My dragon slaying strategy right now is using dragonrend to get the dragon to land and then hitting it with dual spark spells. The spark spells deal magicka damage as well as health damage. I have been noticing something interesting part way into these battles. If I'm able to keep a spark spell on the dragon for long enough, it eventually stops using it's breath attacks and settles for trying to bite my head off, typically for the rest of the battle, save a short burst or two occasionally. I don't remember getting this behavior during the mundane dragon battles (using pointy objects). This leads me to believe that in the dragons, the devs might have decided to limit the breath attacks by using magicka rather than a recharge timer like the player gets for the thu'ums.
So, are the dragon's thu'ums linked to their magicka, or is just some odd behavior?
Best Answer
Ok, so, Skizzlefrits reminded me of the wonders of the console. So, I popped in for a while and decided to try it out.
Long story short, the dragons were not too pleased that I likened their mighty thu'ums to mere magic, and proceeded to shout at me for quite a while.
The Riften guards weren't all that thrilled with me either. Something about how crazy experiments belong in Winterhold...
Result: If the dragon's shouts are tied to something, I don't think it's magicka anymore.