Has anyone compared the armour with Heavy Armour and spells to No armour with the Mage Armour Perk?

Just wondering which is higher.


Thanks for any helpful reply's.


K-Ray

Well, I can only say play how you want to play. Use what you like the most, be it running around in robes or heavy / light armor.

For the comparison: You can reach the armor cap with both heavy and light armor but not with the alteration spells. I hope that helps you.

Full Daedric Armor has a maximum value of 2125 with 4x Fortify Armor skill enchantments. However, Skyrim has an armor cap of 567 so any additional armor value is useless. I don't believe any of the Alteration spells combined with the appropriate perks will clear the armor cap.

Mage armour is viable in the highest difficulty mode as long as you exploit a couple of details:

- Using a shield does not count against mage armour. If you need to take hits, then switch to a shield.
- Using a shield does not build on or require an armour skill
- Lord stone adds another 50 armour rating as well as 25% magic resistance.

Between a shield and lord stone you're looking at around 400 armour with the option to block/stagger. Incidentlly the alteration ritual barrier spell provides a flat 80% damage reduction, which is the highest damage reduction possible for any armour class but only lasts a short duration. Also dragonhide is unaffected by mage armour which makes the perk a little dubious in the end-game.

You probably shouldn't try fighting in melee using mage armour, but for an arcane archer or mage it's quite adequate. My advice, is to consider what you are playing... if you're a taking alteration anyway, then alteration barriers are a cheaper more lightweight option than armour, but are also more flimsy. Kind've like ultra-light armor, less reiable protection than light armour, but absolutely no movement/stealth penalty

The above poster is WRONG

You can get to 80% damage reduction with the master level alteration spell dragonhide. That's the same as having armor capped.

I'd say you look at the other perks in the trees to make your decision. My mage went alteration for the purpose of stacking magic resistance and the free magic absorption from the alteration skill.

I dual-cast http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Dragonhide and also have the http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Stability#Perks perk. This give me 99 seconds of 80% resistance to physical damage. I also have 100 in Enchanting and have plenty of gear to manage Dragonhide's mana cost. For role-playing a Mage I find the protection very nice, not having used any armor for most of the game.

You can get 80% damage reduction but you can't reach 567 armor, so no, that poster was not wrong, much less WRONG (!!). Sure, 567 armor equals 80% damage reduction so the end result is the same, but armor and the whatever-skin spells last a whole lot longer than Dragonhide and Dragonhide isn't affected by the Mage Armor perks anyway.

Generally speaking, I'd further say that constantly casting Dragonhide is a waste of time when you could just as easily be using a suit of light armor. The weight difference is very tiny and it's loads more convenient not having to constantly worry about your damage reduction running out and needing to be recast.

It's not so much a question of the other perks. Mage Armor is crap no matter how you look at it but spending perks on magic protection is an okay deal if you're not planning on spending those perks elsewhere. A pure mage can afford to put a fair few perks into alteration even if said mage isn't going to rely on Mage Armor.

I called [censored] =p

Dragonhide is a ritual spell, ritual spells cannot be dual cast because you have to cast them using both hands - unless it turns out the dual casting buff automaticlly applies to rituals.

I saved up all the Perks so I could test this before committing them. Yes, dual-casting does affect Dragonhide and so does Stability.

Sorry - I stand corrected. I just tried it out and indeed you CAn dual cast a ritual spell. It's just visually no different, but consumes double the mana and has an appropriately boosted result

I use armor. I would much rather save my magicka for useful spells instead of armor spells that only last a short period of time.