Have any other Lurkers played Morrowind?

[Skandranon]

Also the only non-uniques in vanilla Morrowind with Magicka resistance (or immunity) are Orcs (25%) and Bretons (50%), making Absorb Health quite useful since it can't kill you if reflected.

I never claimed that magic couldn't work, just that it was incredibly frustrating compared to going through as a fighter. Balance was my criticism, that the fighter and mage types are imbalanced in favour of the fighter. If you consider mages "powerful enough", then clearly you must consider fighter types "incredibly overpowered". Right?

That said, here are some problems I've had, especially in late-game Morrowind, Tribunal and Bloodmoon. It takes 200 or so magicka to take out the average Golden Saint while it's whacking on you with whatever daedric, glass or ebony doodad that it spawned with. Roughly the same for Dremora Lords. All while you're casting at it and it's hitting you and swinging your point of view back and forth. You can be completely abusive and exploit the AI's lack of ability to react to Levitate, but I never did due to its extreme cheesiness. Plus, since they all have Reflect to some degree or another, it's not about weaknesses, it's about using as much Absorb Health as you can, because running any kind of damage guarantees that one out of five times you'll fry yourself. Plus, casting times are just irritating. If I want to kill things with magic, my fighter will take a golden saint soul to Galbedir and get a nice ring that shoots 10 foot radius Absorb Healths with no casting time at all. Mages can do that, too, but not any easier, and if both of us are using the (incredibly broken) enchanted items, then the only difference is that the fighter has a lot more in the way of useful skills.

Casting times and the relative power of spells are just terrible compared to just about any weapon out there. Still, it's workable until you get Bloodmoon...as if mages didn't get blasted enough, they have to deal with Riekling Raiders with 60 points of Reflect, which tend to congregate in packs and attack quickly. A fighter can just tear in with a melee weapon or use a bow or darts from a distance. Mages have to run backwards across half of Solstheim hoping that they can get through those 400 hit points quickly enough. Just not worth the hassle.