Magic Cloaks?

[Cessair]

Are these cloak spells really of any use? I think at max they do 12 damage per second and they're adept level spells. Is there really any point to these? By the time you can afford to cast them the damage seems pretty insignificant. Maybe with an aversion poison theyre deadly? I figure if you're a powerful destruction caster one of your advantages is using your range?
And what's the deal with runes? why are they so expensive to cast, they easily consume over half your mana

[Yaije]

PBAoE centered on you that inflicts dmg while you're running in/out of range of something. Also the only reliable way to combat slaughterfish or anything in deep water while swimming. (assuming you can get out of water to cast it)

runes, a cast and forget trap effect. shame you can only have one active at a time and that they are actually pretty weak after awhile.

[Cessair]

I thought cloak spells only inflicted damage when enemies are in melee range

[Yaije]

I thought cloak spells only inflicted damage when enemies are in melee range

That's correct.

Edit: one of the downsides of combat in skyrim is that you don't always get the luxury of being at range.

[Mr.Argonian]

Cloak spells are fairly useless for pure mages. Their real use comes out when playing a battlemage or spellsword. Then the damage really stacks up.

Runes are only usefull if you set them down and wait for your magicka to recharge than attack. Using them in combat is a waste because they do less damage for more magicka than other spells.

[Mattbott]

my dunmer puts on his flame cloak every time he has an audience with an important person, or fights trolls

i found runes were great at lower levels where enemies kill you easily, you lay a rune and recharge your energy, then draw enemies into the rune. This way you get an extra attack in addition to all the stuff you can normally cast. Stick a rune near a companion and the triggering of the rune by an enemy makes them hostile which kicks your companion into combat mode and you can be hiding in the next room if you like whilst the bodyguard battles the bandit - so imo they are worth it if you use them (stealthy mage types)

my khaajiti got through a whole dungeon by preparing a rune, shooting a poison arrow to get the enemies' attention, they hit the rune - blammo, i am hiding and they cant find me, they go back to patrol, rinse and repeat

runes are also cool for role play - i would imagine mage houses would be covered in runes against burglars

[BunBun299]

I wish I could place more than one Rune, or that there was a stronger version of them. My vampire character found them very useful early on. She's a stealth mage, so making enemies run over a magical land mine, after making them fight it out with a rage spell, fit her quite well. But later on, those spells just couldn't keep up. Better to just dual cast fireballs.

[Mattbott]

yeah, they are more a softener up than a nuke type spell at any level

it would be great if you could use telekinesis to cast runes at greater range, perhaps there would need to be perks that allow you to combine different schools of magic (i believe power combining has been explored in dishonored so it might be on the cards for future tes games)

i also dream of the day a bandit walks over my uber maxed lightning rune and is disintergrated to dust (lol that itself would be worth it)

[philfredobob]

i thought cloak spells were Pathetic

then again, i found most magic in Skyrim to be very weak...

[Hissien]

I only use them as a defense when the enemy isn't dying and I have to use my last resort, my magicka absorbing daedric long sword to be able to summon more daedra.

[Chaos the N'wah]

I use cloak spells largely for their elemental effects rather then damage

• For melee characters
  • Frost cloak to reduce melee attackers stamina or to keep ranged attackers from running away
  • Flame cloak for trolls
  For Archers/Mages
  • Frost Cloak to slow melee attackers

Of course, the range stinks even when you dual cast them, but they still have their uses

Too bad everything is resistant to frost...>.>

[Yaije]

Cast cloak of <insert>, Cast wall of <insert> to make patch of dmg, sit enemy in it and cast a short range aoe (shock/frostbite/flames). It adds up for some nice constant dmg if you have the cost reduction/magicka pool to keep it up.

Not as effective as say slitting a throat with sneak attack or rushing in with bow/blade, but I like it more than the expert level spells.

[Mattbott]

these spells sort of replace the ones in morrowind where you did 3 points per second for 120 seconds, and eventually did 360 damage. They're not wow but several times a fight has finished a bit quicker because of them, often when my health was very low and no more potions were available

making a character who relied on them might be a challenge

[Yaije]

Oh... they're incredbily useful for those city/fort assault type quests where you basically just getting swarmed by everything. Times like that are very few and far between though (outside the civil war quest line).

