using alteration to defend yourself, illusion to break up a enemy pack, heal with restoration and use your destruction spells to rain down death to the enemies.

 

Alone none is good enough. You can, of course, slap together different styles all together. Illusion + sneak is overpowered. Heavy aromor + 2 handed weapon + conjuration is overpowered. The list goes on.

[darklight12345]

i've learned, it seems, that pure any school is rather horrible. Generally you need to have two schools going and then either 1 handed/archery or a third school. Sanguine rose is incredibly for a mage to use, i'd always recommend getting it. Getting the right companion is always good, and equiping him to benefit your style of magic can make the companion simply fantastic. Also, ECHANTMENT. Once you get real high in enchanting you can get 25-40% a school per item. Generally i do a hood of fortify magicka/regen, robes of fortify magicka/regen and then everything else is a school reducer. I also heavily recommend getting the tytanis mod, or the ring of summoning and Midas Magic mod if possible.

 

my mages are like this

 

Conjuration

Destruction

One-handed/archery

 

and i generally have some thralls late game or just a staff of summoning or atronarch spell to beef me up. Then, depending on the enemy i'll either use adept/expert des spells to support or i'll conjure up a bound bow/sword and support the atronarchs/thralls.

 

Illusion

Conjuration

Restoration

 

This is a rather odd one, i do the same stuff with the thralls/summoning/atronarchs that i did before, but i use illusion and restoration to basicaly support the thralls. Kinda boring but its similar to the White Mage idea.

 

Destruction

Alteration

 

this is a tough one, but very fun once you do it. The basic idea is getting a companion (or if you added in conjuration) thralls and giving them armor with high magicka resistance enchantments. You then use alteration on you to make yourself pretty well defended while you cast master level magic. The point of the enchanted companion is that if you want to focus on Master Fire, you can get him near 100% resistance with just 2 items easy, which allows you spam all fire magic without any worry what so ever.