Truly wonderful. Thanks.

That is really nice, thank you. Although the point stands: destruction is scaling horribly. In regard to the above post:
It is not, that using enchanting or alchemy is the problem, the problem is, that enchanting is useless damage-wise for destruction.
Sure, you can enchant your gear to be able to spam destruction non stop, but that wouldn't be fun nor would it solve
the problem that the damage output is mediocre.

Imho, destruction scales in itself very wrong. I would suggest to make it like any other "damage" skill like one-handed or archery: scale the damage.
In addition to that, tune down the mana base costs a bit.
Doing that, a high skill in Destruction would result in really powerful spells. But, late game spells are really magicka hungry, so it would be necessary
to have a big magicka pool. Bottomline: give the player more options to increase the damage of destruction, perks alone do not work.

I'm a dark elf that specializes in archery (63), sneak (73) and destruction (52). Destruction is only used in penible situations where I have 3+ guys storming on me. No problems for me here, my ice spells mostly do the trick to either slow them down or kill them off.

Only on expert difficulty for the moment tho.

Yeah, AoE spells are very powerful against a group of weak targets. A real problem are enemies, that are not easily staggered. They just storm up to you
and one-shot you. Too late did I realize, that you don't need to invest in magicka as a mage, as the % destruction magicka reduction will do the heavy lifting
in later levels and the size of your magicka pool is nearly of no importance.
Wait till you have 100 in sneak, should be possible to sneak + one-shot a group of enemies, because you can restealth.

As much as I love rage comics, that misses the point in every frustrating way that the point has been repeatedly missed on this forum. Still pretty amusing though.

It's not really that mages are completely under powered, its more that it becomes extremely frustrating to play as a mage in later levels. Since damage doesn't scale (and the higher level destruction spells are almost worthless), you will find yourself having to spam lower level spells to survive. Stunlocking your opponent is an absolute must, and a failure to dual cast will probably mean your death. You will also have to level certain skills which I personally find cheap and not fun. Conjuration and Illusion are great, but really aren't that fun for a lot of people. Basically there aren't options for mages like there were in past games and its extremely noticeable at later levels

My biggest problem is that you can get 100% off of destruction spells via enchants, which essentially completely eliminates the need to level destruction at all!

Its people like you that makes me so tired, why did you even post this ?

To the post above mine, it actually makes sense, A dual cast destruction mage is way over powered with the greybeard stagger buff and impact, anything u hit will stagger nonstop, its easy, and if its available why not use it, assassins on the other hand are a little more difficult, well maybe not in most cases but when ur getting charged by more then one mob then its a challenge. specially if ur strictly bow, like me screw swords n all the other stuff

There's nearly hundreds of videos on youtube depicting melee, bows and backstabs one shotting ancient dragons on master; do you see any magic among those? :laugh:

Why do People that havent even played with an mage and people that have just played with one to lvl 20 post here and lying that they got an high level mage? And saying its fine?

Conjuration + Destruction = BEAST!

THAT. And we can end this nonesense

Ignore conjuration posts, unless you enjoy watching other guys do all the work for you (I dont even use followers).


Several things can help you (using no mods or console)

1. max enchanting and add -25% destruction costs to 4 items, making these spells mana free.
2. Illusion silent casting and sneak allow for several fireballs etc (throw some invisability too) while the enemies search for you
3. Dual cast with stagger is awesome (provided spells cost no mana)
4. Use armor and level ups into health, since your spells cost no mana anymore anyway
5. Dont waste perks on the -50% mana cost enhancements
6. Allchemy can increase spell damage (i find this tedious and ignore it)


Dont worry about people saying destruction is too weak at higher levels, they only say this because they are comparing it to weapons with +100% damage from perks, +100% damage from smithing upgrades, and +100% (or more) from enchanting. Heck even +50% (or more from alchemy)! Destruction is fine, its just the game mechanics and balance are broken for meele. Making meele weapons do 5-10x more damage than base is stupid.

Maybe. Its a [censored] stupid argument anyways, cause you should use enchanting. You're limited as hell if you JUST use destruction. Enchanting lets you use 2 schools of magic efficiently. And wearing cloth isn't exactly a good defense strategy.

This argument about having a beneficial synergy with enchanting is just dumb. Do you HAVE to use it? No, especially if you only level destruction you'll be, what level 32? Capable of shooting incinerates for 9 mana = god mage. Seriously at that level incinerates are completely over the top even on master difficulty.

I still recommend to any mage looking to do more than shoot fireballs to use the awesome benefits of enchanting and alchemy.

Please view the image of my level 55 or 56 mage in my signature.

Thats with [censored] horrible gear on.

You can make them work but its a very restrictive build, and requires more preperation/planning and (ab)use of crafting than any other skills.

