Restoration is secretly the most useful school and we've been sleeping on it

[DragonbornVet]

Okay so I'm on my 5th playthrough right now and I actually spec'd into Restoration this time instead of just ignoring it completely, and I'm genuinely shocked at how much it trivializes survival. Not even talking about healing spam - I mean the actual utility perks.

That perk that lets you cure diseases and poisons on yourself? That alone saves me from carrying fifty cure disease potions everywhere. And the one that boosts healing on yourself - suddenly you're not chugging potions mid-combat, you're actually managing your health like a resource. It feels way more engaged than just letting your stamina Regen while you wait behind a rock.

The thing is Restoration gets lumped in with "boring healer builds" when really it's just the most practical magic school in the game. You don't need to be a dedicated healer for it to be useful. Slap a couple ranks in it, grab the perks that matter, and suddenly half your survival problems just evaporate. Especially on higher difficulties where potions get expensive.

Am I crazy or does vanilla Restoration just feel bad because it's designed around spamming heal and nothing else? Like the school itself is fine but the perk tree doesn't give you reasons to actually invest in it beyond "be a cleric."

 

[WhiterunModder]

You're not crazy about the perk tree design, but I think you're underselling vanilla Restoration a bit. The issue is more that healing itself is fundamentally less engaging than damage, so even good utility perks feel like a consolation prize compared to what Destruction or Conjuration let you do.

That said, you're spot on about the practical value. The disease immunity perk alone is huge on Legendary - I'm on my 3rd playthrough right now and I skip it less often than I used to because yeah, it just removes a whole category of annoyance. And the self-healing boost actually does change how you play mid-combat, especially if you're not stacking absurd armor ratings. It forces you to manage positioning instead of just face-tanking.

Where I'd push back though: Restoration trivializes survival because potions are already so cheap and abundant. You're not really solving a problem the game had, you're just replacing one solution (potions) with another (spells). The real value is convenience and immersion, not mechanics. On Legendary it matters more since healing scales differently, but on normal difficulty? Restoration perks feel nice but they're not doing work that the game wasn't already letting you trivialize some other way.

That said, if you're enjoying it more than your usual playstyle, that's what matters. A school being "boring" is mostly about whether it engages you, not whether it's secretly overpowered. Restoration's fine - it's just that the game design doesn't really force you to need it, so it reads as optional in a way Destruction never does.