Can't block with spell in off-hand

[Barely_Able]

Currently it appears that you can't block with a one-handed weapon if you have a spell equipped in the off-hand. I think that really needs to change if Battle-mages and those types of builds are going to be viable.

[saice]

since block is your off hand button it would mean having to give block is own button.

Not impossible but something they would have to change to make happen.

But right now I've been finding the spell casting meh. There is a lot of interesting spells. But they all end up costing to much. Ive been a few good hours into a battle mage and I'm about to just start over without magic. Because every combat spell I find cost more to do less then the starting fire spell or the ice spell you can find. And duel wielding spells (combat in one hand heal in the other) does not work well as you just burn through your mana and suck down all your mana pots. So I ended up with 1 being Ice + Hand axe 2 Shield offhand + Ice 3 Shield off hand + heal and 4 being a bow. This worked fairly well if you pull one guy and run to fight one and one ... which ends up being really slow. You later find a nice heal regen and when I got that just gave up. I found I would pop that and then just go melee and that was more effective then all my spell casting I had done for the last few hours.

So here I am re-rolling probably just plan melee. I would go theving archer but lack of finding places to craft at worries me that that will also just fall back to melee to often.

[Vlad_The_Impaler]

Originally posted by saice:

since block is your off hand button it would mean having to give block is own button.

Not impossible but something they would have to change to make happen.

But right now I've been finding the spell casting meh. There is a lot of interesting spells. But they all end up costing to much. Ive been a few good hours into a battle mage and I'm about to just start over without magic. Because every combat spell I find cost more to do less then the starting fire spell or the ice spell you can find. And duel wielding spells (combat in one hand heal in the other) does not work well as you just burn through your mana and suck down all your mana pots. So I ended up with 1 being Ice + Hand axe 2 Shield offhand + Ice 3 Shield off hand + heal and 4 being a bow. This worked fairly well if you pull one guy and run to fight one and one ... which ends up being really slow. You later find a nice heal regen and when I got that just gave up. I found I would pop that and then just go melee and that was more effective then all my spell casting I had done for the last few hours.

So here I am re-rolling probably just plan melee. I would go theving archer but lack of finding places to craft at worries me that that will also just fall back to melee to often.

You have to put points into the magic attribute, as well as make sure to take the perk which reduces mana usage if you're using anything other than light armor (which you probably are using, medium-heavy) once I got this perk I found I could spam spells non-stop easily

[saice]

Originally posted by Vlad_The_Impaler:

You have to put points into the magic attribute, as well as make sure to take the perk which reduces mana usage if you're using anything other than light armor (which you probably are using, medium-heavy) once I got this perk I found I could spam spells non-stop easily

Yes I have done that. I went full mage for stats. Even with the regen perk once you dealing with 3 or more at once that take 3-4 shots form your spell to kill it gets rough

[saice]

I wanted to come back to this. I put in some more time on my mage build and wanted to share for anyone else that might be having some issues with doing battle mage or wanting to try full mage. Mostly because not a lot is explained to you about some of the systems.

First and biggest one. If you want to really go deep in mage give up on medium and heavy armor. After some testing your armor type effects your mana costs for casting. this can mean casting a few more spells before having to dip into potions. It might effect regen also but ive not really been able to notice much if any. But it does effect casting.

The other big thing have a load out that has a shield in your off hand if you are having issues with guys getting into melee. You can block with the shield while casting in your main hand.

Use Alt Dodge if can be better then block in a lot of cases where your trying to do a melee/caster setup

That is really it. It is still a rough play style until we get some levels and skills and I highly suggest you pick up every alcohol, herb, and mushroom looking thing you find. You need murshrooms and alcohol for mana potions and even with high regen you get for stacking your stat and skill will need them in longer fights.

Now of course you can go heavy armor just relize it will make your mana costs higher but I would assume later game when your spirit is really high this might not be an issue anymore.

Edit: moments after posting this I leveled up and there is a tier three skill to lower the mana cost on medium and heavy armor. So if you want to do a paladin sort of build you want your spirit at 11 asap to beable to bring your mana costs down

[Ylight94]

I wish you could have the block button on another button when you have a spell in the hand so that you can like block with the weapon you have or whatever