Restoration is secretly the most broken skill and nobody realizes it

[DragonbornVet]

I'm on my 3rd playthrough and just now actually invested in Restoration instead of just using it to heal myself between fights, and I'm genuinely baffled why people don't talk about how absurd it gets.

Like, you grab the perks that let you cast Cure Disease and Cure Poison for free on yourself, stack those with the perk that reduces magicka cost, and suddenly you're immune to like half the status effects in the game. Then you get the perk that lets you turn undead and suddenly every draugr dungeon becomes trivial because they just walk away from you. Add in the paralysis immunity perk and you're basically untouchable.

The real kicker is that if you actually level it up early (which is brain-dead easy since you can just cast healing spells on yourself constantly), you get access to Heal Other which scales insanely hard with Magicka and Intelligence, and by mid-game you're basically a mobile healing station that can also nuke things with the restoration paradox if you're willing to break the game.

People complain about Conjuration being weak early but Restoration is sitting there doing the exact same thing - it feels useless until you actually commit to the tree, and then it's quietly one of the most powerful support schools in the game. I'm not even using mods, just vanilla AE perks and it's wild.

Does anyone else actually use Restoration seriously or am I just discovering this now on my 1000th hour?

 

[WhiterunModder]

Restoration's definitely underrated, but I think you're conflating a few different things here. The immunity stuff - Cure Disease, Cure Poison, paralysis immunity - that's genuinely useful and yeah, way better than people give it credit for. Those perks make you tanky in ways that matter.

But the "restoration paradox" thing and scaling with Magicka - that's not really how it works in vanilla? Healing spells scale off your Restoration skill, not raw Magicka, and there's no paradox exploit in AE that I'm aware of. You might be thinking of an old glitch from earlier patches. Heal Other is solid for keeping followers alive, but it's not a damage tool and it doesn't nuke anything - you'd still be better off with Destruction for actual damage output.

The real reason people sleep on Restoration is probably just that it's passive and defensive. Everyone wants to feel like they're doing cool stuff, not just... not dying. Conjuration gets hype because summoning stuff feels active even if it's equally support-focused. Restoration's job is to make the dangerous stuff less dangerous, which is less flashy than having an Atronach tank for you, even if the end result is similar survivability.

That said, if you're actually leveling it early and stacking those perks, yeah, you're basically unkillable by mid-game. That's not broken though - it's just the natural progression of committing to a skill tree. Same reason full-perked Alteration with Mage Armor or heavy Smithing with Ebony Smithing is absurd. You invested in it, so it pays off.