So much better than to cycle through them all). I used to have one spell dedicated for the alteration buffs (walk on water, breath under water, light 20 ft or so, detect life, feather self all for 120 sec. That's the kind of freedom I'm talking about. I always liked summoning armor and combining that with the shield spell, but I didn't always summon the full set of armor cause I didn't like the way the helmet or cuirass looked. You could also combine 4 or more useful spells, and make them last for a decent amount of time. The end boss in the game had 25% spell reflection, and I literally killed myself with my own spell. This happened to me more than once, but it was great. If you wanted to kill something in 1 sec, go ahead, but be careful not to cast it on someone with spell reflection. Frenzy lv 25 area = infinity + invisibility self 60 sec). You used to be able to blow your entire blue bar on something incredibly dumb, but awesome at the same time. The best stock spells in oblivion mostly sucked, besides some of the illusion ones. I'm thinking they're trying to replace this with the spell combo thing, but I don't think that'll be enough.

Every hotkey I had in Oblivion was dedicated to a custom spell. I'm sure for a lot of people this isn't a big deal, but anyone who got hardcore into Oblivion knows that this feature saved the combat along with enchantment.

Skyrim detect life enchantment mod