Re-quoted.

I've seen dozens of these threads here (BOTH "Destruction is broken damn it Bethesda" and "Mages stop crying and use all the schools") and I don't really have a position. I DO agree (as a user said earlier) than Destruction is THE school of damage. But really, should mages in this game be allowed to only dish out Destruction and be successful, without having to rely on other schools (like Restoration to pop some heals if your Fireball's not doing the trick and that bandit's getting a little too close)? While I'm mostly neutral on this topic, and loving the game as a warrior who drops the occasional Flame Atronarch, I'd have to say.. well, yeah, they should. That's called a DPS mage: squishy as all hell, but dishing out godly levels of pure damage to people. But, from what I've read, the way that Bethesda made magic in this game, doesn't allow for a pure Destruction mage to be viable option, and in my opinion, that is kind of a flaw. Not a flaw that I personally care about, as I'm desperately in love with my game disc, but a flaw nonetheless.

My two cents. (:

I certainly don't want an IWIN button with Destruction. I do, however, want it to live up to it's namesake.

It would be horrible if you didn't have to rely on other schools also, I like my Alteration spells and Enchanting. I think they are great and have fun with them, and Restoration is great too.

It's just that Destruction damage is a bit low and even when using all my various spells, it would be really nice for my damage spells to have a little more oomf.

The problem with trying to play a pure mage is simply that you have no way of reliably and cheaply dealing damage. At the end of the day all the magic tricks in the world don't help if you can't reduce the opponent to zero hitpoints, and destruction just doesn't do the job.

Also destruction eats so much magicka that you can't even cast any other spells anymore if you try to deal damage through destruction magic.

Id personally like all vanilla damage based skills to do somthing in between what destruction and the other do now. Not the one hit easiness of the archer of one/two handed, but not the kite, boring spam fest of the Destruction "master".

My biggest beef though wasn't with destro, its with the butchering of H2H, but that's for another thread.

Nearly everyone has said that mages should have to use all their skills. There's no debate about that. It's just that destruction, with or without other skills, does lackluster damage. As a damage dealing tree it should be good (good, not OP) in its own right, and supplemented by other schools.



Also, this.

The key point is, Bethesda isn't going to patch this. They never patched Oblivion except for bug-fixes, they didn't fix things like Finger of the Mountain being terrible for being such a fabled destructive spell. They're going to release the Creation Kit and allow us to balance the game however damn well we please. We don't need every thread complaining about Destruction. You can beat the game playing as Destruction. It'll be hard. If you don't like that, install one of the many mods that will be released after the CK comes out.

What the heck are you talking about? As long as you actually use Destruction in Morrowind or Oblivion you can whoop ass. An Apprentice or Journeyman spell in Oblivion could do 30-50 damage for 3 secs in a 5ft radius. A Master-equivalent spell in Oblivion could do 90 damage for 5 secs in a 2ft radius for almost half the Magicka cost of the Master fire spell in Skyrim, WITHOUT the 10 second charge-up time, immobilization, or the ability to be interrupted.

I think the running out of Magicka issue is because, in Skyrim, you have to chose between increasing Magicka, Health, or Stamina every level. It should be that every time you level up that you gain 10 points in the two you don't pick, and 50 points in the one you do.

That's not the complaint at all. The complaint is that it takes like 15 hits just to kill one enemy, when it should take maybe 3 or 4.

I'm a destruction mage level 40 now...so far everything dies, unless they shoot at me with poison arrows. It's impossible not to get another trait or 2 going, unless you gonna keep saving up the perk points for something greater. (NOt sure what, the game is gonna end on you, or you gonna get bored doing the same thing over and over)
Here is the deal, the the last 3 skills in the fire/storm/ice are not necessary at all, they only freeze the enemy or turn them into ashes, they are waste of skill points. INstead, invest into enchanting and restoration. I also put a few points into smithing, because I thought it was cool to make armors and jewelry, so it's not like I spent all my skill points on combat.
If I would do another mage focusing to be powerful the destruction/restoration/enchanting/conjuration + one handed weapoon to go. One handed doesn't need a lot of points, just to serve as an emergency, and only carry a dagger or a shortsword.

