Pure Mages - the most effective and sensible class?

[Bu]

I've been roleplaying a pure mage Breton for over 500h now (since the original game) and it feels like a glass aircraft carrier - extremely powerful and versatile, but handles damage rather poorly.

I have legendary skills on every school of magic (no weapons, no smithing, no armor, sneak or alchemy) and have only invested on Magicka points, so that totals a Lv.70 character with nearly 1k points of Magicka (enchanted clothes, Lv.100 Speech which comes naturally in every playthrough, and the additional level from the 90 skill books). The character also *never* drinks any potion (enchanting potions included) and relies entirely on her enchanted gear and spells.

This class is perfectly sensible for roleplaying because it's a pure mage and it actually works in the long run, in fact, you can easily steamroll through Legendary difficulty with it, so long you're careful and use your spells wisely; unlike a Warrior that's also a master enchanter/alchemist, which never made any sense to me RPG-wise. Not to mention that a pure mage Dovahkiin in itself adds a whole new epic to the lore.

Spells like Clairvoyance, Detect Life/Dead, Soul Trap and Candlelight gives you all the support you need to survive and get things done more easily, while Paralyze, the conjured Daedra/Undead, Call to Arms, Frenzy and Pacify, Guardian Circle, Dragonhide and Destruction with the cannon spells and Whirlwind Cloak gives you a massive advantage in combat like no other class.

Recently I've been wanting to start a new game as a warrior, but the fact that I'll lose all that versatility and the tactical approach of the pure mage really keeps me off. And roleplaying a warrior that relies on spells to make it interesting is outright rubbish in my opinion.

Anyone else RPing a pure mage?

Interested on starting a pure mage playthrough?

[OnlyOffensive]

From all dumb ideas that skyrim had, you actually found less annoying imo. Dual class/specialization is a common canon among most of games, battlemage or spellblade is as canon as it can be. Breton spellblade is a classic mix for TES games, imo only orc mix doesnt make sense all others are perfectly fine.

[SeriousCCIE]

I actually had a hard time keeping the mana reserves up to properly put up a magic shield barrier and cast offensive spells. Eventually, I decided to just conjure things and raise corposes to act as offensive barriers, but always had to rely on wearing very non-canon armor for a mage.

Considering armor wearing doesn't strictly prohibit nor greatly harm spell use, the rewards for going the pure route just didn't seem good enough to me.

I could enchant a bow and poison arrows and get things softened up from a much farther distance and then when they approached me, blast them with magic or just have my conjured minions go soften the enemy up further.

I also never really got into the conjuring of weapons other than to learn the skill to gain experience in two handed or one handed when otherwise lacking a suitable effective alternative.

To that extent, I have to admit that my playstyle was poor -- from a purist of any class, from any perspective. But, it allowed me to complete all the arcs of the game and taste everything there was on offer without being bound.

It may have been more fun to hit the max as a specific class, and then do it again for another class (like be a great warrior and then decide to retire and hit the books and become a mage), but it was just too tempting to practice alteration while running around and restorattion
after proving to be a not so very great warrior.

[Incunabulum]

Definitely not in Skyrim.

Spell damage doesn't scale with skill level (unlike all the other weapons) to start with.

Conjured weapons can't be improved.

Eveyone who does pure mage ends upusing Conjuration tanks and kites around with ice magic. Nothing else is really effective.

[Zsrai]

I find pure mages a bit boring, especially without mods. Pure mage being Destruction for damage, that is. I really like Spellthieves a lot, and Spellswords too. Arcane Archer types are pretty fun, and then after that I start preferring builds like Paladins or (old D&D style) Clerics more than either pure Mages or things like Battlemages. Relying heavily on Destruction just starts to get boring for me, especially in Vanilla where it doesn't scale.

I find Spellthief/Sneak Mage really fun, because you can just abuse the hell out of Illusion and Sneak and get around places in some interesting ways.

[Malsvir Ixen]

I got a Nord Cryomancer who wears Heavy Armor + Dukaan. Given Ordinator Perk Overhaul gives nice buffs for specializing in a specific destruction magic I'm just tearing ♥♥♥♥ up. Coupled with Frost Breath + the Frost Breath upgrade from the Black Books and I'm good. Even have Apcolypse Spell Pack to give me Blizzard Tornado or something that looks like that and its just flipping awesome.

[Dangalf]

Conjured weapons can't be improved, but they also gain the benefits from their respective skill trees; One-Handed perks for Bound Sword, Bow perks for Bound Bow, etc,. It's useful for builds that don't want to bother with the carry-weight of weapons, and it's also nice to have that little double-dip damage and soul trap on hit.

For reference, my currenct character is a Breton Mage that uses Light Armor and Destruction+Conjuration mainly for damage and then I switch to any utility I might otherwise need. I didn't find Mage Armor to be very tempting because if I got hit by almost anything before casting Ebonyflesh/Dragonhide I'd be nearly dead instantly.

[Midnight]

Unmodded mage in Skyrim runs a fine line between being completely useless and being completely broken. On one hand you have nonexistent destruction magic scaling on the other hand you have stuff like conjuration and paralysis.

Honestly, I don't know how you find the game challenging at all, all of my pure mage playthroughs end at around level 35 when I become a god among men that no enemy can touch. Muffle + Invis you're undetectable. Anything gets close and you can just spam Paralysis and keep entire rooms locked down. And why would you need to kill stuff yourself when you can conjure 2 dremoras and have them tear through everything. If one dies just conjure a new one.

