How do you use blood magic?

[Kalvix]

Got myself blood magic thinking it would be some great spells that really increase my mages power.. but so far its just a sustain spell to increase power and while I don't notice much of an increase in power I do notice myself dying in a few shots despite putting 2 points in magic and 1 in constitution every level.

Is there a way to make it work properly or is blood magic basically just to get the end spells and never use the sustain one.

Edit: Just did a comparison.. with blood magic on frost spell did 46 damage to a wolf, without it on it did 46... is this a bug or am I doing something horribly wrong cos right now its basically just a way to make myself die quicker with no upside

[Lucan Fenix]

I could be wrong but i dont think the skill Blood Magic make your spells more powerful, it just uses hp instead of mana and allows you to access the spells in the Blood mage skillset. Although the Specialisation itself gave you +2 spellpower when you chose it so it kind of did your spells a little bit more powerfull but that has nothing to so with wether you have blood magic active or not.

[Kalvix]

Ah so basically its worthless till you get some of the good blood magic spells

[Lucan Fenix]

Yes and no, it can be used in an emergency if you have no lyrium potions but you have to be careful. if you don't use it on your main char you could try setting in tactics to activate it when self hp is 100% and deactivate at 30% so you dont have to keep track yourself.

[Emmental]

Blood wound and blood control are devastating. Blood magic (the sustainable) is useful when you run out mana or for casting if you have a ton of other sustainables on.

A powerful combination is blood mage and arcane warrior (at high levels imo). Use your mana for sustainables like rock armor, arcane shield, miasma etc and switch to blood magic to throw in fireballs and such.

[Cacaw!]

Blood magic is beastly. And funny how in reality you walk around being maybe the biggest criminal in Ferelden and demontrating extremely violent acts of terror even on puny human farmers.

[Hjelpmooglene]

Well, getting the specialization gives you a +2 boost in spellpower which increases spell damage.