Here a few of my ideas who want to play mage: (this is after figuring things out 40 levels later)
Destruction
(don't go farther than augemented shock/fire/storm 2/2 dual hand etc. + of course complete to master experience (meanwhile spend the perks in other skills). Turning them ashes or freezing them solid is nothing but visuals and I actually hate doing it, it's harder to find those pile of ashes to loot them plus some dragons got pulverized this way and I didn't get any souls from it.

Restoration
At least go half way on up on the star tree

Conjuration
I only made it to cost half as much magicka, but whoever want to conjure his or her own weapons, go for as far as possible on it
One handed
Just to give him a chance to deal with close combat/out of magicka/out of potions - sort of emergencies (use a powerful enchanted or daedric weapon from a
mission, I have been carrying the Dawnbringer since like level 5)


OR

Keep the destuction/restoration and replace enchanting or conjuration with

Alchemy
- sell your poisons if you don't use a weapon, but keep the stamina/magicka/health ones, you don't have to buy them anymore, but you will have to chase butterflies/fish/pick flowers


Block
-No comment, I havent' utilized this skill, not sure if its great, since I use both hands for either dual casting or one with restoration/ward spells

Light Armor
- No comment again, I use robes, boots, hoods exclusively with zero armor, I'm sure it works great though, I just don't feel like mages should wear an armor.

Heavy Armor
- That's the old battlemage setup, I was never ever in favor of heavy armor in any TES games not even as a warrior so I don't like my mage in heavy armor. Heavy armor is for p_ssies. :whistling:


Archery
-This is kinda weird idea, since both the mage and the archer are projectile/distance fighters so I never mixed mage class with bowhunter


Two Handed
-Could be used instead of the one handed, I just don't feel like carrying around a axe or great sword, it's too slow to use and requires too much stamina and as a mage all your extra points should go either magicka and health maybe one or two times of leveling add to stamina if you must.


Illusion:
I hate to say it, even though it's magick stuff, it's useless for me, maybe the thief-kind of character wants to use this one. Although I have heard, that some sort of a bug makes my destruction mage more powerful if I advance in the Illusion class too. I don't know if that's true, I havent' tested it yet. I only put 1 perk into that so I can't tell.


All the rest of the skills

Speech/lockpicking etc... are very optional, unless you have a motive or make some funky thief-mage sort of character, but then one handed sword skill will be still needed.

I really hope you're wrong, cause I'm on console. :sadvaultboy:

Though eventually, when I have the extra funds, I will be putting together a nice rig and enjoying the game on PC.



What would your recommendations be for a mage using Destruction, Restoration, Alteration and Enchanting. Many people seem to not like the summoner type role. I know it's a powerful school, but still.

Qiox, man. You need to lose this "1 dimensional" mentality about Destruction. Not everyone is using solely Destruction. I believe Destruction is laughably weak. Why?

I play a Mage utilizing every single school of magic and guess what?

Destruction is useless when:
My permanent summons roll through everything before I can even be bothered to cast a spell
My magic resistance and absorb makes enemy casters a joke
I can turn my enemies against themselves and make them run in fear
I can summon a bound weapon and do more damage than Destruction
I can sit there and spam zero cost healing/ward spells while the above do their magic

Basically, the game plays my game for me, and you know what? It's freaking boring. I'd rather use Destruction as my main source of damage so I can actually, you know, play the game instead of watch it? Last I checked I bought a video game, not a freaking movie. But alas, I can't. Due to Destruction being complete garbage for damage without using Poisons and Potions. I'm sorry, if I wanted to use bows to apply poisons, I'll play an archer, not a pure-mage. Mages should not have to rely on means that are not magical, to do respectable damage.
Also, abusing Impact? Yeah, because spamming an attack on an enemy that can't fight back is totally fun, right?

All in all, I'd like to use Destruction as my source of damage, with Alteration for defense, Illusion for the occasional distraction, and Restoration to keep my from being one dead mage, why? Because it's a fun play-style. But alas, I won't do the damage needed because Destruction is garbage.

Think whatever you want, Destruction is weak for what it is supposed to be, a Mages source of damage.

