Skyrim Master Difficulty Experience

Click here and disable ads!

Yep, playing pure mage with robes sucks and is extremely unbalanced. My mage got one-shotted even by most high-level archers on normal. I stopped playing that character or just turned on god mode because it was just idiotic after a while. Combined with a lack of any benefits with Enchanting or Smithig for mages, lack of spell creation, lack of spell damage scaling, and potions, mages are just exceptionally broken in Skyrim. Better to play a spellsword, you literally suffer no benefits whatsoever from wearing heavy armour etc.

aren't there any good armor spells?

The problem is that Skyrim (and Oblivion/FO3 before it) use a crappy armor system where you get a static amount of damage reduction % per armor. Getting 300 armor only provides 36% damage reduction, or a 50% increase in survivability. A 600 armor warrior/thief (which only requires you to wear 500 armor, each piece adds a hidden +25 on its own) provides 72% damage reduction, or a 350% increase in survivability. And keep in mind that 300 armor for a caster is end game level. A starting caster who uses half their mana on a low level spell might get 80 armor, for a whole 10% damage reduction.

TES has always had the "battlemage" archetype, a mage that wears heavy armor. That appears to be the only viable mage in Skyrim. Enchant that armor to reduce destruction spell cost and you can go to town with lightning bolts!

And yeah, skyrim's armor system is retarded, the damage reduction should scale with incoming damage rather than being an absolute percentage.

How does Skyrim's armour system work exactly? I know MW's had pretty nice way of calculating damage depending on AR (shame about no locations), I know oblivious used shitty percentage, but I thought Skyrim tried a hybrid of sorts?

Actual damage reduction is 12% of your total armor rating, so yeah it's a shitty percentage too. They just thought they'd be clever if they hid it.

Faggots.

Bethpizdy