Battle Mage

[arunpal]

I am making a High Elf Battlemage.

The skills i am going for are:

One-Handed, all the perks taking out mace and axe-15

Heavy Armor, all the perks-12

Block,all perks-13

Destruction,all perks taking out frost & shock so only fire- 11

Smithing, all heavy perks plus arcance enchanter- 7

Enchanting, all perks taking it out the non-fire ones-11

Sneak, all perks but the last two-11

 

Totals to 80

 

Do you think this is a good skill set to use and could someone give some advice on how to distribute my magika,health and stamina.

[jimsippo]

Hey arunpal,

 

I would take another magic skill instead of sneak personally. Sneak will slow your game down to a crawl and with all that heavy armour on and tooled up weaponry from smithing and enchanting you wont need it. If you took conjuration for example you wouldn't need to sneak anyway as you would have minions you could just plonk in the way of anyone you don't want to get too close to you. Send them in first as a tank and then run in and burn and slash the enemies up while they are distracted. You could get by without shield perks too probably as you'll most likely have a sword in one hand and a flaming orb of death in the other. Be aggressive and hit them hard. Attack attack attack! It's a much more exciting way to play.

 

I don't know what would be more important out of magicka, health and stamina as you're likely to need all three quite a lot. At the start I'd say to stay quite even, but then as your magic skills progress I would concentrate on this so you can drop some big magic or prepare a ward for charging enemies and a cloak spell and then finish them off up close as the damage over time from the fire does its stuff.

 

Hope this helps,

Jim

[arunpal]

Thanks Jim it really helped and thanks for the quick response.

[justwannaddl]

I'd go with lightening specialization instead of fire myself since the lightening bolts come out near instantaneously.

[Lord Garon]

The way I play, Mages seem to be the most powerful characters. I think Conjuration is the most powerful school, with Destruction a valuable second, and Alteration right up there. I play hardcore and have created what seems like an infinite number of characters by now. I've only been able to finish two play throughs and those were both with mages; every other character (dozens of them) has died at some point.

 

Archers are the bane of Mage existence. Mage Armor spells or real armor is mandatory. Both is even better. You're in a race between "Battle" and "Mage"; improving both will take a lot of perks and careful selection, especially early on. My most successful builds concentrated on Mage first, then Battle. Contrary to many opinions I've seen in the forums, a well built mage is one of the most powerful low level characters in the game (vanilla Skyrim on Expert).

 

Arcane smithing, Steel smithing and Sky Forge weapons can take you a LONG way with minimal perks. Using a sword and board probably means ranged attack magic; I like Frost, especially Ice Storm which gets bad guys even behind obstacles and slows them down to boot. Careful with your Magicka/Health ratio; a lot of Magicka won't help if you can be 1-shot. With enchanting and magic perks, a little bit of Magicka can go a long ways and extra Health is ALWAYS a good choice for that unavoidable melee fight with a Boss.

 

Sneak is nice during certain quests, but I wouldn't focus on it too early; grab them when you don't have a good combat or magic perk available; you're a Battle Mage, not a Battle Thief, after all. Enchanting will really give you a Battle Mage to wreak havok with; improve Enchanting as quickly as possible. Good luck.

[CalibanX]

Any strategy you pick is doeable with enough Potions on hand. With potions, you never really have to worry about builds, if you have enough Healing/Magica/Stamina potions you will always be fine. That's why I now don't use them. It makes the game a lot more interesting.

 

In general, Mages problem solve by having a variety of spell options to deal with different kinds of enemies & scenarios. So, don't get stuck doing the same tactic for every fight. Some fights will go a lot easier if you can Summon an Atronach or Fury your enemies to fight each other. Almost all variations of Battle Mage are really good at most combats cuz they're not helpless when their Magicka runs out. Don't sweat it. Just charge it with spells blazing and switch to one handed when you have to and things will probably go your way more often than not. :)

[jyujinkai]

i do not get it.. how can you be a mage in heavy armour.. won't you run out of mana in like a single spell?

[Deleted3507349User]

Well, I dressed Marcurio up once in plate steel, and he was one tough killing machine.