I disagree with people who say that pure mages are useless. I have 700+ mana and maxed out perks in ALL Magic classes. Im playing on master difficutly and theres only two things you need to do. First, cast Mayhem to get rid of the weaker enemies then cast harmony to calm things down.(Master Illusion spells have massive AOE) On higher level characters, where illusion doesnt work, simply cast paralyze and wall of flames/frost/storm and keep him paralyzed. Game Over.
Source: Level 81 Pure Mage Xbox.

I stopped following these threads a long time ago, because they're mostly pointless, the CK is going to allow you to change what you want to your liking - whether or not Bethesda adds scaling to the lower tier spells doesn't matter too much. But it is a valid point.

Personally, I haven't found much difficulty in a pure mage setup with no magicka cost in Destruction + throwing on some decent magic resist because of the pain of fire breath and other mages. (This is on master, I cannot say everyone will have the same experience as me, but I am around level 40ish and I assume it will continue to be this easy, especially with the impact perk.)

What iffs me more than anything (even the no-scaling effect on ALL spells, and though there is a potion to increase Destruction damage, it is not a permanent enchantment, it comes from alchemy) is that lower tier spells (their spells effects, particles, all the cool little things about them) cannot be used at later levels, they are NOT viable because 50% increase to 8 damage (see the Destruction perks.. they do not take into account lower tier spells, flawed design) is NOTHING.

While I hope that Bethesda adds all of these things with manual patches so that console users can have a better experience (at least the ones that do not min-max), I don't care too much for these threads - I almost find them pointless because of the Creation Kit.

That's just my 2cents.

They are good, up until ~level 30-40 (Beyond that there are no destruction spells that can compete with melee weapons or bows).

The other magic trees don't suffer as much though, Summoned atronachs scale with your level and remain powerful throughout the game for example. and the illusion tree is very strong, (Paralyze rocks), (You're better off making a conjuration/illusion + archery or melee build though than one based on destruction)

I wonder if they can patch the Destruction tree for us console users?

I think the problem most people have is they do not understand the math in this, I will try to shed some light.

My SINGLE one handed daedric war axe upgraded to legendary through smithing (WITHOUT any enchants on my armor to make smithed items stronger) does about 72 damage per hit. With the first tier one handed perk maxed, that damage is doubled to 144. Now because im dual wielding these exact same axes, I attack 35% faster from the dual fury perk, and also my power attacks cause 50% extra damage. I also use the axe mastery perk so that my axes cause the target to bleed for even more damage (The damage isnt stated.) I also have 25% bonus damage to my power attacks, and 25% less stamina use for power attacks. Now, I do not have these enchanted because I feel the Elemental Fury shout is better (It DRAMATICALLY increases attack speed, AS WELL AS power attack speed. But can only be used with non enchanted weapons, to my knowledge, there is no such enchant for destruction users, or archery for that matter.)

To my knowledge, the highest damage destruction spell is Fire Storm, which is 150 points. They also have 50% increased Fire damage from a perk, making this come out to 225 damage. With NO way to make it a power attack, NO way to cast it faster, NO shout to improve its casting speed or damage, NO way to smith it to be more powerful, AND they must be a fire mage to make the most use out of this spell. While I as a warrior can freely choose between the weapon type that i want with no real decrease to effectiveness. So lets look at this from a bullet point style view.

Daedric War Axe - 72 damage
+100% Damage
+75% Power Attack Damage
+35% Faster Attack Speed
+???% Faster Attack Speed (Elemental Fury shout, im guessing ATLEAST 100% faster.)
+25% Less Stamina For Power Attacks
+?? Extra Bleed Damage

Fire Storm - 150 Damage
+150% Damage (Im assuming dual wielding the spell doubles its damage, plus 50% from the perk.)
+??% Less Magicka Cost (I have no idea how much less magicka it costs when destruction is maxed, I do not play a mage.)
+??% Chance To Fear Target (Assuming you're a fire mage, which really limits destruction even more.)

And this doesnt even factor in enchanting my gear with major smithing to create even BETTER daedric war axes and improving them even MORE. I also didnt take into account the fact that I play on master difficulty, basicly nerfing all damage the player does by 40%. From this math alone, I can already tell it svcks to be a pure mage.

-Edited to include bleed damage and fear chance-

For PC players, mods gonna fix it, for PS and XBox players, they just gonna have to deal with it. I'm playing as a mage and I do carry around at least 2 staffs and a powerful sword as well. I kinda figured out, that a willow wisp mother is about 3x harder to kill (for me) than a dragon. Yeah , I'm level 20 only and I die a lot entering fights, especially because I mismanaged many points early on and both my mana and health level svcks for being at level 20. So I'm kind of experimenting with a lot of stuff lately, trying out everything see what they are about, not really trying to focus on a particular skill or class anymore. It seems to me, the game levels very fast to a certain point and then it slows down, so the game gets very easy to very hard, especially if you screw up your character.

Could anyone post a video of a high level mage playing on expert or master difficulty? I want to start a new playthrough as a mage expert or master, but if it's as underpowered as some people say it won't be much fun.

