SpellSiphon - Immersive Combat 4.5

Vanilla Skyrim has a variety of issues. Most would agree that the passage of time has not been kind to it, with a ton of people rightfully pointing out a ton of issues with it. Luckily, Skyrim has one of the largest modding scenes around and a ton of creators have dedicated themselves to fixing the game's many issues. One of them is SpellSiphon - Immersive Combat, a mod that fixes the rather weak default magic system of the game.

To install the SpellSiphon - Immersive Combat, drag it into the Skyrim Data folder, as well as using LOOT to determine the optimal load order so you don't crash your game constantly, much like most Skyrim mods.

What this mod does is make magic a whole lot less clunky to use as well as rebalancing it so there aren't many useless spells down the line. This mod aims not to expand the magic list, but to focus on a few baseline spells and give them a ton of mechanics to make them more fun to use. To facilitate the combo feel of the new magic system, it makes it so you don't need to constantly pause the game to access spells on your favorites list, instead mapping every spell type to a hotkey. Player skill counts a lot more using this mod.

Overall, SpellSiphon - Immersive Combat significantly improves the base game's magic system and makes it a lot less linear as well as a whole lot more fun to use. If you're a mage, you should give it a shot.