General Mage skill priorities. Restoration vs Alchemy etc.

[Daemos Avetorii]

If I made say an Altmer mage and use the 6 magic skills and Alchemy as well. That would need a very large amount of levels to accomodate the perks necessary to gain a measure of expertise in each.
Since time waits for no one, and priorities need to be made. I wonder. Is it necessary to have both Restoration and Alchemy? Or is it more practical to choose one of those two for primarily healing purposes.

Further more. I see both Illusion and Conjuration as primarily distractive magics. Either calming foes, or distracting them with a summoned creature. Would you need to use both, or is it more effective to prefer one over the other?

With that in mind, I am rather unimpressed with Skyrim's version of Alteration. Where as in Oblivion, it was always the mainstay of all my mages. Here it seems virtually meaningless. Unless someone can enlighten me otherwise.

With that said, I'd imagine a basic start focusing on Destruction and Enchanting, and allocating perks to those as the character levels, and then midway adding either Illusion or Conjuration, and in between leveling eithering Restoration or Alchemy.

Would this result in a more focused character perk build than to go all out and take it all but take ages to get there?

[SeaGtGruff]

It's up to you, but speaking for myself I mainly use Alchemy as a way to make a bit of gold selling potions and poisons I've created. When it comes to healing maladies I typically use Restoration spells-- or, if necessary, visits to a shrine.

But it also depends on whether Magicka regenerates automatically in the particular Elder Scrolls game or only by resting, drinking potions, etc. If Magicka regenerates automatically then it seems more "cost efficient" to use spells rather than potions, as long as your reservoir of Magicka is large enough and regenerates quickly enough, otherwise potions do come in handy.

[Nord85]

I think the choice between Restoration and Alchemy largely depends on if you are planning to play as a pure mage, or to wield a weapon too. If the latter, Alchemy is vastly preferable. That is because you don't need to swap either a weapon or a shield for a spell during combat so often. Also, poisons are very handy. With a pure mage it's more of a matter of taste. Personally, I use Alchemy for pure mages too rather than Restoration. It's just a habit largely, but it feels much handier to keep both hands for offensive spells and quaff potions for healing purposes. Also, one can't overestimate the financial benefits of fully perked Alchemy (although Enchanting comes rather close while having a little more fuss).

I like Illusion much better than Conjuration. The former is tremendously effective when combined with stealth, and the tactic of making enemies kill each other and then mopping the survivors up with Destruction is one of my mainstays for mage characters. Calm and Fear are very valuable even for battlemages for buying some healing time in large battles. Plus, summoned creatures/thralls can be pains to deal with as they might get in the way or lost. Conjuration might be a bit more fun than Illusion, though, so if efficiency isn't main priority, why not?

Alteration is rather dull in Skyrim, yes. It has a few nice spells, though, so a slight level of expertise is useful. Magelight is very good, especially for stealth Illusionists because you can illuminate the enemies while staying in shadows yourself. For enchanters Transmutation is nearly a must (just think of the money all those enchanted jewel-encrusted gold amulets bring in). Waterbreathing makes quite a few places easier to deal with. Paralyze is nice, too, but not sure if worth having due to the perk and mana cost. So, Alteration's definitely not a main expertise area but worth a few perk points.

As for allocating points, I'd say focusing to two or three main skills is better than spreading it out. If I would have to choose, the order would be Destruction first, then Illusion, then Enchanting and then the rest. Illusion is the second in list, because it really needs to be upgraded with perks early on so that the level requirements for spells won't make it useless before you even really start to use it. In other words, it's rather frustrating to try to calm a level 25 bandit with a spell that works only up to level 12.

[BetaB17]

Alchemy, while having the potential to break the game via exploits, really isnt as handy as Restoration during day by day play.

