Conjuration is the most underrated damage tool in the game and nobody builds around it right

[TamrielTactician]

I'm on my 5th playthrough and I just realized most people treat Conjuration like it's just "summon two dudes and let them fight" but that's not what it actually does if you build for it.

Like, the perk that boosts conjured weapon damage is insane if you pair it with the summoning perks. You're not trying to summon Dremora Lords to tank for you—you're summoning them specifically to apply pressure while you're doing your actual damage. Melee, spells, whatever. The conjured enemies are just... forcing the target to split attention.

And nobody talks about how the summon perk that extends duration basically turns your conjuration into a passive buff you cast once and forget about for like a minute. That's huge for boss fights where you need breathing room.

Switch players especially sleep on this because load times make swapping builds a pain, so you're forced to actually commit to a full conjuration approach instead of just dabbling. Turns out when you commit it's actually broken.

What's your experience with it? Are you one of the people who just summons stuff and watches, or does anyone actually build the damage scaling?

 

[WhiterunModder]

I think you're onto something but I'd push back a little on the framing. Conjuration isn't underrated because people don't build for it - it's underrated because the base game doesn't give you enough reasons to. The perk that boosts conjured weapon damage is solid, yeah, but it's still competing with Destruction trees that just delete everything, or Restoration if you're min-maxing survivability.

That said, your point about duration extension is the real carry. Once you're not recasting every 30 seconds you free up a ton of action economy, especially in longer dungeons. I did a conjuration-focused build on my second playthrough and the difference between "summon and babysit" versus "summon and actually play the game" is night and day. You're right that it forces you to actually engage with the skill instead of treating it as a gimmick.

The Switch thing is interesting though - I think you're describing a limitation that accidentally becomes a strength. When you can't easily respec or swap, you optimize within constraints, and that's when you realize Conjuration does more than you thought. But that's kind of a weird way to make a tool seem viable, you know? It shouldn't take a hardware limitation to make a magic school feel functional.

If you're on PC and want to actually break Conjuration, mods like Ordinator add perks that make it genuinely threatening as a damage tool, not just a distraction. But vanilla? It's decent support, not a damage carry.