Are there any tricks for making powerful magicka efficient spells besides weakness stacking? Similar to the way a 20 point elemental damage, 1 second 100% elemental weakness enchantment does 40 elemental damage without the charge drain of a 40 point enchantment.

I've tried making spells with short duration weakness spells tagged onto the end the way I enchant my weapons, but it doesn't seem to have an effect unless I add several seconds of magic weakness to the spell to make it stack with itself, and that nukes my mana pool.

Other methods for efficiency include multiple damage types - 10 points each of fire, frost, shock, and damage health costs less than 40 points of any one by itself. Similarly if you spread that damage out over more time, it costs less.

I'm aware of that, and always have a solid collection of tri or quad element dots. For a primary nuke, I'm interested in the most efficient way to use weakness spells.

The only effective way to use weakness spells is to give them a duration of several seconds, since they have no effect on other spell effects cast in the same spell.

I've never found anything more useful and magicka efficient than on-touch 1 second of damage and 3 seconds each of weakness to element and weakness to magic. You can reduce the cast cost of the damage element by doing less damage over more time, but then you have to extend the duration of the weakness effects to compensate, and that not only ups the cast cost again (though it can still end up a point or two cheaper) but complicates casting, since, in order to maximize the damage, you have to be sure to wait long enough after each cast for the damage to run its full duration. For the point or two you might save, to me, it's just not worth it to have to be sure to pause long enough between casts. It should be feasible to do 2 seconds of damage with 3 seconds of weakness and save some magicka, but I don't like having just a 1 second window in which to get off the next cast in order to both maximize the damage and be sure that the weaknesses are still running. So I just stick with 1 second of damage and 3 seconds of weakness. So long as they're on-touch (on-target is FAR more expensive), that seems to be about the best you can do. At least it's the best I've been able to come up with.

I just set the spell up with enough damage so that the final cast cost works out to, at most, about 1/5 of my total magicka pool, just so that I know I can always get off as many casts as I need to kill an opponent. I design my characters to level relatively slowly, and that seems to always be sufficient to kill whatever I'm facing at a given level in two or three casts-- very rarely four.

You mean aside from "stacking"?

Well as mentioned above damage spells are more efficient if spread out over time. For example, 10 points shock damage over 15 seconds costs considerably less than 150 points over 1 second.

But let's say you have a weakness to shock 100% for 3 seconds. Then within the 3 seconds you cast the shock damage 10 points for 15 seconds spell. that will give you a full 300 points of damage, using only a 3 second weakness spell. That's pretty efficient.

But let's say you make two spells with different names for shock damage 10 points over 15 seconds. Then you cast your weakness to shock 100% for 3 seconds. And within those three seconds you cast both damage spells. then you get a full 600 points damage!

After reading the talk page on Useful Enchantments on UESP, I found some valuable info on weakness spells, one of the most important being that the target's weakness only matters at the second the damage spell is cast. A spell with a 15 second duration doesn't need 15 seconds of weakness - the weakness effect simply modifies a correlating spell's magnitude, so it only has to be active when the damage spell first makes contact.

In other words, a spell that does 10 damage over 15 seconds actually changes when it hits a weakened target. If the target has 100% weakness, the spell becomes 20 damage over 15 seconds, so even if the weakness effect expires immediately after the damage spell strikes the target, the damage spell will continue to deal 100% more damage because the damage spell itself has been affected.

Looks like a kick in the nuts for traditional mages to me, since I can't think of a way to get around lengthy weakness spells for straight-up nuking. A hybrid could use marksman/melee/conjuration along with long duration spells, using 2 second or so weakness spells to conserve magicka, but I don't see a way around fairly long duration weakness spells for a character that relies on high damage 1 second duration spells. Besides stacking Magic weakness, of course, which I really dislike because it feels like cheating, but meh. A lot like stacking fort magicka/fort int spells into infinity for ungodly magicka.

Edit: lol, I guess I should have read Savlian's post better, because I basically stated the same thing he did.

so weakness spells are stackeble? does this mean that you can cast a 100% weakness twice to create 200% weakness, triple to get 300% weakness and so on?

No. The second spell will replace the first.

However, if you create two weakness spells with different names but the same effect, then they will "stack".

Weakness it magic is more interesting. Because weakness to magic affects all magic. And Weakness to Magic is itself Magic.

So if you create a weakness to magic 100% spell and cast it twice, technically it does not stack because the second replaces the first. However the first will magnify the second. So casting that spell twice will give you 200% weakness to magic.

There is an alternative. If, in addition to mastery of Destruction, you also have mastery of Restoration; you can tack in a 5 second long Absorb Magicka element to your spell.

"Elemental Touch" - on touch spell.....
Weakness to Magic 100% x 6 seconds
Absorb magic 5 points x 6 seconds (will recoup 30 points but add only ?~a dozen points to your spell cost? ) (60+ points by double tapping the target ).
Cold 4 points x 2 seconds
Fire 4 points x 2 seconds
Lightening x 2 seconds
Absorb Health x 2 seconds
Damage Health x 2 seconds
Paralyze x 1 second

This is a suprisingly cheap spell, and the stacking of damage to itself with double and triple taps is very nice. The paralyze makes sure they don't fight back.