And those Dremoras don't get affected by pesky drawbacks like difficulty scaling so they do massive damage even at legendary. And all that is BEFORE enchanting.

For mages the game is only as challenging as you make it and that means not using Enchanting, Paralysis, Dremoras, Invisibility or Dual Cast stagger at which point you might as well go spellblade and just heal yourself while hacking away.

[Bu]

People saying mages = destruction school clearly haven't played the game for long enough.

Originally posted by 💀 N E C R 0 💀:

You're not supposed to be use weapons as a pure mage though, bound weapons included. Weapons require physical strength, which in itself contradicts the purpose of an actual mage. Spellswords are not mages, neither are armor-wearing spellcasters. The whole purpose of the schools of magic in TES is to rely entirely on the magicka energy from Aetherius and to shape that magicka according to your needs, from mind to matter, and that's the main reason why I picked a pure mage over a spellsword or an armored spellcaster.

Certainly it takes longer to kill single opponents. An enchanted weapon deals times more damage than any destruction spell, but the versatility of the pure mage, specially in crowded situations is imo what sets it apart from all other classes.

It's honestly pretty petty to see a supposed warrior casting healing spells and drinking a shipment of potions to stay alive, as well as relying on enchanted magical gear to actually make any decent amount of damage.

A single pure mage can suppress and terminate 50 Death Overlords in 8 minutes simply by using Frenzy, Fireball and Guardian Circle. Pair that with a Breton + Agent of Mara + Magic Resistance 3/3 + Atronach Stone and you can do that the same against 5 Legendary Dragons, something no warrior in this game can do without relying on heavily enchanted gear, potions and possibly spells.

Pure mages are just as badass as they come.

[Bu]

Originally posted by Midnight:

Not useless, just plain overpowered. It's the most useful class actually. Clairvoyance, Detect Life/Dead, Soultrap, Candlelight, those are handy spells no other pure class could [rp-wise] use, unless you're roleplaying a hybrid.

That paired with Illusion (mostly Pacify and Frenzy), conjured Daedra/raised undead and your character can basically just sit down and watch, or simply run through dungeons without causing a single point of damage.

[Zsrai]

Originally posted by Ariel:

Pure mages are just as badass as they come.

Yeah and that power level is what makes them boring as sin to play. Playing with no challenge present = snoozefest.

[Bu]

Originally posted by Zsrai:

Yeah and that power level is what makes them boring as sin to play. Playing with no challenge present = snoozefest.

It still requires some tactical approach nonetheless. Don't want that one ebony arrow hitting you in the back of the head and sending you flying across the map.

[Malsvir Ixen]

Being a "pure" Mage doesn't mean you can't wear Armor. Battlemages are still "pure" mages. Honestly any class can say they are a "pure" mage if they use more magic than they do physical skills. Even TES lore shows that to be true. Not many mages in TES lore were your definition of "Pure" mage.

[Agent Chieftain]

Pretty sure pure warrior and pure rogue types trump mages in terms of combat. Don't get me wrong, mages can still be pretty broken. But warriors and rogues are potentially more broken. We all know how busted stealth can be in Skyrim. With the right gear, sneak builds get the highest single hit damage in the game, both ranged and melee.

And warriors are simply the most reliable and consistant in combat. With Legendary forged gear, and all weapon perks, Warriors dish out the most consistant damage in live combat. Not to mention the fact that skills like Shield Charge are just plain busted. It's literally a spammable Fus Ro Dah, that makes you resistant to magic and ranged attacks while the shield is up.

Most broken thing about mages is the Illusion tree. While you can turn just about anything into an ally (or at the very least, make it an enemy of your enemy) this can be a slow way to go about things. Other than that, you have conjured Wrathmen and Dremora, which again, can be a little slow.

[Malsvir Ixen]

Originally posted by Agent Chieftain:

Pretty sure pure warrior and pure rogue types trump mages in terms of combat. Don't get me wrong, mages can still be pretty broken. But warriors and rogues are potentially more broken. We all know how busted stealth can be in Skyrim. With the right gear, sneak builds get the highest single hit damage in the game, both ranged and melee.

And warriors are simply the most reliable and consistant in combat. With Legendary forged gear, and all weapon perks, Warriors dish out the most consistant damage in live combat. Not to mention the fact that skills like Shield Charge are just plain busted. It's literally a spammable Fus Ro Dah, that makes you resistant to magic and ranged attacks while the shield is up.

Most broken thing about mages is the Illusion tree. While you can turn just about anything into an ally (or at the very least, make it an enemy of your enemy) this can be a slow way to go about things. Other than that, you have conjured Wrathmen and Dremora, which again, can be a little slow.

To be fair I think the TC is showing just a bit of bias.

[Zsrai]

Oh it's well known that stealth archery is utterly game breakingly OP. It trivializes the game more than any other combat style. Magic is either boringly broken (stun locking with 0 magicka cost Destruction spells) or just broken (Illusion, to a slightly lesser degree Conjuration). The warrior skills are probably the least broken out of them all, but still provide a full package of OP-ness.

Basically, Bethesda made the game too damn easy. This is why using mods and/or houserules are a must I feel.