Sure, the restriction on how many consumables you can take in combat was removed and defies space and time.. but your also severely limited by the quantity of resources you can collect and how many you are using mid-dungeon. And sure, you might collect potions via looting, but thats a net benefit regardless of what skill you stick with

Restoration at least has the perk of consistent healing, and as a mage, your focus should already be on magicka. Pair this up with some of its perks like a boost to overall health, joint recovery of stamina, near death safety, and the be all end all.. that boost to magicka recovery
--
As per the whole magic school itself, you can still get by alot of the skill trees without ever committing perk points to them, which is a big boon for skills that really matter. So Destruction needs every boost it can get since it doesnt scale the same as physical weapons. Illusion and alteration are meh and mostly used for utility spells i.e they arent gonna be the ones to make or break a fight. Conjuration is nice but lets be real, most of the perks arent useful, especially for a pure mage. Enchanting is in the same boat as Alchemy, it can be just as broken and powerful but its whatever

Mind you, I am bias. Excluding stealth/archery and how overpowered THAT can be, my real bread and butter was running around in light armor wielding a long sword and casting healing in my off hand. Who needs a shield when you can out heal any DPS? Why stop the assault when my stamina is always at full. My only crux was shock mages since they directly dealt damage to my magicka supply with kept my survivability up so high, and by late game I dont care how much regen enchants you stack.. those mages earn your fury

[SeaGtGruff]

As far as perks, it's true that you can save them for later when you level up, which can be very handy if you want to spend a perk on a skill that isn't quite to the level needed for the next "must-have" perk.

But my own general approach to perk points is that I usually spend them as I earn them, and usually spend them on whichever skill has gone up enough to allow a new perk. The only problem is when there are multiple skills that are at levels where another perk is unlocked, or a skill that has multiple perks which are unlocked at a given level, in which case I go for whichever skill or perk I'm more focused on at that point in the game-- or, as suggested by BetaB17, whichever perk offers the best return as far as what it does.

However, at some point in the game the question of perks becomes irrelevant, because the ability to make any skill "legendary" and start it over from the beginning means that there's no cap on how many times you can level up-- and hence how many perk points you can earn, such that you'll eventually be able to acquire every perk for every skill.

It's kind of interesting to me that in real life I'm definitely the type of non-athletic person who would be far more likely to use magical skills if they existed, as opposed to physical force and weapons, yet in The Elder Scrolls and other fantasy role-playing games I almost always rely on physical force and weapons rather than magical skills. I'm not above using enchanted weapons and armor, and I do use magical skills for healing, but I seldom use magical skills for attack unless I'm specifically working on leveling up a given skill. And I do like to level up each of my skills, even the ones that aren't central to my type of character.

Thus, in Morrowind I might start by trying to max out my Hand-to-hand and Unarmored skills, if only so I don't need to spend any of my carrying capacity on armor and weapons-- other than loot, of course-- and then switch to Light Armor and Marksman after that as my carrying capacity starts to increase; or I might start out with Heavy Armor and Long Blade despite having a low carrying capacity, simply because those are my "usual poison."

I follow similar strategies in Oblivion and Skyrim; and I initially tried to follow the same strategy in Elder Scrolls Online, until I realized that at some point I was going to stop acquiring Skill Points, which I hadn't been aware of at the beginning because I wanted to play ESO the same way that I play other Elder Scrolls games-- by learning on my own through experience rather than reading strategy guides or asking veteran players what I "should" do.

Anyway, if I were to play a "pure magic-based" character in a solo Elder Scrolls game (as opposed to ESO where you can play as part of a group) then I would focus initially on Alchemy (mainly as a way of making money but also healing potions and poisons), Destruction (for attack), and Restoration (for healing). Of course, Alchemy isn't even classified as a Magic skill in Skyrim, but rather as a Stealth skill. As for the other Magic skills, there are usually only a few spells in each school of magic that I ever use, such as Waterbreathing (until I acquire or create a piece of gear that has a Waterbreathing enchantment), Bound Sword or Bound Bow, and Muffle (since I like to keep making Illusion a Legendary skill and then rapidly level it up again by repeatedly casting Muffle while I'm running around Skyrim).

But having said that, I think it would interesting to try playing a magic-wielder who focuses exclusively on a specific school of magic, such as Alteration, to see how that affects the gameplay-- at least until maxing out that initial skill and acquiring all of its perks. I guess the specific choice of school of magic you'd want to start with would vary depending on your particular character and his or her backstory.