Magicka vs Health vs Stamina

[Pandamatak]

Which is the most valuable?

Assuming you have 100 in all three, which would you pick?

I would probably go with stamina since it is one of the hardest to replicate. Magicka regenerates really fast if you have the right robes, and the apprentice stone + being a high elf is really helpful. Not to mention it's pretty easy to get about 75% less cost to cast on certain schools of magic (without learning enchanting) and the 50% less to cast perk makes it so that spells really only cost 12.5 (or 1/8) of how much they should.

Health doesn't regenerate so it would be my second choice, except for the fact that magicka does and spells like fast healing basically churn your magicka into health - making health easy to refill. Not only that, armors can effectively triple or quadruple your health (not visibly, but you can take more damage).

Stamina is used for sprinting and sprinting is used all the time. Not to mention with high stamina and dual daggers you can kill pretty much anything that stands in your way. I don't know of any enchantments that increase stamina regen rate and stamina also has the side effect of increasing maximum encumbrance (no piece of equipment does both of these things, I'm pretty sure). The only place where stamina falls short of the other two is potions. Stamina potions cost a lot less to buy/make and heal a lot more than their health and magicka counterparts (per coin basis).

So which would you choose? Or, which did you choose?

[Giordano]

I would pick stamina due to similar reasons of your own. Even as a warrior, more stamina lets you power-attack more often. With the exception of magic for mages, I see myself as picking more stam in the long-run than any other.

[Wolfie]

Health dose regain

[OblivionDuruza]

Health, because I tend to use Light Armour, and am a bit of a Spellsword. I tend to keep all three fairly balanced though, maybe with about a 40/35/25 split Health/Stamina/Magicka. Magicka is easily replenished with a potion, or replaced with a second blade, while Health is vital to my character's survival, and Stamina isn't as great an issue for a Light Armoured character.

[Cemiboy_FB]

armors can effectively triple or quadruple your health (not visibly, but you can take more damage).

You forgot something: armor doesn't protect from magic. When people face me with melee weapons or bows, they have not a single chance to beat me, but 3 strong fire spells and I'm down.
Because of this, I go with health with my tank character.

[Lord Cattow]

I like to play with magic alot, so as long as I can keep casting, I won't need stamina (although I raise it every now and then as well, so I can carry more loot). I also like to use summons, followers and dogs to fight for me, so as long as they take damage for me, I don't need to raise health alot.

[SirMonz]

As stated above it really depends on the character. For my Mage I did purely magicka with a small bit of health. Of course I've really worked on my alteration and restoration. Close wounds works wonders with a dual cast. Throw ebony flesh on top of that and I'm good to go. Those aren't cheap spells though so I need a lot of Magicka. For my thief I've done a ton of stamina and some Magicka as well for illusion spells. I don't worry about health because if my thief is actually seen and not stealth attacking I'm doing something wrong. For my Orc/ warrior its all stamina with just a little health boosting. Throw on some health boosting/Magicka resistant dragon armor and Im good to go.

[DorostheConqueror]

Which is the most valuable?

Luck. Followed by Speed.





If I had to care about what passes for stats in this game, I'd probably say... Stamina. Health regenerates way too fast as it is; might as well keep it modest as a makeshift fix. Magicka is nice, but it seems to be really easy to boost and the regen means that unless you're a pure mage, the only point in pumping Magicka is to get access to high level spells. Stamina does two things, both critically important:

First, it boosts your Carry Weight. Since Strength and Feather were both snarfed, and the Deep Pockets perk requires you to waste three or four Perk points, you've got to resort to Stamina pumping to arrive at a manageable weight limit.
Second, it lets you Sprint, which is utterly critical now that Athletics has been dropped. Otherwise, your character will be putzing along at a skeever's pace everywhere you go, from the start of the game to the bittersweet end. Being able to Sprint for minutes on end is a poor substitute for Fortify Athletics +100 or the Boots of Blinding Speed, but you take what you can get until the CK comes out, right?

I don't know of any enchantments that increase stamina regen rate

Just wait. You'll find 'em. I've got a whole bunch of self-crafted +Stam Regen gear; as a vampire, it's absolutely necessary to daytime adventuring.

[dancam1]

I go magic, health as 1:1 and every 5 I upgrade Stamina. Life is very important, and if a dragon breathes on you for like a zillion damage, u need a lot of life. Sometimes, the game won't let u click on it to get potions or change your spell. Magic is important to cast your summon guy and then destruction spells. U can run out of magic pretty fast.

Honestly, I don't see why people won't max out on their experience for alchemy, smithing, and enchanting, all 3 are very easy and hit 100 faster then any other ability or stat.

[Avron the S'wit]

armors can effectively triple or quadruple your health (not visibly, but you can take more damage).

You forgot something: armor doesn't protect from magic. When people face me with melee weapons or bows, they have not a single chance to beat me, but 3 strong fire spells and I'm down.
Because of this, I go with health with my tank character.

