My newest character has just exceeded 70 hours. She's a pure spellcaster with 0 destruction spellcost enchanted into her armor. I began using Sparks, then Chain Lightning in her early levels. These days she is using Thunderbolt almost excusively.

You know what I've never seen? Enemy casters running out of mana and charging at me with melee, which is supposedly the strategic value of using Shock damage in the first place.

What gives?

How close were you to them?

It's because NPC's aren't affected by the "in battle" reduced magicka regeneration, the same as the PC. Their magicka pool regenerates faster than you can effectively reduce it. This holds true for using sapping weapons, spark spells and poisons. Even ravage magicka. That is unless you use a highly potent ravage magicka poison.

Even then, it takes several to truly become effective. By that time they are usually killed anyway as they generally don't have a lot of health. That is unless you are up against a bad ass Uber Duber Master Vol Vampire or something.

I did think of that. I'm playing on Adept, so most enemies take several hits of Thunderbolt (2 to 3 dual-casted, sometimes I can't get the timing right and just throw basic charges at them).

I dunno. Woulda been nice to see.

Casters don't run when I soul trap them either. TVtropes lied to me.

It happens.

It's just less likely with arch-mages whom have 400+ magic, and Dragon Priests who regenerate magic really quick.

But it does happen. Some will charge you like an idiot. Others will hide and regen in cover.

I have only had sucess when using Lightning Cloak and constant AOE spells for draining other Mages.

Funny, my mages generally only need sparks to drain other mages' magicka; it take some time but it works, they eventually draw their dagger.

I can assure you that it does happen, in drawn out fights many generic caster npc's will eventually switch to daggers and come in close, and start casting after a short while. They just never seem to run out of Magicka for casting Ward to block your Thu'um, which is annoying...

The instances where they opt to melee, is just triggered by the distance value calculated during battle. The same way archers revert to melee. Archers will sometimes maintain their ranged attack, until the player has encroached to the point that they share the same loin cloth.

I admit to having a slight obsession with My Electromancers walking up to other Mages and watching thier attempts at surviving a Cloak, then pulling a Dagger before being killed. My Hybrid characters use the same method, except they already have a Weapon readied for an instant Killcam. When the Cloak fails, then it can be annoying how fast an NPC does recover in combat.

Higher Tier Dragons are dangerous for a Cloth Mage, Dragons tend to go directly into Melee when they can not Shout. I had a RP character that wore Monk Robes and depended on Absorbtion, the character did very well against other Mages, but died a lot when Elder Dragons began to spawn. The character did not use any Enchanted Gear and relied solely on Perks. My lack of choosing not to exploit Alchemy did not help the character, either