Mass Paralyze analysis

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I finally got the Mass Paralyze spell and gave it a whirl. Too bad, but NONE of my characters will be using that more than occasionally.

First, the good. The area of effect is huge, affecting whole rooms in your average dungeon. You don't need to be close to any of the mobs, so even less than perfect Sneak should get the job done on the initial delivery. I've seen reports of it only paralyzing at 40% chance but anything not immune to paralyze in its area was affected as far as I could tell.

Second, the bad. Come on Bethesda, for Master spells that takes a literal eternity to cast, could you at least be able to cast them while moving? Pretty please? Sure, it doesn't matter much when using it as an opener, but it's a drag in actual gameplay, even if the point was to make retreat tactics including them a non-option. With such extreme magicka cost, there's just no point in pouring perks into halving it if you still need multiple enchants to be able to put into reasonable use. And no, you CANNOT dual-cast it, at least not on a PC, for extended duration either. And every single Dwemer is immune, making the categorically longest and most convoluted dungeons looking for alternate solutions for crowd control.

Third, the catastophic. I guess this is the bane of all area of effect spells in the game, but casting this makes EVERYTHING not bolted down fly around, just like a mini-Fus-Ro-Dah. While many locations are rather indifferent about this, there are some where you'll be losing stuff into cracks in floor, walls, the ceiling, between inanimate objects (such as pieces of fallen ruins) and if really unlucky, right through solid objects into unaccessibility. Even if everything was still recoverable, I kinda like the pattern that most high-value stuff sits on tables, shelves etc instead of scattered around together with everything else, speeding up gameplay once you're past the "stretch every penny" phase. REALLY awkward if a quest item happens to become unaccessible in the heat of a combat and you realize it AFTER making a quicksave, searching for it half an hour and being forced to retrace to an earlier autosave much, much earlier.

Whoever came up with the idea of stagger push for AoE spells at Bethesda needs to make a LOT of amends, methinks.

 

As you said, ALL master level spells have this push affect upon casting. It doesn't matter what it is - Illusion spells all have that effect too. Especially annoying for something like a dragon claw that gets knocked off a pedastal and into another room that takes you forever to find. And god help you if you were trying to find a skill book that was all by itself on a book shelf, but after casting the spell, all 30 books are scattered randomly on the floor.

One of the things that you may not have noticed with Master level spells is that the spells also travel THROUGH walls. Whenever I use Mayhem, I find that the dungeon gets considerably easier, because it effects things you can't even see yet. In a case of casting it in room A, if the path out of room A takes a left to room B, and the exit to that is another left to room C, it is possible that Room A and Room C are geographically close together, even though there's no way to access room C from room A. However, a Mayhem spell cast in room A will go right through the wall, effect everything in room C, and all but one of the creatures in that room (the one left standing) will be dead when you reach Room C.

With Mass Paralyze, you're right, it's can't be dual cast - just like all Master level spells btw - but there is a perk Stability which increases the duraiton for all Alteration spells by 50%. The question as to whether or not it's worth the perks needed to get it - it has Adept Alteration as a prerequisite - largely depends on how you feel about Resist Magic. If you're going to get Resist Magic, then you've already picked up Novice and Apprentice Alteration anyway. So it's only Adept Alteration to add to the list before being able to pick Stability. I'd say in the case of two additional perks, it's worth doing. However, if you weren't planning on getting Magic Resistance, then you're talking about 4 perks for something that is only going to have modest utility. I think the standard length of Mass Paralyze is 10 seconds - that's a ton of time to kill stuff, or if necessary, retreat out of the room to cast it again.

On Mass Paralysis and all Master level spells that you're considering for casting cost reduction. Assuming you have the given skill at or near 100, then it's totally worth taking the master level perk to half the casting cost, because it becomes imminently useable with just two pieces of reduce casting cost gear. I'll use Mayhem again as an example as I don't have any direct experience with Mass Paralyze, but the numbers work out the same because both spells have a base casting cost of about 1000 magicka. With 58% reduced casting cost, we're at 420. Half of that is 210. And with each skill point reducing casting cost by 0.4%, we can take that casting cost down all the way to just 126. (Versus 252 otherwise.) And in that case it's obvious that you'd take Stability, as you'll have all the prerequisites anyway.

It's a real bummer that Mass Paralysis does not work on automatons. And there is no Illusion equivalent perk like Master of the Mind that increases it's utility. I'm assuming it DOES work on undead, because Paralyze as a weapon enchantment does. I guess the question becomes thus - is there anything that Mass Paralyze affects that the regular Paralysis spell does not affect? I'm thinking in the case of two enemies, you can snipe one, and since you CAN move whilie casting regular Paralyze you can hit the other one with the spell as you back up. Then you'd only see the utility of Mass Paralysis in a 3 or more situation.

