Conjuration is actually broken and nobody talks about it the right way

[WhiterunModder]

I keep seeing people say conjuration followers are better than real followers, which is true, but nobody's actually talking about why the school itself is so absurd. Like, you can summon two Dremora Lords and just... win. You can summon them, cast paralysis, summon again, and the game's basically over. There's no build diversity because once you hit Conjuration 50 and grab the dual casting perk, everything else becomes optional.

The thing that gets me is that even with Ordinator or other overhauls, conjuration always ends up being the "I win" button. You're not playing the game, you're just watching your summons delete everything while you stand back and cast invisibility. At least with other magic schools you have to engage - destruction requires positioning, illusion requires planning, alteration has actual utility puzzles. Conjuration is just "summon thing, watch thing kill everything."

I'm not even saying it needs to be nerfed into the ground. But it's wild how the game's balance just completely collapses once you commit to it. Makes me wonder if the original designers knew how strong it was or if it just slipped through testing.

 

[DragonbornVet]

You're not wrong that conjuration trivializes combat, but I think you're underselling why people actually use it. It's not just "summon and win" - it's that summoning lets you play a different role entirely. You're not a damage dealer anymore, you're a summoner-controller. That's genuinely different from a destruction mage or a melee build, even if the outcome is the same (everything dies).

That said, yeah, the power floor is absurdly high compared to other schools. A dual-cast Dremora Lord at 50 Conjuration is stronger than most endgame builds, and you hit that threshold way earlier than you should. Destruction mages have to actually invest in perks - Impact, Augmented Frost/Flames/Shock, Rune Master, all that - to get close. Conjuration just needs dual casting and one summon perk and you're done.

The weird part is that even Ordinator doesn't really fix this because the school's problem isn't the perks, it's that summoned creatures scale with your level and don't have the same action economy limitations as the player. A Dremora Lord doesn't have magicka costs that matter, doesn't get tired, can tank hits you'd die from. That's not a perk issue, that's a fundamental design problem.

I've never felt like conjuration was "broken" in the way you mean - it works exactly as intended - but I get the complaint. It does make other playstyles feel worse by comparison. Honestly though, if you want build diversity you kind of have to self-impose limits. Skip conjuration, play melee, do whatever. The game won't stop you from being overpowered if you don't want to be.