Restoration magic is genuinely useless and it's kind of hilarious

[TamrielTactician]

okay so I'm on my third playthrough and I finally committed to a pure restoration build just to see what happens. I've got all the perks, decent gear, the whole thing. and I'm level 22 fighting draugr in Bleak Falls Barrow and I realize I've cast Healing Hands maybe twice in the last hour because my Healing spell literally heals less per second than the damage I'm taking from literally anything.

like the math doesn't work. I can cast a Fireball for 50 damage or I can cast Heal Self for like 8 health per second and hope nothing hits me for 5 seconds straight while I stand there. obviously I'm just using healing potions instead, which means the entire tree is just... there. taking up a perk slot.

has anyone actually made restoration work, or is it just a meme skill that exists so you can pretend you're a cleric? because even the Restoration scaling perks don't save it. you'd need to dump like 8+ perks into the tree to make it viable and by then you could've just gone Destruction and solved your problems in 2 seconds.

what am I missing here or is this just how the game is designed

 

[RiftenWanderer]

You're not missing anything - restoration's healing scales terribly compared to the damage you're taking, especially at higher difficulties. The math genuinely doesn't work out until you're either way overleveled or stacking perks that could go literally anywhere else.

That said, restoration isn't totally dead if you reframe what it does. The actual value isn't in keeping yourself alive during combat - it's in the utility spells. Cure Disease and Cure Poison are legitimately useful for avoiding status effects, and if you're doing a roleplay run where you're a support character in a group (like adventuring with followers), then keeping them alive while you control the fight with something else can work. But yeah, as a primary combat tool? You're right that potions do the job better and faster.

The real issue is that Skyrim's healing was never balanced around being your main defense. You're supposed to use armor, restoration as a supplement, and actual damage output. If you want restoration to feel viable you basically have to either gimp yourself on purpose or accept that you're playing a healer in a game that wasn't designed for healers. Which is kind of a bummer because the concept rules.