Ah, yes, this is true: magic can be a pain. But, if you give yourself just enough magicka to use that healing spell, you will notice you're not worried about this. Everything said above I've found to be true. Magicka recovers so darn fast even with a simple novice hood - which I picked up right in the tutorial and which I refuse to part with - that it doesn't even make sense for me to have that many potions (except for when I am in the thick of 4 or more enemies and don't have the time to cast the spell because I'm so cornered), and I'm not concerned with getting knocked out by spells. Really, I don't even agree with Doros here:

Magicka is nice, but it seems to be really easy to boost and the regen means that unless you're a pure mage, the only point in pumping Magicka is to get access to high level spells.

I find that even at the lower levels, and I've almost all but ignored my magicka compared to health and stamina, despite my rolling as a battlemage (bless that hood!), magicka has wicked potential. When you get into the teens you might want to pump it up, but you don't have to over do it if you're not going as a mage or purely mage type. It's just so easy.

I say stamina, for all the reasons already mentioned. When you're in close melee combat, you need it and it just makes sense. Magicka easily recovers; health is easily recoverable; but stamina wiped me out at the first few levels of the game, and I really focused on it most of the time. I think I've given maybe four of my twelve runs around the stars to health, and I don't find that I'm constantly dying or anything. Stamina is a necessity to me.

But, I really, really dislike the whole "10 points and you're done!" thing, which makes me miss the attributes of Strength and Endurance. Ten points a level to just one of the three, even when you're leveling up faster than you can shake a mammoth tail at, just seems a little...I don't know...unrewarding.

[azuarc]

Health. Stamina isn't THAT important, but not dying is. IMO stamina is more for convenience than anything else, since you can carry more and sprint longer. I do use it to shield bash, but I'd rather have health for those occasions where I'm getting wailed on or I'm being beleaguered by a frost mage.

[sevenindasun]

My magicka is 500 my health is 400 and stamina is 300 I'm a destruction Mage/necromancer first thing I did was build stamina so I could carry more after finding the steed stone I built health until I was able to double enchant my armor with resistant enhancements then I went all out magicka coupled with arch mages robes and moroki's mask so I could endlessly cask expert destruct spells and raise death lords to fight for me...

[Pandamatak]

Health dose regain

Yeah, I forgot to mention that, but it's so slow you can basically rule it out (it becomes even slower during combat, to the point where the regen is insignificant).

Health, because I tend to use Light Armour, and am a bit of a Spellsword. I tend to keep all three fairly balanced though, maybe with about a 40/35/25 split Health/Stamina/Magicka. Magicka is easily replenished with a potion, or replaced with a second blade, while Health is vital to my character's survival, and Stamina isn't as great an issue for a Light Armoured character.

I use light armor as well, but I chose to branch out in all the combat trees (very bad move - cut down replay value for me) and I found that stamina is especially useful for archers since zooming in drains a lot more stamina than you would think. Not only that, but hit and run tactics are almost vital to an archer's survival. However, even when I played a mage I needed a lot of stamina to sprint around since everyone seems to do ohkos on master difficulty (at this point, health was the least useful since their DPH actually surpassed my health limit by a significant margin).

armors can effectively triple or quadruple your health (not visibly, but you can take more damage).

You forgot something: armor doesn't protect from magic. When people face me with melee weapons or bows, they have not a single chance to beat me, but 3 strong fire spells and I'm down.
Because of this, I go with health with my tank character.

True, but on the other hand I see countless heavy armor pieces enchanted with 50% resistance to element x. All you need to do is carry around a pair of gauntlets and boots for each element and you've become invincible to magic (save for certain summons, of course).

armors can effectively triple or quadruple your health (not visibly, but you can take more damage).

You forgot something: armor doesn't protect from magic. When people face me with melee weapons or bows, they have not a single chance to beat me, but 3 strong fire spells and I'm down.
Because of this, I go with health with my tank character.

Ah, yes, this is true: magic can be a pain. But, if you give yourself just enough magicka to use that healing spell, you will notice you're not worried about this. Everything said above I've found to be true. Magicka recovers so darn fast even with a simple novice hood - which I picked up right in the tutorial and which I refuse to part with - that it doesn't even make sense for me to have that many potions (except for when I am in the thick of 4 or more enemies and don't have the time to cast the spell because I'm so cornered), and I'm not concerned with getting knocked out by spells. Really, I don't even agree with Doros here:

Magicka is nice, but it seems to be really easy to boost and the regen means that unless you're a pure mage, the only point in pumping Magicka is to get access to high level spells.

I find that even at the lower levels, and I've almost all but ignored my magicka compared to health and stamina, despite my rolling as a battlemage (bless that hood!), magicka has wicked potential. When you get into the teens you might want to pump it up, but you don't have to over do it if you're not going as a mage or purely mage type. It's just so easy.