For example, conjuration and illusion are fine by themselves. They do not need a hard reliance 2-3 complimentary skills to do good on master. This is a fact. As destro you will need to take enchanting (or get lucky and magically find 25% bracers..., i haven't come across one in 3 characters), farm alchemy for every battle, and/or change your playstyle with conjuration.


OR

Use mods and forgo having to power level and exploit crafting, forgo being forced into a spec that everyone tells you to play in every Destro thread, and use those extra perks to play how you want like most other skills get to. your choice - your playstyle. <3 mods.

Hmm

If you are only level 32, you'll NOT get 9 magicka incinerate. I never saw any Peerless stuff droping yet and I'm well on my way to 50. As a guess, it takes level 50+ to get them to show up "reliably".

And those little bracers of yours make all the difference really. Without them, your incinerate would cost 31 magicka per cast instead of 9 That's the power of the broken "xx% reduction stats should NEVER be additively combined" mistake that Bethesda loves to use Basically, once you get a lot of that stat, any little addition has a huge effect.


And yet, your incinerate costs 9 and your total pool is at 350. It means Dual casted you can throw 14 incinerates before you are out of magicka. Enough to kill the strongest targets in master but not if there's multiple of them



I just don't like the rules Bethesda put on their magic spells and magic cost :/ Feels far too restrictive and boring to use. If I had to change I'd try something like making magicka regen in combat for a full bar in 20s and remove all the magicka regen/cost reduction effects. Then on top of that I'd reduce the expert and master spell costs to something reasonable like 100 magicka for expert and 200 for master fully perked.

That or make the spells under expert free to cast with 100 destruction but keep the regen as it is currently. And in all cases, I'll remove the need to charge a spell to cast it which I find damn annoying on my mouse. It's somewhat fine for pad gameplay but I'd much rather have the way melee works : one click and the attack happens after a small delay.

It's also equally selfish to deny those that have no choice (console users) to never be able to have destruction scale properly if they want to play a pure mage type. What is it to you? Don't like it, don't use it and it won't overpower the npcs because guess what? Their magic already SCALES to yours which is why many find it so difficult to deal with them.

So what other compelling arguements do you have against this other then - "I don't like it"?

Would you be satisfied if as a warrior, you couldn't beat another with "just" your weapon of choice to deal damage? If you needed more than "just" your one hander, DON'T even try and tell me that you wouldn't be pissed because you would be a damned liar!

Destruction is fine, however if I ignored enchanting and didn't make my own gear, I would hate it with a passion. That being said, I'm @ level 45 right now, and am not having any problems being a mage that uses mostly destruction with illusion/conjuration as secondarys.

I'm level 54 in that picture I don't know when they started showing up. It makes sense that they wouldn't though, as that is how spells scale in this game. They get easier to cast, not more powerful. Because an incinerate will 1 shot most things at level 32 it makes sense that it eats more mana. You might not find a peerless version but you'll probably find an expert version.



If it weren't how it is now then Incinerate would do 30 damage base, perked to 45, and enchanted to 90, and all mana reduction would come from perks. Its arbitrary to say whether or not it would be better or worse, as gear and enchanting would be required to achieve the same level of power it does now.

No, No, No, No, NO!
Whats your reward? What the hell reward are you talking about? Play the class you like....thats your damn reward.

sigh glass cannons....

Most DO utilize other schools - it doesn't stop destruction from being underpowered which is the issue for consoles. Besides, people need to get out of the "should you be allowed to do it" craziness. Too many people with the mmo mentality ruining the game. What YOU think should be in a single player game has no bearing on anyone but YOU. If you have the pc version, use the mods to customize the game as you see fit. If you're on console, DON'T use it if you don't like it but the OPTION should always be there for those who want a different experience and not an ironically "one dimensional" one- it really that simple.

A warrior needs two skills to play effectively. An armor skill and a weapon skill.

A mage can TRY to be effective using only 2 schools if they want (3 is best). Conjuration, Destruction, or Restoration (Any combination of those 2, really). So what happens here? The mage who chooses destruction, which is supposed to be THE damage skill for mages, and in fact is the ONLY direct damage skill for mages, doesn't even hold a candle to what a warrior can put out. And it doesn't even matter about what the competition puts out, because the destruction mage can't even effectively fight in the world itself. Without enchanting, you WILL go through several whole mana bars just to kill your opponents.

And yet we're told to use this skill and that skill or whatever to survive, but no one who suggests that ever answers the question at hand; why are we forced to supplement, or completely bypass, our only direct damage skill, while warriors and thieves can use a SINGLE damage skill, effectively, for the ENTIRE GAME?

The simple matter is that destruction is a mage's only direct damage skill, yet it doesn't do its job effectively at all. Every other direct damage skill in the game (Two-Handed, One-Handed, and Archery, and hell, even BLOCK) scales. Destruction does not scale.

How is this even a debate anymore?

Compelling argument! Who can argue with that???