How do YOU play a Conjuration Mage? (spoilers)

[masternoxx1]

Through long play I have finally settled at a style... my guy is not really a mage at all but a 1-handed warrior and part sneaky..

What I do is use sneak all the time (unless weak enemies), when see an enemy no I dont attack them but cast a nice Frost Atronach 12ft in front of me once the enemy is engaged I un-sneak and rush in with the sword, sometimes put a poison on it while rushing,

works really well except in cramped spaces, where frost 'nach is really annoying.

One thing bothering me for a long time was switching to bow if you still want distance but now I switch to chain lightning staff so as not to occupy both hands, either way kind of sucks compared to sword because you miss a LOT.

I wonder how others play the Conjurer?

[SomeMMORPGplayer]

sneak, light armor x4 , fortify conjuration( cheesed) on everything, stack hp sneak health regen on everything.
dont get a folower as they ruin sneak.
for the bow part: use the conjuration projiectile.
also 0-max-0 is the only viable buiild in skyrim

[Weyrlock]

Conjuration in vanilla skyrim is not really powerful by itself until maxed or nearly maxed, thankfully there are ways to level it fast even at the beginning of the game. But I guess is always nice to have a summon in most fights and you can surely roleplay with it, especially on lower difficulties.

[LostSoul]

Conjuration in Skyrim is...not good. Whether attronachs or 'zombies' they're fragile and weak. They're not strong enough to be a useful damage source, and they don't have enough health to be meat shields. They last about as long as they take to summon, resulting in a complete waste of time. I've lost track of how often a Storm attronach dies without dealing a single point of damage. The only exception are Dead Thralls. Kind of. Almost. You can improve and enchant their gear to make them reasonably durable and powerful. But instead they suffer from having totally buggered AI that frequently renders them nearly useless. And unlike other summons or companions, they don't teleport to you when they fall behind or get lost (which they do, often). Nor do they fast travel properly with you. And your dead thrall can just randomly despawn, taking their gear with them to the void. Not that it matters. Because the only gear they will use is the gear they spawned with. And then there's the constant moaning (thank god for the mod that shuts them up).

Skyrim Conjuration gets a 0 out of 10. Very bad. Would not recommend.

[Spirit]

fire atronach is useful at low levels because it distracts enemies. i always send them first then attack the distracted enemy. to get early levels raise all rats in bleak falls barrow and use flames spell to kill them, gives fast levels

without mods only the dremoras are really strong summons. at higher levels even they get destroyed fast by mage enemies

ice and storm atronachs are good because ice can stunlock enemies and storm casts spells.

[Poil]

Fire and storm atronachs are really hampered by having the terrible ranged fighting "ai". Instead of dealing damage they spend more time backpedaling around corners and behind obstacles doing nothing.

Having said that, one of the most fun builds I've tried was conjuration and illusion only (no invisibility but some regular sneaking).

[masternoxx1]

I am using frost atronach, agree flame atronach is weak, reanimate is too slow and weak, other summons all been weak, but frost atronach can melee, its slow moving, but I just recast it if it gets behind me.

Compared to Oblivion Clannfear its weak tho

my follower is not ruining my sneak but some followers do I think

[masternoxx1]

Flame atronach can be helpful in quite a few archer areas, but melee areas thumbs down

[Poil]

Originally posted by masternoxx1:

Flame atronach can be helpful in quite a few archer areas, but melee areas thumbs down

But they deal fire damage to all enemies around them for higher dps than their slow attacks and explode when dying so you can easily tell when to conjure up a new one.

[-={LG}=-]

I play it as if I were a master thief who knows a couple spells.