Rogue? WoW much! This game has no "rogue" also learn the meaning of the word

shadow warrior does everything a sneak would need from illusion, and is damn fun to use in combat. illusion in skyrim is basically for mages who want to be stealthy, and isnt as good a compliment for normal sneaking anymore. personally, i still use it because i love being the "manipulator" type sneak, calming enemies to ignore me and frenzying them to do all the work for me.

if i may go off on a tangent... why are light spells in the illusion school? firstly its not an illusion because it actually illuminates darkness, and secondly i thought illusion was just the manipulation of people's minds? i dont see how manipulating your own mind to make you think you can see better in the dark makes any sense.

i am also playing a archer/thief kind of character and pretty confused about the choice to put perks into magic or not.

currently I am level 20 and have put all my perks into Alchemy/Sneak/Archery. I often snipe my enemies and sometimes use backstab. pretty happy with the set-up. Only thing that I am lacking is crowd control and clearing out instances with 4+ enemies in the same room.

Should I put my remaining perks into things like one handed, light armor and speech/pickpocket and forget about magic altogether?

I can understand how crowd control spells in illusion can be helpful and also the conjured bow is useful but I want to avoid using magic altogether if possible.

so its a choice between the below 2 builds:

non magic archer:
http://www.ign.com/builds/the-elder-scrolls-5-skyrim?d=000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000050001110011111000000000000000000000000000000050000000215111123005111100115111115111111110000000000051010111

have smithing/enchanting/pickpocket


magic archer:
http://www.ign.com/builds/the-elder-scrolls-5-skyrim?d=00000000000000000010111111111111111100011011110000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000005000000021511112300511110011511111511111111
drop smithing/enchanting/pickpocketing and get Illusion and Conjuration. Also need to spend some level-ups into Magika.

If you haven't played a stealth character at higher levels, (20-25), it may seem like the sneak skill won't be enough to keep up with the more difficult encounters. Take my word for it, sneak is totally overpowered, and unless you enjoy being a demigod you'll probably be better off intentionally gimping your stealth potential or, as I plan on doing, creating a stealth hybrid such as a bard that also uses illusion, thereby giving you the limitation of a low mana pool.

My previous character was a pure stealth khakiit with perks in sneak ONLY, and I was dominating by level 15, and godly by 20. This was without shadow warrior perk, which now seems totally redundant considering the effectiveness of the rest. I'm not sure exactly when the build attained overpowered status, but it happened as I progressed up the muffle perk line, and was gamebreakingly noticeable after taking the walking/running doesn't affect detection and dagger sneak attack perks - so, what I'd do differently is to just max out the base 5/5 sneak skill as well as the sword and bow sneak attack multipliers without touching the rest of the tree. The absolute highest I'd go would be to get the stealth roll, which is fun and useful.

Then, you will use the anologous abilities from illusion to increase effectiveness, which would be more challenging as you would likely have less mana than a pure Mage. I'm going to go with 2/1/2 into magicka/health/stamina every five levels, which should provide just enough mana at level 15+ to cast a select few crucial spells before or during a battle.

Edit: also, for the bard class, be sure to take alchemy as it will help you during those fights in which sneak simply isn't viable, such as when facing a dragon. Dragons will still be taken down using archery for the most part, so you'll be better off with poisons and maybe some other utility potions. Have fun!

I've noticed that Skyrim rewards pure archetype builds much, much more than the previous games in the series, which is cool, but can also result in overpowered characters if played correctly. Make a hybrid class for the most rewarding and challenging experience, in my opinion.

I would use Illusion but I don't have any perks left and I heard that its very hard to use illusion spells on enemies higher ranked without perks.

Its not just hard, its impossible if not invested perks in. From my memory I can recall it only works on lower lvl mobs, so..

Agreed. There's an in-game book on the difference between Illusion and Alteration, which boils down to Illusion is subjective and can only be seen by the target(s) of a spell, while Alteration creates genuine changes in reality which will affect everyone. By that logic, the light spells should definitely be under Alteration unless you're the only one able to see the light you created (which would make it much more useful for sneaky types, since it would let you see without letting others see you, much like Night Eye effects). Also by that logic, Detect Life-type spells should be Illusion rather than Alteration, since only the caster can see the glow on whatever is being detected by the spell.



Without looking at the builds, I say that, if you want to avoid using magic altogether, then avoid using magic altogether. Although I greatly enjoy having spells mixed into my stealth archer and find them quite useful, they are by no means essential. A magic-free assassin is definitely a viable concept.



How so? I don't see a lot of synergy between perk trees beyond the simple "crafting makes strong items and high skills in using those items makes them stronger still"-type cases. I'd definitely say that the perk trees reward specialization a bit more (deeper perks are more useful and getting them requires you to both raise the skill level and invest more perks in prereqs), but that's specialization on the level of individual skills, not something dependent on which set of skills you go with.