That said, I can't imagine I'd trade Mayhem in for Mass Paralysis.

 

Paralyze vs ALL of Illusion?

Paralyze DOES work on undead and the only non-automata I've failed to Paralyze so far are Mammoths. No level caps either. I haven't bothered to try it on named bosses, but I guess I'm old-school in that I usually WANT to face the head honcho head on, fair and square.

However, while MASS Paralyze failed to impress, the single target Paralyze is and remains very useful, quite likely surpassing everything Illusion has to offer for quite a while. Specifically, AT LEAST until Master of the Mind is unlocked.

Since you get Paralyze already at 65 Alteration, well before Illusion really gets to spread its wings, there's an actual gameplay advantage in not really choosing either over the other but going through them consecutively, Alteration first. Of course you'll be LEVELING them both, just that heavy Alteration enchants have benefits that far surpass Illusion's until you reach Master of the Mind. A few that come to mind:
- You can use Paralyze enchants on weapons with impunity. With dual enchants, Paralyze+Anything still retains the soul cost reduction.
- You can use Ebonyflesh/Dragonflesh to bridge the gap to reach armor cap for the rather lengthy period when you're training both Heavy and Light armors, especially if you lack Smithing perks to fully improve either type.
- Paralyze needs only one hand to achieve what Illusions need two for, against precisely those mobs where it matters the most.
- Paralyze has the uniquely useful property of keeping the mobs put. Not just off your back, but full stop, not running all over the place. No more adds from rooms nearby, no more patrolling guards and no more considerable detours for loot retrieval because some ranged mob decided to back off a cliffside. Quite literally the proverbial scalpel vs Illusions sledgehammer approach.
- Paralyze ENABLES the use of healing spells in the thick of it. Just force your opponent to take a nap, heal to full unhindered, resume.

 

These are fair points. But how are you leveling both Alteration and Illusion? I mean, other than transmute, what are you casting in Alteration that actually allows you to level it to 65 in the first place? (All of the "Flesh" spells? And if so, how effective is that? If it's like Transmute it will take you for-freaking-ever to get to 65.) It's also no bargain in terms of mana. The base cost of Paralyze is 450 - which is, incidentally, almost exactly what it is to dual cast Frenzy (base cost 209). However, you can get adept illusion at level 50, and start using Frenzy immediately, whereas you can't half the casting cost of Paralyze until you get expert alteration at level 75.

You can always level illusion on your own, because you have Muffle, which offers a steady stream of Illusion experience points up to level 50, at which point you acquire Frenzy. Now I will concede that you can pick up Alteration with fewer perks spent, especially if you were planning on getting Magic Resistance anyway. Then you already have Novice and Apprentice alteration, making those a "sunk cost". I don't have any need of any of the Mage Armor perks (I always wear armor), so they can be safely skipped. Which means other than the 5 that I'm spending anyway, I only need to add Adept, Expert, and Stability. (It's not like I NEED Atronach.) So that's 8 perks for Alteration versus 12 for Illusion.

I don't know - I'm still on the fence here. I'm just not sure it would be more useful, as there's no offense there until I get it to 75. I don't want to be devoting a third piece of my gear to Alteration to get the casting costs down to a managable level, especially when I know Frenzy is easily able to be dual cast with just two pieces of gear. I also don't know if I'm going to feel like going into my favorite list before every battle to cast the flesh spells. (Remember that I play on XBox and thus I am unable to hotkey 10 different spells to my keyboard.

 

Oh, I meant that I don't put ANY perks into Alteration at all, just use it with a helping hand from a bunch of enchants in the meanwhile, while waiting to get Illusion fully online, perks and all. Frenzy is still single-castable with a reasonable magicka bar without enchants if you want to use that as an opener against the occasional bandit camp.

It's slow to train Alteration yourself to 65, even when using the Flesh spells. Every other spell is so situational in use that it just feels awkwardly exploitative to cast them just for the experience. Although I DID get decent at emptying hard to reach top shelves with Telekinesis.

If shooting for clvl 80+, 100 Alteration is something you'll want anyway, hence I'm promoting the idea that you should consider pushing past the 40-65 speedbump with training points. Of course, you could use the same training points to boost Illusion to get it fully online faster, but Illusion levels true and steady on its own so why not get Alteration out of the way and get to use Paralyze in the meanwhile? This way the rest of the Alteration takes care of itself, too.

Edit: Point being that due to the enchants available at Body armor and at least other half of Helm slots, it's really easy to cram at least two or three magicka cost reduction enchants on your gear at early levels. I'm just pointing out that using them to boost Alteration, rather than Illusion, at this stage brings all these side benefits. Even if the ultimate goal is to gear up for Illusion! This way you get to use the best from both worlds as they become available.