So me? I'm letting my Mage rot in the pit of saves I'll never play again until a decent mod comes out to fix the problem. If you actually enjoy watching the game instead of playing it, power to you, I don't.

Edit - Fixed typos and edited confusion about resistance/reflect.

Conjuration is amazing. Two Dremora Lords will wreck almost anything melee, Storm Atronachs can deal with casters and dragons.
Illusion is also very good.

See my above post, but to reiterate, not everyone likes playing a summoner. Feels too much like it's all being done for me and there's little actual playing going on. Just my opinion but it would seem others share it as well.

I play a Conjuration mage/archer type with destruction as a backup. Basically, you have put points in Conjuration up to Twin Souls and for Mystic Binding + Soul Stealer, get 100% cost reduction enchants for Destro' spells (50% for conjuration, and run with a tanking follower. The rest is up to you.

Here's my base build: http://skyrimcalculator.com/#8588

I use the Steed Stone so I can wear Heavy Armor without weight and switch to Light if I have to do a sneak type mission. Also, I have 5 points in Alchy and just craft pots for magic def., health, and mana.

Eh, it's not so much that it's not good, it's that it just takes forever to kill things and seems to be designed backwards. Instead of Enchanting + damage, we get -magicka cost, which has rather unfortunate effects for the mage playstyle late game:

• Once the mage reaches high levels of enchanting it becomes pointless to use anything other than the expert level spells, effectively incentivizing mages to use one spell.
  
• Magicka ceases to be a resource that has to be managed and becomes ignored, rendering previous investment into the stat worthless.
  
• Killing high level enemies isn't difficult, it's just tedious. The mage can stagger lock every enemy in the game indefinitely so every fight boils down to dual casting free thunderbolts/incinerates until the enemy is dead.

Both of the variety and tedium issues of the late game mage could be alleviated with replacing -magicka cost with + %damage enchants. Early game spells, if leveled properly, would still be of use to the player because the damage scales, late game expert spells would do much more damage but have prohibitive costs that prevented them from being spammed, so the mage would be use his other spells as needed. Investment into the magicka stat is always rewarded and never becomes obsolete.

I will never, ever understand why Bethesda didn't do it this way. Or if not this way, why they did it the way they did.

Um. No. That would be completely unbalanced. The fact of the matter is that there needs to be a ratio of damage to magic. Lets take a look
Flames = 8 damage for 12 magic (1.5).
Firebolt = 25 damage for 35 magic (1.4),
Fireball = 40 damage in 15 radius for 114 magic (2.85),
Incinerate = 60 damage for 255 magic (4.25)

These numbers in brackets are the number of magic points you need to use to do a point of damage.

For comparison, using axes (with perks double this, if dual wielding double again, then multiply by 1.35)
Iron 8 to 16 to 21.6
Steel 9 to 18 to 24.3
Dwemer 11 to 22 to 29.7
Ebony 15 to 30 to 40.5
Daedric 15 to 30 to 40.5

Now here's the kicker, there is no fatigue to damage ratio here because you don't need fatigue to swing an axe, therefore the ratio is always 0. Theoretically, this means that melee or bows are always more efficient than magic in dealing damage. Take in to account sneak attacks and this only is exacerbated.

What we see here is that the magic costs quickly become too high for the damage dealt and because a player only gets 10 magic per level tops around level 50, one would have 600 magic if all points were put into that (no enchantments listed here). If you have the expert perk, you can throw say 6 incinerates for 240 damage before the tank is empty or a three dozen firebolts for 900 damage.

This is the problem. As level goes up, magic efficiency shouldn't go down and certainly not that far. Either damage for expert perks needs to go up dramatically or costs need to come down dramatically because as it stands, it's not fathomable to use expert level spells and using firebolts would take forever.

Referring to the axe chart, we see that for two regular swings of dual wielded ebony axes, you are essentially doing about 175 magicka worth of damage (if you were using destruction to do the same amount of damage). Consider that you can continue swinging these axes till the cows come home and you see the issue.

