Bound Bow unperked does more damage than perked Destruction spells do.

im not sure how can anyone argue against "destruction svcks past level 40 due to scaling issue"

A number of ways really:
1. Don't try it
2. Don't play to level 40
3. Use TGM
4. Abuse broken game mechanics to fix another broken game mechanic
5. Stick your fingers in your ears

Ultimately, it's clear as day that it's broken, I only hope Bethesda fixes it. Mods can fix it of course, but I feel bad for anyone stuck on console. Just the fact that you need to use apprentice spells is nuts, it'd be like a warrior never moving beyond steel weaponry despite having all the perks to use daedric.

wasn't destruction also no good in oblivion and morrowind? I found the spells very weak. try to paralyze your targets with alteration and hit them with a few conjured weapons. worked like a charm in tes3 and tes4... don't know if it still works in skyrim. i am very content, that there are no one shoot = one kill spells.

remember: destruction has aoe, is ranged and very easy to use compared to bows. so theoretically it has a very high dps potential

This so much this. Sorry if you bought this on console but bethesda has been afraid of balancing destruction for quite awhile now. Destruction has always taken a ton of extra work compared to physical damage builds. I have no idea why it's like this but it is, welcome to TES.

Destruction in Oblivion and Morrowind is vastly superior to Skyrim's Destruction. As with their Destruction, it is not about nuking something down, but degraded it to the point where the enemy can't defend themselves, yes I'm talking about the Drain and Damage skill line of destruction spells. Skyrim doesn't have this, and also with spell crafting, you can literally create spells that can blow up a whole cell >>;.

And yes paralyze works really well in Skyrim.

I can't see how destruction is useless at higher lvls,I've got a lvl 55 battle Mage that uses nothing but destruction and restoration,destruction is maxed and I'm smashing almost everything in game 1-2 hits except for elder dragons and bosses which take 5 or 6,i mostly use incinerate.
I upped the difficulty at 50 to master because it was getting to easy and now it's more of a challenge!
Don't power lvl urself with smithing and enchanting(not saying u hav) as it makes all combat skills weak,I did this on my 1st toon and it ruined him,just lvl them slowly.I didn't get my dragonscale armor until 40 and didn't get it enchanted until 46

It's also been shown in that same thread a destruction mage can one shot nearly anything. Anything beyond it is complete overkill. Is it nice to be able to do 32k backstabs? Sure, but you could 3k and achieve the exact same effect.



1) Really? I want proof. I want you to grab a 2H weapon that you found(it cannot be smithed or custom enchanted). I want you to wear no armor, use no pots and cast no spells and walk up to a respectably challenging mob(giant, dragon, deathlord etc etc) on master difficulty and kill it. Do you understand that armor they wear, the smithing they use to super power their weapons, the alchemy and enchanting the use to further amplify that are all support skills and are not inherent to the weapon skill.
2) I can't argue that however the same is not true for warrior types(or rogues)
3) Major oversight from a developer is not an exploit. It's simply bad design.
4) *shrug* I have capped physical(heavy armor) and magical resist. I don't rely solely on impact although it does the job. As you mentioned you could just use conjuration and summoned 2x Dremora Lords and go make yourself a sandwich. Maybe that's exploiting too?
5) Work around to bad design yes. I'm not arguing that.


Worth pointing out that even with enchanting+smithing+natural damage scaling you break about even with a mages damage as melee/archery(actually still lower except for DW). It's not until alchemy is thrown in the mix that melee/archer takes off to the moon.

Ummm...the OP wrote "Should a mage just completely forget about the destruction tree?" My answer was clearly yes, since I didn't mention destruction. The OP did not ask how to use destruction effectively, but rather how to be an effective mage despite destruction being weak. I gave a legitimate answer.

(sigh)

Destruction is not weak at all, despite claims to the contrary by people who obviously do not know how to play a Destruction mage. Sorry if that sounds rude, but I am sick of this misinformation being posted. Corrections have been posted by myself and others, but the naysayers outnumber us (evidently because there are fewer people who understand how it play a Destruction mage in TES games).

For the OP, you have two other primary skills for damage: Illusion and Conjuration. Choose one, and choose one of the two support skills (Restoration and Alteration).

What exactly does Illusion do that deals damage? This is an honest question, I've never touched Illusion

THe point is, there's nothing that destruction can do that archery can't do better.

Archery does WAY more damage than fire, and with the appropriately enchanted bows you can get the same additional effects as frost and lightning without sacrificing damage.

So, anyone who uses destruction AT ALL instead of archery is deliberately gimping their damage just to make pretty lights and waste magicka. Not to mention enchantment slots on magicka regen.

Whenever you mention other magic skills, guess what. Archers can take them too.

And before anyone mentions skill synergy, guess what. Conjuration buffs bound bow damage too right along with archery.

Btw heres the proof that you don't need any tradeskills whatsoever for expert destruction to be use efficiently.

http://i40.tinypic.com/2upecup.jpg

9 mana incinerate with only store bought and dropped gear.

The image of the mana bar usage is fully charged dual-cast incinerate. Thats with pretty pathetic mana pool too.

God damnit, [censored] edit fail. :brokencomputer:

Well, the way I see it is like this. If Destruction is your favorite skill and favorite way of killing people then why would you level any other combat type skills anyway? It doesn't make sense.

*casts* Dead Thrall.

destruction could uses some buffing (another 20% from the agument perks would shut all this raging up) but that as far as i would even go.

but ive been playing a pure mage sytle for a while now on adept and not had a great promble dealing with anything but saying that isnt going to change the fact that if it isnt a cake walk like it is with one/two handed and archery then people are going to rage and troll

I seriously doubt "another 20%" would suddenly make everything better; considering master level spells / perks are all useless for conventional use.
; won't make the spam one spell tedium any better.
; nor regular sustainable damage :flamethrower:

Takes control of enemies and makes them attack their buddies.

Frenzy makes them attack the nearest threat, which includes you; And its hard capped by the level of enemy it can effect, :laugh:
Which coincidentally also makes the master version of said spell awful, given how its cast.

Enchanting's always there to save the day; i had quite a lot of fun with destruction as my main form of attack, since my spell mana costs are reduced by 75% (100% just made the game worthless to play) I had the impact perk though, its extremely useful. I just blast the enemy with fireballs

You were very lucky with those bracers because it's not an enchant you can put yourself on gloves. Looking at the item list, it seems someone at Bethesda forgot to remove the "Imperial xx of Destruction" items.

Basically, those items are alien in the level progressing of stuff that can drop. There's no gloves with lower or higher quality material than "Imperial" that has the destruction mod. As a result, only a "narrow" loot level range has a chance to include them. Also, I don't think I've seen a merchant sell "Imperial" gear in the first place!


You got very lucky indeed to find them. I doubt many players will be able to get those at all unless they are a fixed reward somewhere

what happened to just hitting somthing with a spell till it dies? before my ps3 died i got to level 33 with my destruction mage and yeah the enemies health didnt drain to fast....but thats why i keep hitting them with more spells its the duke nukem theory shoot it till it [censored] dies (and yeah i know about the npc mages regenrating health and magicka quicker than we can that sorta of thing...well thats what become etherial is for...running away) :intergalactic:

http://i.imgur.com/WuSQB.png

Or just click your name in the upper left and select 'Ignored'. It will take you right there.



:rofl: