Restoration
Restoration
All healing effects have been nerfed. Given that they are instantaneous and non toxic, it is
important that they don’t overtake the now nerfed healing potions. You’ll still get big magnitudes
by late game when you can empower buffed healing spells.
Focused Mind nerfed,
Power of Life replaced by Enhanced Magicka (fortifies magicka),
Essence of Life has been downgraded to Power of Life, which is now Heal Self (Rank IV) and is simply another healing spell which is expert-tier and more efficient than Heal Self (Rank III) instead of being a once-per-day invincibility buff.
Heal Self I is now Novice.
Healing Auras now work like in AZtweaks, becoming fast short-duration heals if empowered.
Protection from Poison is now Enhanced Constitution as in AZtweaks, but it doesn’t give you flat damage protection/etc. Instead it gives +30 poison resist and +30 stamina, which become +50 if empowered, similar to an alteration spell. Its duration now scales with resto skill and lasts less time by default.
Wards are good now.
What is the difference between a ward when you first activate it vs when it is "fully charged"? And is it different for the various levels of wards, or with the Improved Wards perk?
How long does it take to fully charge a ward, and is there any indicator? I'm not noticing any major audio or visual cues that it is charged, but maybe I'm missing it.
How do the charge times differ or scale from different versions? Does the improved ward perk affect this? Does my restoration level?
I didn't realize how much wards affect my movement and attack speed (I see NPCs sprinting around with them, so it caught me off guard that I move and attack so slowly). Is there any way to sprint with the ward? The perk from blocking, perhaps?
Do perks such as flurry from 1H affect my attack speed while I have my ward activated? Or were wards designed to be used with a spell in the other hand rather than a weapon?
As far as I know, 3Tweaks (and Requiem for that matter) does not change anything about the mechanics of blocking spells with wards, so these answers apply just as well to vanilla Skyrim. My answers to the following questions are based on tests I just did like an hour ago, so while I may be a little off on some of the specifics I am confident I am correct about the main ideas.
1, 2, 3. Casting a ward increases your WardPower stat. It starts out at 0 and begins increasing extremely quickly once the ward effect appears on your character. I don't know if the increase rate is different for the different spells. There is no indication when the ward is fully charged, but it will happen very quickly. Better ward spells have a higher maximum value that they can increase your WardPower stat to and the higher your WardPower stat is, the better your ward is at blocking spells.
This next part is super important and is something I did not know until I was doing research for this post. The maximum value that a ward spell can increase your WardPower stat to only depends on the base magnitude defined in the spell. This means that increasing your Restoration skill, taking the Improved Wards perk, dual-casting the ward, etc. has no effect at all on how good a ward is at blocking spells.
When a ward blocks a spell, your WardPower stat is damaged. The amount it is damaged by is the sum of base magnitudes of the effects from the incoming spell. However, not all effects count towards the damage.
I am not entirely sure which, but my suspicion is that it only counts effects that would damage your health. EDIT: It appears to only count effects that have a base cost greater than 0. This is why it is possible to block many dragon shouts even with low level wards. As another example, when blocking an Icesphere spell, it only counts the magnitude of the frost damage effect, not the magnitude of the movement speed slowing effect.
If the damage from an incoming spell reduced your WardPower stat to 0, the ward breaks. If the ward does not break, your WardPower stat remains at the damaged value for a brief period before increasing back to the maximum again.
4. There is no way for you to sprint with a ward out. NPCs just get to cheat this way.
5. I don't know.