Restoration magic is actually the hardest school to build around

[DragonbornVet]

Everybody talks about how broken conjuration is or how illusion does secret damage, but nobody mentions that restoration is legitimately the most restrictive school in the entire game. You get like four useful spells and two of them are heals that scale off nothing.

I just tried a pure restoration build on my current playthrough and it's genuinely painful. Close Wounds and Heal Other scale off Restoration skill, sure, but your damage output is zero. You're basically a support character in a single-player game where there's no real support role. Even if you stack Restoration perks, you're still just standing there healing yourself while your follower does the actual work.

The restoration perks are weird too. Most of them are just "heal more" or "heal faster" which doesn't solve the fundamental problem that healing doesn't win fights. Undead are immune to it. Dragons don't care. You end up needing to respec into literally anything else halfway through.

And before someone brings up the alchemy loop - yeah, I know you can make restoration potions that break the game. But that's not really playing a restoration mage, that's just exploiting crafting. I'm talking about actually using the spellcasting school as intended.

Has anyone actually made a restoration-focused character work without either going full pacifist or just using it as a utility tool for a different build?

 

[TamrielTactician]

I get what you're saying, but I think you're underselling what restoration can do if you lean into it differently. The problem isn't really restoration itself - it's that you're thinking of it as a damage school when it's not. You're right that pure healing doesn't win fights, but restoration has way more tools than just Close Wounds and Heal Other.

Turn Undead is legitimately powerful, especially early-to-mid game. Paralyze works on everything and restoration has access to it. You've got Healing Hands for sustain while you're in melee range, and if you stack the perks that reduce spell cost and increase duration, you can keep yourself alive through almost anything. The real trick is playing restoration like a tank mage instead of a pure support caster - get some heavy armor, grab the Alteration perks that boost armor rating from spells, and you're basically unkillable while your healing keeps you topped off.

On my last playthrough I did a restoration / alteration hybrid and it actually felt way more viable than pure restoration alone. Restoration isn't broken because it doesn't one-shot things - it's "broken" (in a good way) because you literally cannot die if you know what you're doing. That's a different kind of power than conjuration or destruction.

The alchemy loop thing is fair though. That's more of a crafting exploit than a spell school thing, so I won't defend it as "real restoration play."