-.- This from a poster who has not played a high level destruction character, and has only played a melee character.

not really, skill up your melee, but don't change the weapon. use the same iron sword. as your skill goes up, even WITHOUT perks, your damage goes up. so at 40 skill you are doing more damage than at 15. with magic, they got rid of the spell redundancy from oblivion of having different levels of the same spell do more damage because the spells were supposed to grow with you. But, using the previous melee as a template, you start off with a fire spell for up close and personal that does 8 damage at low level, but, at much higher level, you are doing... still 8 points. doesn't matter if you are skill level 15 or 50.

these are for straight skill usage, not perks. perks just augment your base abilities.

You don't have to have actually played a character in order to understand how they work. You can listen to arguments and look at numbers and come to conclusions just fine. What it is, is a matter of opinion on how much all that matters. That's all this debate really is in the first place, people arguing over how much destruction matters in the first place. Reasonable people will differ.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1273804-the-bottom-line-with-destruction/page__view__findpost__p__19296873, for those of you arguing that Destruction is already balanced.

I'm guessing you haven't given the firewall, or the dualcast firewall, a try yet then, have you...

/facepalm..

Well, in all fairness to the poster you quoted, I think it was really reasonable for people to assume that magic was not going to work the way it does. I was totally under the impression that we would learn a spell, and then over the course of development that specific spell would become more powerful. Furthermore, I figured that we would simply learn different ways to cast that same spell. In other words, you just learn "Fire." Then later, you figure out how to do fireballs, fire DoT, Fire AoE, Flamethrowers, Traps, etc. All of these would essentially be variations on the same spell.

Then that would simply scale up as your skills and perks went up.

Instead, the system Bethesda made is this awkward hybrid of the new concept and the old. Old spells still become useless in time, which is dumb. To get stronger, you still need to find new spells, instead of just strengthening your existing ones. But at the same time, you can't craft the spell yourself, you only have the options that the game gives you, apparently crafted by an NPC somewhere that is far more powerful than we, the player character.

It just doesn't make any sense to do it that way.

As you improve your weapon skills, you weapons do more damage.

As you improve your Destruction Skills, your spells do the same damage they did at level 50 as they did at level 5.

Sorry... With Perks, they do 50% more damage.

On the other hand, melee damage increases by well over 500%.

We have a problem with warriors having Linear advancement, while Wizards have Logical advancement (Start out with slow advancement, rapidly increase in power, then peak.)

This

Why are you looking at the "DAMAGE" of Firestorm and stopping there? Do we play in a vacuum? It has an extremely long casting time too, so it's overall usefulness is even worse.
Your wall of text somewhat has a point, but it's overshadowed by the simple fact that you can make the weapons deal 500 damage per swing. Power attack bonuses not even factored in.

Yes it is, nothing you say changes the fact that the single most important offensive magic skill destruction is gimped and does not scale and low magicka regen even with enchancements dont help. Every other skill scales. This is Gimping the most popualar mage, the sorcerer or elementalist. Needs to be patched.

This explains why those enemy conjurers I ran into at level 13 were 2-shotting me with ice spike. I used ice spike on them, and their health went down by 1/1,000,000th. They hit me, and it took 50% of my health, easily. What's up with that?

Yes, Destruction magic is underpowered. Especially when you consider how overpowered melee and archery are.

No spell can one hit a dragon. Melee weapons can.

Desctruction IS underpowered, because you cant bust your damage like warriors/rogues can do.
ALL THREE crafting skills contribute in SYNERGY to PERMANENT weapon/bow damage bust, and they have potions with temporary damage boost too.
Mages however ONLY have potions.
20 lv mage with 100 Destruction will have the same damage that 70 lvl mage with 100 Destruction. Mages dont have a motivation too lvl-up.
Warriors and rogues have it, because master all 3 crafting skills and 2 on minimum for warrior (weapon skill, armor skill) and even more for thieves/assasins will take you to 40+ lvl.
If you cant understand this simple thing, i hope you are a 10 years old kid, because if you are not...well to put it straight: you are simply an idiot.
No offense.
PS: Oh and dont post your crappy videos where you are "killing everything". Nobody sad that it is impossible to play as pure destro solo.

Your idea is fantastic. That's how it should've been done.

Lol, NPC mages are nothing like PC mages.

Try playing it before you make a thread, u troll.

Is that seriously the point you're trying to make? Flames is a NOVICE spell everyone starts out with, Firebolt is an APPRENTICE spell. Of course it's going to be stronger.

Melee:
All but 2 perks in the 1h melee weapon skill tree contribute to damage. Only 1 perk in 2h does not.

Levelling the melee skill itself adds to damage.

+skill enchants on the weapon add to damage.

Having a better weapon, and being able to improve it adds to damage.

Dragon shouts such as elemental fury add to melee damage.

vs

Destruction:
Less than half the perks increase damage, and those that do do not improve all destruction spells, only subsets of them.

Levelling the destruction skill does not add to damage

+skill enchants on gear do not add damage.

Having a better/higher level spell does do more damage, but not anywhere near enough to begin to compare to melee advantages.

No dragon shouts improve your cast spell damage.

+magicka regen is broken. Magicka regen is inherently far slower than stamina regen.

THis is why the scaling is so off. Levelling destro needs to improve destro damage, and magicka regen needs to be fixed.

Excellent post, something really needs to be done with destruction, its really broken right now.

You also have poisons for melee. And melee champions can gain the benefits of a mage by using staffs and gems to fuel them.

I'm leveling a mage. (currently lv 38)

I'm having fun.

And there is nothing you can do about it.