What's the purpose of the 6 seconds on the weakness to magic? Since WtM is replacing itself instead of stacking, 1 second would be all that's needed, maybe 2 if covering for getting staggered (which wouldn't happen with the increasing long paralyze effect).

The absorb magic is a brilliant idea though, wish I had thought of that.

As I mention in post 9 above, weakness to magic will replace itself. But it also magnifies the second cast.

So casting the above spell twice will give you 200% weakness to magic with the second cast.

The basic weakness spell. Works best when useing a enchanted melee weapon, or enemies that like to stay close.



As you advance in the the magic schools you can add a paralyze effect in a updated spell. Hit them with the new spell then follow up with the older spell that's quoted. Whatever damage spell you apply after that will have it's damage magnified by 16x. This can be done, and more imporantly be pratical, with 75 skill in destruction.

Once at 100 destruction skill you can switch things from "on touch" to targeted AOE effects. Magicka cost will be extreme at 404 Magicka to cast both a weakness and damage spell for me. Any enemy caught in the 10ft AOE of these two spells will die (1400+ damage), unless they absorb a large chunk of both spells. So invest in alchemy and crank out those 0.1Wg "Restore Magicka" potions. Willpower alone won't be enough and those potions can throw in a absurb amount of magicka into your character in a hurry when you want to "go nuclear".

Even consider homebrew potions that both fortify and restore magicka at the same time. Shivering Isles has Blister Pod Cap, Red Kelp Gas Bladder and Fungas Stalk that can be combined to this effect. All three are easy to find.

I didn't ask about the purpose of weakness to magic, I asked about why you're wasting magicka on an overly long weakness effect when the duration is mostly irrelevant.

If you want to be a nuker-type character, the best way is to be sure that Fortify Intelligence and Fortify Magicka (in that order) are first in your custom spell effects list. Weakness to Magicka must be last, and any other Weakness must be after its related effect. Also, for Poison, it's best not to apply poison to a weapon that has WtPoison on it because the game reduces the poison effect in that case.

Basically, for nuking, you can boost your Int and Mag together allowing for up to 150 Mag cost spells, and then continually cast nonstop. This is also true for non-nuke effects, of course (Fortify Strength for carrying stuff after cleaning out someplace, for example). Just remember that you cannot stop casting or the magic "pool" will dry up. In that case, you'll have to wait to recharge (or quaff some potions, of course).

As far as specific effects, there are endless combinations and you'll have to choose based on your play style. I'd suggest choosing a targeted series as well as a touch series. For the latter, Absorb Health/Magicka/Fatigue (all together, mind you) is absolutely devastating IF they are combined with Illusion's Calm, especially when you specify a 10-15 foot radius. In such a case, you can stand in the midst of a crowd who you continually Calm and slowly drain them dry while they watch you helplessly.

Nice!

I guess I should add that my suggestions do not apply to enemies with Reflect Spell. Such enemies are the one true danger.

I'll also note that I play on max difficulty and easier difficulties would make such strategies... well, easier, of course.

It provides time for you to cast the second (and third) in a double tap (and triple tap). If set for 1 second, then by the time you hit your target with the repeat (second tap), the WtM part of your first cast would be worn off.
Three seconds is safe for a quick double tap, but 6 seconds lets your have room to move, strike, or what have you, .....and still get the second tap in for that golden 200% damage.

Just FYI, if you are spamming spells that include WtM, 3 secs is all you want or need, even for "Target" spells rather than "Touch" spells.

If you are using a bow, you'll want maybe 4 secs due to the long (at least 2 sec) draw time for bow and arrow.

If you want to cast single spells, move, and cast again... well, that's actually not the efficient way to use the magicka system, but you can do it if you want, of course. Why worry about moving without casting when you can simply spam and move while casting, especially when you lose magicka efficiency with the former option?

That wasn't my spell. It was Cane_Cliffjumper's spell.

I would guess that the reason for the 6 second weakness to magic is the 6 second absorb magic duration. if you can cast the spell again at just before 6 seconds then it become very efficient. Whereas if you only made it a 2 second weakness to magic you'd need to cast a second time within two seconds for the weakness to take effect, and so you'd be wasting most of the absorb magic effect.

I would say that the most efficient method for any spell is to spam and build the spell(s) accordingly. The one variance in that is that the cast time slightly varies (fraction of a second) depending on self/touch/target and whether or not you have a weapon/torch equipped. Aside from that, the casting will always be the same as you spam so it removes any human variance, reactions, etc.

For the absorb example, decrease duration and increase the strength. With WtM included, the strength doesn't even need to be increased if it is spammed becaise a couple extra casts will make up any difference, anyway.