I am levelling up a pure mage and pretty soon I am going to have to choose between going with absorption or magic resistance in the alteration tree. If I go absorption I can become immune to spells with the atronoch and necromage but I lose the ability to conjure things and would have to stick with only raising dead creatures as opposed to summoning dremoras or wrathman. If I go with magic resistance I can keep the summons but even with capped magic resistance I only have 100 health so I would still be fairly vulnerable. Anybody else been through this decision?

It's a tough decision, but I'd always stick with summons. Not that absorbing magic is bad (it's awesome), but with your build it's going to be necessary. Speaking of which, just because you're a mage doesn't mean dont spec into health. Typically it's a good idea to raise magic and health by a 2:1 ratio. Meaning, if you have 120 magicka, you have 110 health, etc.

For RP purposes I am playing a mage that is doing everything to increase his magic power at the expense of anything else. So it wouldn't make sense for him to choose to increase physical prowess over magical prowess. I even use the apprentice stone to increase magical power at the expense of taking more damage. If I increase health in the future it will be through using magic for example fortify health enchantments but thus far I haven't needed it as I use become ethereal and amulet of talos religously to avoid damage.

I Think 2:1 is a littlie much for a pure mage, I'd do something more like 10:1; 100 magicka for 10 health. I however went until at least level 30 (or was it 40) before i raised my health a single time, because as a pure mage you can never have enough magicka. even then I raised only as much as I absolutely needed, until about level 80 (or was it 90). I have over 1000 magicka these days.

As far as the summoning is concerned, the absorption is'nt worth sacrificing the conjuration... I wish they would fix that because it is frustrating as hell. Even when I reach Lvl. 252 I still probably won't take the Atronach perk, odd considering how much I loved absoption in the other TES games.

As far as the magic resistance is concerned, 80% is quite potent, so that you should not underestimate it.

I am leaning this direction because the way I have had to play with apprentice stone and 100 health I rarely get hit (everything one shots me) so absorbtion might not be completely necessary. However putting summons between me and others has been essential to survival so far. Another thing is without summons that use weapons I would be unable to do any physical damage as I only use spells and no weapons whcih means I might have a tough time with anything that has strong magic defense if I can't summon.

You would be correct. My breton has somewhere between 65% and 85% magic resistance and magic feels like the bite of a flea. I tend to forget mages are actually hitting me sometimes. High end dragons like Serpentine Dragons are the one thing that can hit me with elemental damage.

As far as the Magicka to Health thing, it just depends. I don't usually do a ton of pure mage builds, but I might just try it again for fun.

I guess I could always throw up a ward along with the magic resistance if stuff gets real bad for example dragonbreath while my become ethereal is recharging.

I played a Breton pure mage a while back and went with summons, found it more useful than absorption at later levels. As for health etc I went with 5 magic to 1 health as a ratio which worked perfectly for me.

Not much of a mage myself. I leave that fancy magic stuff to them elves. But if its cold hard steel you're enchanting, im all for it.

Iknow that feeling, for a long time I got one-shoted by almost everything.

There are ways of breaking almost any magic defense (or circumventing it such as casting chain lightning behind them and bypassing the ward), concentration spells are weak but can keep them from reestablishing a ward, also when breaking a ward don't dual cast instead cast in an alternating pattern so you constantly hammer the ward.

With higher magicka capacity comes better regen, since the regen is a percentage of your total the higher the capacity the higher the points regenerated each instance of regen.

The way I got around this is I do the magic resistance and go with the ward absorb perk in the restoration tree. The greater word also adds +125 armor if you have the necromage perk and are a vampire. Wards can be underrated but with the right perks and gear they are very usefull since they can block shouts, dragon's breath, magic, and not to mention you can attack in melee with your ward up just as long as you don't do power attacks. This is the way to go if you want to still be able to summon imo.

Yeah wards are often overlooked by many players, but use them right and they are very powerful (especially against Thu'ums).

If you can unlock absorbtion at a lower level then you'll truly benefit from it, unless you're playing on legendary. By the time you get the dremora lords with the twin souls perk youre pretty much op so you wont need anything else, unless youre on a higher difficulty.

According to the wikia, wrathmen have more health than dremora lords, but dremora lords deal more damage. Wrathmen are also resistant frost, but weak to fire. I'm fairly certain that dremora lords have powerful spells.

However, I have seen my dremora lords get killed in one hit, even on adept difficulty.

Dremora Lords do quite a bit more damage, but have somewhere between 300-400 health. I believe Wrathman have over double the health, 800, and 900 with the dark souls perks, but don't do as much damage.

I have been using wrath man thus far as I have a lot of magicka but not 75 conjuration to buy dremora yet. They work very well for my purposes which is to attract the enemies. I usually just bomb the whole group with chain lightning or fire ball including the wrath man and just resummon him when he dies so his high health works perfect for me.

Dead thrall with max absorb is pretty OP as well. You just have to hope the thrall doesn't glitch on you

Alternatively, you could use the atronachs, which (although weaker) would allow you to "bomb" the area with the element of your choosing without hurting (or turning hostile) your minion. you should be careful not hit them with the dual-cast stagger, becaus that will turn them hostile.

Whatever works for you.

For dead thrall to work well you need good thralls, which can be in short supply. Though, in my experience, those ressurected by dead thrall don't ash pile when killed, so as long as they don't get decaped you can ressurect them again. Dead thrall also only works on people.

Sorry for the double post, but i was slow typing the previous response out.