So, I am not a veteran of this game. I enjoy it, but while I have owned it since 2012, I have only just really gotten into it this past month. My current character is a Breaton with 85 Alteration skill and I have Ebonyflesh and all three Mage Armor perks. With a flat armor rating (AR) of 300, I figured that Mage Armor was pretty nice. However, after looking at the raw numbers, that is only somewhere around a 30% damage reduction to physical damage. Also, that there is a cap of 85% reduction which is achieved somewhere in the 500's depending on various factors. As a mage, I cannot get the mage Armor perk advantages while wearing armor, and without armor I don't know any other way to increase my damage reduction (DR) beyond the 30% or so that I have right now, let alone anywhere near that 85% I read about.

I haven't messed with enchanting much, so is it possible in time to greatly improve my DR or AR by enchanting things like basic gloves and boots? Right now it feels like throwing 3 perk points into mage armor was a mistake.

The school of alteration lets me get 30% magicka resistance and eventually that 30% absorption once I get to 100 skill, and the flesh spells are nice was to augment armor early on. I figured that because i was already heavily invested in alteration I might as well dip into mage armor, but now it looks like I shouldn't have and just stayed with light armor and continued playing more of a nightblade.

I like using magic as a support. Light spells instead of using torches, alteration to improve my armor, illusion to help sneak, and restoration to heal. However I still play more of a melee style. I use destruction as my secondary combat skill instead of archery for ranged combat.

30% Damage reduction is decent when you're mostly staying out of melee range. That being said, Dragonhide completely negates the need for the 3 Mage Armor perks.

If you plan to do your own enchanting, there's really no reason to take the perks, unless your build is designed around an "all cloth" character.

For me, when playing as a cloth mage the last thing I want is to get hit. Mage armour and flesh spells acts as a last bastion of defence should the situation arise. Most of the time however, my followers or summons act as great distractions/tanks

The best armour spell is Dragonhide which basically nullifies the need for the Mage Armour perk, but it takes time to cast. You can also use The Lord Stone for a slight boost in armour rating and magic resistance.

A couple things to consider. Arguably, for only 3 perk points, you're getting better bang for your buck in terms of AR versus any of the traditional armor skills. Typically to get a better AR than 300, you've putting a lot more perk points into an armor skill and you've had to invest in Smithing as well. You end up with a nice AR bump that feels competitive with the various armor skills (early-mid game) with no mobility or weight penalties - you've just got to keep the spell up. That being said, those three perks do become useless once you have access to Dragonhide as it automatically puts you at the 80% cap. Some people will forego the perk points in Mage Armor and just grind it out until they hit the master-level armor spell. If you have Dragonborn, you will have an opportunity to refund perk points in exchange for Dragon Souls or you can simply turn the skill into Legendary when you hit level 100 (drops it to 15 and refunds you the perk points). Granted, you'll have to grind the skill back up if you want the various other perks.

Personally, I feel like they're an OK spend for my mages given the alternative.

Others will definitely prefer to just use light or heavy armor and skip the mage armor perks.

Is your character more of a "regular" mage or a battlemage? A more traditional mage should be a robe wearing spellcaster and trying to dodge as much damage as possible. Your character is gonna have don some armor if he wants to go toe-to-toe in a battle.

Personally, I don't think the mage armor perks were well designed. Either it should have required fewer perks to obtain that 30% reduction or the amount of reduction should have been increased. Also, making three perks obsolete with the master spell does not seem like a good design to me.

I have never liked mage armor perks and the only character to take them was a necrovamp, who got the necrovamp bonus when using them. With the necrobamp bonus, the mage armor perks seemed about right. They should have made them that strong to begin with.

I would not go so far as to say the mage armor perks are useless, but they are certainly not my favorite perks and I think they are underpowered, given how many perks you need to spend just to get a measly 30% damage reduction.

My thoughts about Mage Armor and flesh spells:

Normal flesh spells are fast charge & cast. Augmented by Mage Armor, they can give you enough time to survive an ambush and either get out of range, or contain it otherwise.

Dragonhide as a master spell, takes a bit to charge & cast. This, finds it's use when you know what's up ahead -either by taking a sneak peak, or by detecting life/dead.

At the moment, I can't remember if Dragonhide can be cast while in Ethereal Form -will have to look at it.

Mage armor spells are horrible and not high enough armor rating. If you need armor. I would suggest going with light armor or heavy. Also put some time in to Smithing to raise the armor rating as well. I think if you're going into a fight, common sense would be wearing some protection. If I was a mage and instead of swords; say people had guns. Would you not want to pack your bullet proof vest even if you could magically deflect some of those bullets using alteration? I'd still want some armor anyway no matter what. Best to go all out if you can.

When my character started, the Jarl of Winterhold gave my character a set of steel armor from his persona armory and my character wore that for a long time augmenting it with the oakflesh and later stoneflesh spells. As I said in my opening post, I never looked at the raw numbers and when I saw that going Mage armor would drastically improve my AR is I dump the heavy armor in favor of cloth armor, I thought, "okay, I'll wear enchanted robes and stick to the flesh spells." At that time, with the first mage armor perk, my total armor rating with stone flesh and steel armor was the same as mage armor perk 1 after casting stone flesh, a total of 120. By the time I got to iron flesh, mage armor perk two and eventually ebony flesh and mage armor perk 3 with a 300 armor rating, I felt pretty good... then I kept leveling and eventually looked at the raw numbers and found out I really "need" an armor rating of like 500+

To your bullet proof vest anology, I kind of feel like steel armor is the bullet proof vest and ebony flesh is magical armor that could even let you survive a round from a 50 cal slug. The problem is, by level 25+ the leveled monsters aren't using guns anymore. They are using rocket propelled grenades and anti-tank cannons. As I wrote above, i got to a point where my armor spell and my actual armor were equal and I still had two more ranks of mage armor to unlock, so I deduced that mage armor was a good branch to invest points in. It looks like i was wrong.

well, 1000 armor rating is really good if you can get it. Just use Enchanting on some regular cloths to fortify Smithing. Than smith and enforce some light or heavy armor. It should get it over 800-1000, also try buying some potions to fortify smithing to get it over 100. You will need to have Enchanting and Smithing over a skill of 100 max to make a tremendous difference. Than with the high armor rating and Alteration spells combined. You should be like a tank. I think like melee warriors, Mages should wear armor any way. If you want to gain more levels just use the sneak glitch on the Greybeards and you should get to level 81 easily. Its an exploit but it will help get you some perk points. That is if glitch training is your kind of thing.

According to the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Armor#Armor_Rating: Physical damage reduction is capped at 80%. This occurs at 542 displayed armor rating when wearing all four pieces of armor and a shield, 567 without a shield, or 667 when not wearing any armor or shield at all.