Magic Recovery Versus Reduce Spell Cost

Mayanpup

Is there an effective difference between the two?

I can see MR a bit better if you use spells with delay times, but RPC better for instant cast spells and heavy attacks that restore magicka.

Can you enlighten me as to which is better overall?

WrathOfInnos

If you are talking about jewelry enchants, then typically reduce cost is better, but it can depend on a few things.

Generally gold 160 cost reduction glyph reduces spell cost by 203, and spells can be cast about once per second. So it effectively nets 203 mag/s. Recovery on the other hand adds 169 recovery, which ticks every 2s. Effectively a recovery glyph nets 84.5 magicka/s.

Reduce cost gets weaker if you are stacking spell cost reduction % bonuses. Recovery gets stronger as if you are stacking magicka recovery % bonuses.

Cost reduction also does nothing when not casting a magicka skill. This could be: using a heavy attack, casting a stamina skill, moving between fights, doing mechanics, dodge rolling, fights where the boss becomes invincible temporarily, etc.

lolo_01b16_ESO

There is no overall better choice. It depends on your gear, how many cp you have, the skills you use and many other things.

As a general rule you can keep in mind, that cost reduction becomes better, the more magicka you get back from different sources than recovery (e.g. heavy attacks, magicka steal, class skills, ...) and recovery becomes better when you have a lot of percentage based multipliers for it (e.g. altmer race, light armour, multiple pvp support skills slotted, ...)