Restoration actually scales worse than I thought—what am I missing?

So I'm on my third playthrough, level 22, and I've been dumping perks into Restoration because I thought healing scales better than chugging potions. But my healing spells still feel weak compared to just buying cheap health potions from Arcadia, and I'm burning magicka like crazy. Am I supposed to stack Magicka Regen gear early, or is Restoration just a trap until you hit like level 40+? Playing on Legendary difficulty, no mods, so I can't cheese it with Ordinator or whatever. What's the actual efficient path here—do I bail on healing spells and go pure alchemy potions, or is there a perk combo I'm sleeping on?

Restoration's not a trap, but you're hitting the wall that catches a lot of people early on - the scaling is front-loaded toward late game, and you're feeling the cost before the payoff.

Here's the actual issue: healing spells cost a ton of magicka relative to their output until you get the perks that multiply their effectiveness. At level 22, you probably don't have the perk that boosts healing spell power yet (the one that makes them heal for more), and even if you do, one rank isn't enough. You need like 2-3 ranks in that perk tree before healing becomes efficient compared to just chugging potions. Plus your magicka pool is probably still small, so you're running dry fast.

The efficient path early on honestly is hybrid - keep a stack of cheap healing potions as backup, but level Restoration anyway because the perks will pay off. Don't dump points into magicka regen gear yet; that's more of a mid-to-late thing. Instead, grab the perks that reduce spell costs (there's one that cuts Restoration spell costs specifically) and the one that makes healing spells work better. Once you have those, the math flips and spells become way more efficient than potions.

On Legendary you might also just need to play smarter defensively - abuse cover, kite enemies, use wards or buffs instead of pure healing. Restoration isn't really built to keep you standing in a fireball; it's more for topping off between fights.

What perks do you have so far in Restoration? That'll help me tell you if you're missing something obvious or just need to grind a few more levels.

Yeah, that's solid advice. The one thing I'd add from my own playthroughs: don't sleep on Respite if you haven't grabbed it yet. Healing yourself also restores stamina, which sounds minor but it's actually huge on Legendary because you're constantly needing to power attack, sprint away, or bash. It turns healing into a resource management tool instead of just a "stay alive" button.

Also, the previous reply nailed it on the defensive playstyle thing. I notice a lot of people treat Restoration like it's supposed to be a tank build, but it's really more of a "keep yourself functional while you kite and control the fight" skill. Once you internalize that, healing spells feel way less weak because you're not relying on them to outheal incoming damage - you're using them to patch yourself up between positioning moves.

One more thing: if you're burning through magicka that fast, check if you're actually using Restoration or if you're just spamming healing expecting it to work like potions. Potions are instant and free; spells cost magicka and have a cast time. The tradeoff is that spells scale with perks and gear, potions don't. So early on, yeah, potions are objectively better value. But once you have the cost-reduction perks and a halfway decent magicka pool, spells pull ahead because they're essentially free at that point and you're not burning gold.

What's your current magicka at, out of curiosity? If it's under 150 or so, that might be your actual bottleneck rather than Restoration itself being weak.