Alteration

Mage Armors and Transmute Muscles no longer scale magnitude with dualcast or skill. Instead they now provide fixed values depending on being dualcast, and for mage armor, whether Improved Mage Armor perk is taken. Improved Mage Armor now works if your mass is below 1.2 (20 units) rather than according to light/heavy armor (actual mass, not infamy/penalty mass).

Values subject to change and may use infamy instead)

• • Transmute Muscles: 30 stat increase. +20 if empowered.

  • Mage Armor I: 175, +100 if empowered, +125 if IMA active

  • Mage Armor II: 200, +125 if empowered, +150 if IMA active

  • Mage Armor III: 225, +150 if empowered, +175 if IMA active

  • Mage Armor IV: 250, +175 if empowered, +200 if IMA active

  • Mage Armor V: 275, +200 if empowered, +225 if IMA active. Additional 20% un-penetrable damage resist. (done via Skyproc perk instead of Perk to Apply to allow NPC usage)

  • Mage Shield I: 350, +250 if empowered

  • Mage Shield II: 400, +300 if empowered

  • Mage Shield III: 450, +300 if empowered +20% damage resist.

The intention is to make mage armor more functional from the beginning but not as insane by lategame. It also encourages making a battlemage-- in vanilla Req the difference between MA4 and heavy armor was not big enough to justify spending 12+ perks on the heavy armor tree. Even more so now because you have to spend skill points to unlock each tree and the skills no longer “pay for themselves” by leveling on their own. Robe mages will always be more frail than battlemages, though they will have access to cheaper spells and more regen to compensate.

Many alteration perks have been nerfed a bit: magic resist is now maximally 25% resistance and metamagical perks have been reduced in potency somewhat.

Lightning Speed in line with new Slow Time 3 (4x faster) instead of being effectively 60x faster.