[Riothamus]

Oh... they're incredbily useful for those city/fort assault type quests where you basically just getting swarmed by everything. Times like that are very few and far between though (outside the civil war quest line).

Yeah, or mobbed by Draugr. It doesn't seem like much but cloak spells do add up over time. I use them for my battlemage/spellsword type characters just to keep damage stacking on top of my melee damage. Rarely use lightning cloak though. I just switch between Fire and Frost depending on the enemy. If you are fighting a mage type npc you will reach the bottom of their health pool before you reach the bottom of their magika pool. Though...you could Staff of Magus them AND THEN close in with lightning cloak to keep their pool down...

might try that tonight.

[Alnevar Odai]

I love runes for ranged combat. Unlike fireball and other spells, traps keep you in sneak mode, have 0 time of flight and have an AoE.

Cloaks, as mentioned, are better for the spellsword, battlemage or crusader/dark knight kits. (Melee primary, but magic supplemental)

Traps are wonderful for those tight encounters in forts when in retreat. I usually cast them before a fight so that I can still deal damage while I am recharging the Magika pool or dropping back to heal. (they arent that useful vs mages in this regard. Stray spells will set them off.

[Haravikk]

I like runes for their ability to hurt draugr in coffins, but otherwise they're pretty pointless. They just don't scale in damage well enough, which I'd thought would be the big benefit of having the perk tree, so earlier spells remain competitive, but instead they get useless pretty quickly. It would be better if they had more debilitating effects, such as a frost rune being a guaranteed slow effect (even if fully resistant), lightning rune having a huge magicka damage effect, and fire maybe stacking more with other flaming spells for high damage over time.

But nah, except for messing with draugr I've found no use for the runes so I never take the associated perks. Especially considering they can be harder to cast than conjuration spells; I'd much rather summon a flame atronach than put down a weak flaming trap.

Cloaks as mentioned are great for spellswords and such, it's just annoying that they're high-level spells; I'd have preferred weaker low level versions, and maybe have the high level ones provide protection against the chosen element (so flame cloak lets you resist a big chunk of fire damage), since some kind of protection presumably needs to be woven into those spells

[Theificka]

The cloak spells are to damage anyone else that you aren't focusing on, it's to soften until you can get to them.

I never really liked rune spells, they seem way too weak to matter, but they can cover your escape if you're smart.

[Mattbott]

if you max out runes as soon as possible then they can be useful for a while in most combat situations. Also, if you drop a rune behind you when you are on a heist, the game will tell you when someone has stepped on it and is following you (if you want that). Some monsters also seem to avoid walking through them so a rune can block a path.

but.. THE thing about a rune is you can kill enemies (albeit slowly i admit) from a hidden place almost without any risk whatsoever:- when you stand up to zap someone or fire poison at someone they have a chance of spotting you cos you have to be in line of sight, however with runes you can literally be in the next room when they walk though them so your non stealth mage can get through difficult combat situations, all you have to do is place them carefully. Use runes to kill a boss's guards and save your main resources for the full attack.

so IMO that is how Runes are powerful, and probably why they dont level up to nuke levels

[Yaije]

oh and the new runes are pretty sweet. Frenzy, ash (or poor man's paralysis), poison, and frenzy. Though I personally can only make use of ash at higher levels (the frenzy one is only a magnitude 20)

[Riothamus]

oh and the new runes are pretty sweet. Frenzy, ash (or poor man's paralysis), poison, and frenzy. Though I personally can only make use of ash at higher levels (the frenzy one is only a magnitude 20)

This. I use runes for crowd control with my spellsword so the new ones work waaaay better for that. I'm almost always cloaked though.

[Mattbott]

i recently had a fight with a load of medium level monsters and realised my dunmer flame cloak and boethiah's ebony mail were doing 20+ damage per second, for about a minute (took a while) to about 2 - 3 enemies whilst i concentrated on the boss guy

thats 300 or so damage i did to multiple bad guys just by being there, and if i had put a couple of weakness to flame/poison poisons on my sword, i could have doubled that (i am not a maxed out character so my 2 h sword attack prob does less that 100 each swing)

pretty good imo