When getting sigil stones, sometimes I get stones that does for instance 10 fire damage, and sometimes damage health 15 on strike.

But what's the difference? Damage health seems as if it's the best, so why would anyone want a sigil stone that does fire damage?

Vampires is probably the main reason why you might want to get a fire based blade if your not a mage

Some enemies are weak or resistant to elemental (fire, frost, shock). Damage health is not affected by elemental resistances.

So Damage Health is usually better in terms of damage and often costs more in charges, so there are less uses before recharging your weapon.

Of the elemental damages, few enemies are resistant to Shock (Storm Atronachs are immune, Spriggans are resistant). Lots of things are resistant to Frost. To balance the Shock is most expensive, Frost least, Fire in between.

To further clarify if someone is strong against Magic you'll do much less with every spell. Including Damage health. If they're strong against fire and magic that's a double advantage for instance. It's a safe bet that Damage Health spell will deal decent damage against any foe. Anyone with resistance to magic will have resistance also to elemental based spells. At the same time no one is weak against "Damage health." If they're weak to magic all magical spells will hurt them more including elemental. Many creatures are susceptible to a certain element. This means that in some cases an elemental spell is much more effective over a Damage Health spell but if you don't know the weakness, Damage Health is always a safe bet. I hope this helps.

yeah, damage health, has only one factor modifying damage; magic resistance/weakness rather than elemental resistance/weakness. For example, an altmer conjurer you might run into will have weaknesses to fire frost and shock, 25% each. Meaning... a spell doing 10 pts of fire, 10 pts of frost, and 10 pts of shock damage will actually do 10 + (10 x .25) x 3. This equals 37.5 rounded down to 37 (Oblivion spell effects ALWAYS round down, im not sure why, but i think its the way it was written so spell effectiveness when wearing armor will always be noticeable) points of damage rather than 30 (10+10+10). However, a spell doing 30 points of damage health will have no greater effect on the altmer and do just that, 30 points of damage. Experimenting (or the ES wiki) is the best way to learn the resistances and weakness of your enemies, thus, maximizing your spell/enchantment making effectiveness and tailoring them to the enemies you'll be facing.

The opposite of that example would be a breton inflicted by the same spell.... 10pts fire, frost, and shock......50% MAGIC resistance = 5+5+5 damage. Equivalent to damage health at 30 pts - 50% = 15...


Damage health is over all safer for any/all enemies, but less effective against specific enemies ( especially if you're a vampire hunter, or dremora killer, with 33% shock weakness and 25-75% fire weakness respectively)