Armor for Pure Mage?

[GreekIrish]

I never use weapons. Just conjuration and destruction. I'm not really sure what will be the most effective to wear. I play on Master with some other difficulty increasing mods, so I'm trying to figure out what's the most efficient.

 

Any ideas?

[Zefelius]

This might sound dumb... but I thought mages didn't typically wear armor. I'm a bit of a noob, so maybe I just don't know. But my understanding is that magic robes are best for mages for amplifying magic and such---and you can still get defense through ward spells and alteration. Otherwise perhaps light armor would be a good bet since it doesn't sound like you're using weapons anyway... Edited January 19, 2012 by Zefelius

[BlashyrkhRavendark]

As mage you will benefit more from spending 6 perk points in Alteration. Dual Casting and Mage Armor perks. Eventually you will get the spells Ebony Flesh (Expert) and Dragonhide (Master). Oh and another essential caster tree is restoration that allows you to use wards which is the casters answer to a physical shield.

 

Blashyrkh lvl 71 Necro Mage

Edited January 19, 2012 by BlashyrkhRavendark

[BCbrad]

Would've loved to see an armor type like Oblivions Mithral. Nice light chain mail, with decent protection.

[thesapien]

This might sound dumb... but I thought mages didn't typically wear armor. I'm a bit of a noob, so maybe I just don't know. But my understanding is that magic robes are best for mages for amplifying magic and such---and you can still get defense through ward spells and alteration. Otherwise perhaps light armor would be a good bet since it doesn't sound like you're using weapons anyway...

 

Funny thing, that was my first thought. But then I remembered someone familiar with TES previous games pointing me to a link that showed mages only wearing heavy armor. But I think with Skyrim things have changed and mages don't tend to wear armor anymore. Like others have shown above, mages now have plenty of options for warding (blocking), hardening their flesh (armor), and healing (restoration) and shouldn't be spending perks for wearing armor.

[TimF]

A mage that want to use destruction on master effectively w/o mods should avoid extra levels, and thus chose either magic or real armor. Alteration armor grants 300 with ebonyflesh (and max for a short time with master) + magic resistance + set of other useful spells. Real armor grants permanent max, but gives nothing but armor and forces taking both armor and smithing. Personally, I chose magic armor. And stay below/at level 40 with pure mage. Another thing is that leveling alteration is a piece of cake. Take a mission in magic college that improves your magic restoration for some time, and spam any alteration spell in battle. Or stuff like waterbreathing. Edited January 19, 2012 by TimF

[FordPerfect]

In Morrowind there was an unarmoured skill. :psyduck:

 

Mages that wear armour are battlemages. They fight in the lines of battle and so get hit with smashy stabby things at times when they aren't melting their enemies faceplates with their magic.

 

Pure mages devote themselves entirely to their craft and aren't line of battle units. They can melt faceplates as well or better than their battlemage cousins, but since they're unarmoured smashy stabby things tend to hurt them much more. Their level of skill in the arcane arts is much greater than those of a battlemage as they haven't divided their time between training, both technical and physical, in the use of armour and the schools of magic. They're the ones behind the lines of battle calling down asteroids the size of the crystal tower to smite legions of enemies at a time.

 

Sadly such mages are not part of Skyrim. So unless you're roleplaying there is little advantage to not wearing armour. In that case you probably want armour with enchantments that reduce the cost of casting destruction spells if you're not going to use weapons as you'll be spamming a whole lot of spells to kill things.