choosing attributes when leveling

Question

I have a thief/archer that so far has nearly even distribution of attributes (magicka/health/stamina) at level 16 with stamina slightly lower.

So far my reasoning is:

• although I am not primarily a mage, magic drains faster because of my thief armor and I plan to dabble more in illusion
• Stamina lags behind strength because carry capacity is already boosted via thief perks

My concern is that this "jack of all trades" mentality will make the game harder in the long run. I have read that later enemies and dragons basically required offensive magic. Should I ease back on magicka and make health my primary stat (1/1.5/1)?

Answer 1

If you plan on using Illusion, primarily, that's a once or twice per battle kind of magic. You're not spamming illusion spells nonstop in an effort to kill everyone. You disable the big threat and cause some chaos, then add in damage with your bow at range.

Being a stealth assassin type, you also shouldn't (theoretically) be taking a lot of damage. Your companion (which you should use) should be acting as a meat shield while you put some arrows in the target, and only really beefy opponents in really narrow passageways should be damaging you. Especially if you use illusion's calm/fear effects, your health should be pretty safe.

That being said, things never go fully according to plan, so health is still a good choice. As an archer, you need stamina to zoom and slow time, and you'd be surprised how quickly it runs out once you get those perks. I have built my archery/sneak/illusion assassin using a 2:1 ratio putting points into health:stamina, and never putting anything into magicka. At some point I would like to increase my magicka by about 50 points, because it seems a little low, but at level 30 so far this seems to be a good mix.