I say stamina, for all the reasons already mentioned. When you're in close melee combat, you need it and it just makes sense. Magicka easily recovers; health is easily recoverable; but stamina wiped me out at the first few levels of the game, and I really focused on it most of the time. I think I've given maybe four of my twelve runs around the stars to health, and I don't find that I'm constantly dying or anything. Stamina is a necessity to me.

But, I really, really dislike the whole "10 points and you're done!" thing, which makes me miss the attributes of Strength and Endurance. Ten points a level to just one of the three, even when you're leveling up faster than you can shake a mammoth tail at, just seems a little...I don't know...unrewarding.

Precisely. What I found that is while you start at 100 in all of the attributes, some of them are actually more valuable than others compared to how they're used. At 100 magicka, you can barely hold off a flames spell for a mere four seconds, and after upgrading it, that number becomes more like 4.3 seconds. I find, in the case of magic, equipment and perks are really more valuable since they give you the immediately visible boost. However, keep at it and when you reach 400 or so magicka, I'm sure you will notice a difference (such as being able to cast flames for hours on end)
Stamina, on the other hand at 100 allows you to do multiple power attacks with the weaker weapons, so by upgrading it, you are almost giving yourself an extra power attack altogether. Not to mention, the extra carry weight which can by used to carry some health/magicka boosting gear

[Red Guardian]

I prefer Health and Magicka. Stamina is a waste.... There's a lot of better perks out there...

[Dark Spark]

Stamina.

If you're going dual-wield with light armor, you're all teeth with no shell.

Might as well bite hard.

[Da_BossMaN69]

Honestly this question is a little redundant, it all depends on what type of character you use. For a warrior, stamina is a number one priority, then health, and magic. The other types I could only assume since my first and only character I currently have is strictly a warrior who semi-practices in destruction(not a dedicated spell sword), until I beat the MQ and Civil War quests with this guy Ill try out the other types.

And this is just a question for stealth players (since my next play-through will be a thief/assassin type) which is more important, health or stamina?

[Anderband]

Health and magicka, I say.

I dont understand the stamina thing.

You only need it for power attacks, and it just takes 1 point of stamina to execute it.

Furthermore, the school of restoration can be a big benefit to all character types, as long as you increase your magicka hear and there. Get restoration to 40, and you can "heal" your stamina whenever you want with the respite perk.(so I guess your commitment to restoration would determine your leveling strategy)

I understand certain types of builds put a priority on stamina, but if I had to answer this question, I would say health and magicka are a bigger help, and would only beef it up if I were not wanting to use magic at all. (well, actually, my khajiit assassin has a pretty even distribution, due to using a bow and some destruction rather then one handed.)

[noobishlord]

My Spellblades get a strict Magicka:Health focus, with Magicka going up on even levels (with a perk going into one of my "magical" skills,) and Health going up odd levels (with a perk going into one of my "physical" skills.) I don't pop anything into stamina at all on them. If I'm out of stamina for Power Attacks, I chuck spells. After a few spells, I can launch another power attack if I want. I'm also not a loot sweeper, I'm rather picky on what I pick up, so the extra carry weight doesn't affect me much.

A new character I'm trying to work out, a "light skirmisher" will focus on health and stamina instead, since he'll be having a shield, and having the stamina for both blocking and Power Attacking will be necessary.

That said, I'd pick Health as a first choice. While Avoidance is greater than Absorbing a blow, crap happens, and it never hurts to be ready for it.

[Wolfie]

It depends, I really dont find Stamina helpful, yes it lets you caryy more and run more but dony really use them.

Health is the big one unless mage

[Chaos the N'wah]

Stamina, it pulls double duty by not only giving you a larger pool to swing from, but also increases carrying capacity
Health is nice, but I only increase it if I feel I'm having too many close calls...which is rare...Magicka is only useful if you use magic
Even if you're a mage, you still use sprint when traveling or getting out of reach of an enemy

[TomDD]

For my Thief/Assassin - 1. Stamina 2. Health 3. Magicka

For my Warrior/Paladin - 1. Health 2. Stamina 3. Magicka

For my Mage/Spellsword - 1. Magicka 2. Health 3. Stamina

Works out well so far

[Narzul]

Stamina, it pulls double duty by not only giving you a larger pool to swing from, but also increases carrying capacity
Health is nice, but I only increase it if I feel I'm having too many close calls...which is rare...Magicka is only useful if you use magic
Even if you're a mage, you still use sprint when traveling or getting out of reach of an enemy

You don't need more than 100 Stamina to get out of reach of most enemies and I never sprint when traveling.

[Chaos the N'wah]

Still more useful than Magicka to a non-mage and everyone sprints, especially if you don't use stamina for offense.

[Wolfie]

I dont sprint.

[Talamare]

Stamina is 100% useless as long as the 720 second food exist