Right now the solutions are:
-Alchemy to raise skill or chug for mana
-Spam firebolt 36 times
-Run out of magicka using incinerate
-Enchant gear to reduce all costs to the point where you still are spamming, but only higher level spells
-Mod it

or smack it with an axe a few times.

These solutions mean that to do damage, a mage needs either max 2 trees minimum or exploit game mechanics to maintain an offense. A melee character needs only 5 perks to effectively double his damage and that is before taking into account crafting, enchanting, or alchemy. Also, he can unlock abilities for his chosen weapons still which give even greather benefits.

Sorry to get bogged down in the numbers, but I feel that this helps clearly demonstrate what the issue is for someone who isn't playing a mage. Long story short, as you spend more time training as a mage, you do less damage. The most efficient thing to do would be get to firebolts and spam those incessantly; this is the issue.

If he used his bound bow, got archery instead of destro, and instead of 100%cost-reduction he took +160% bow damage, he'd be better off.

So his statement was actually pretty accurate, that a mage could easily fore-go Destro and actually enhance damage by a rather considerable amount, and use the other schools just as conveniently if not moreso (resto/illusion/conj actually synergize with bow better - sneak criticals easier with calm/invis, respite, bound bow+mystic weapons)

That's quite an understatement.

You're ignoring that magic is ranged and some of the spells can hit multiple enemies.

Yes, it is ranged. Unfortunately, PC frost spells barely slow down enemies, so unless you're fighting an enemy from a quarter mile away, he's going to be on top of you in just a few seconds. Oh, and he'll have alerted all of his buddies around him so you got those to contend with as well.

Area of Effect spells in this game are rather impractical. Furthermore, if you are actually able to AoE down a room full of enemies, chances are they weren't really a threat anyways. Fireballing a room full of level 1 draugers doesn't make you a hero.

That is exactly the problem here. Magic damage does not scale well, so you are out cold if you want to build a true glass cannon mage. Too bad that is my favorite playsite across games (that actually give me character build choices), so I feel seriously gimped playing Skryim. I did leveled to some extends other trees: resto to heal, illusion to CC (keep mobs in place if you dont know the term) and alter to improve my survival rate, but I intended to build my damage output around Destruction, which itself failed miserably. Ended up maxed out perks in conjuration, and to my horror, my pets did more damage than my own spells lol.




- Master spells are mostly AoE, and they are practically useless. Dont ask, just try to yourself. Even people defending destruction here use a lower tier spells. Chain lighting and fireball are fun, but you risk killing your own follower in the process, so your play choice is even more limited: pet tanking or ranged/magic follower only.
- Magic is ranged, true, but you cant kite them forever with limited magicka and lack of CC/escaping tools. The most obvious one is stagger effect from dual cast, but it takes too much magicka and your defend drop to zero when magicka run out - which lead to situations where you ended up kiting group of boss-lvl mobs through half the instance. That wasnt exactly the kind of fun im hoping for, but tedious kiting waiting for my magicka bar filled up.


I dont understand some people here. Destruction failed to do its job so it has to rely on other school to deal damage (mostly conju) or exploitation. I didnt expect my glass canon nuker to stand the ground dishing out tactical nukes, but didnt expect this kind of pathetic damage either. Bethesda simply didnt give us options.

Actually you can shoot fireballs and lightning bolts. They're apprentice level spells, but it's possible. Plus if you level up the perk for Dual-Casting then you get to open up a new door for more [censored] whooping! My friend tells me about it all the time, though I play a Light Armored Paladin-type class I still find his tales of his character very intriguing. Especially when a dragon attacked the Magic College, that story was pretty cool/funny.

But back on topic, there will be times when you're going to need more Health/Magicka, but Stamina is a must for whatever potions/armors you're trying to carry that are slowing you down. It's a game, so there's going to be challenges. And that's why You, the player, are able to make changes to adapt to any given situation! Plus there's mods to add bonuses to your healing spells depending on what level of casting they are being casted.

I'd also like to add in that there's at least one expansion coming out (Though we all know Bethesda puts out two) for the game that'll add new things. So, if you don't like something NOW there might be a solution to it LATER!

I hate to say this but destruction is fine, learn to play or turn the difficulty settings down.

explain 'fine'.