This has been said before but I think it needs to be said again.

I find being a pure mage in Skyrim is very unfulfilling and unfair when you get to higher levels.

Let's start with Restoration wards. From level 1 to 81, I have put every single attribute point into magicka. None in stamina and none in health. Why? Because when first starting, I automatically figured that a master mage could rely solely on his magical skill to protect him/her from harm. I was wrong. No matter if I'm a master at restoration or selected the appropriate perks, my wards are still terrible against other mages/magical creatures. Why? Because opponent damage seems to scale with their level but no such thing happens to me when I go up a level. Granted, blocking the thu'um of a Dragon is ridiculous...but should it really be that ridiculous if you're a master? To me, if you're level 100 and you have the magicka, you should be powerful enough to block yourself from the harm that a dragon fire commits. This even happens with certain necromancers or bandits, who are nowhere near as powerful as Dragons. Even their flame/shock/frost spells aren't blocked by my ward, when in reality, my superior skill/power would make their attempts turn to a puff of smoke through my ward. I feel forced to wear a full set of Daedric armour to have any hope of surviving combat, and even then I still am a sack of fragile meat.

As for destruction, well, it's very simple. As a level 100 in destruction, I'd expect my spells to be ridiculously powerful. I'd expect far far greater scaling to my personal level also. If I'm level 70+ whilst also being a master of destruction with all relevant perks, my strongest thunderbolt should take 1 hit, not 5+ to kill an enemy. Even with the lowest armoured bandits, it isn't instant.

The main issue is simply scaling. I just don't feel it is balanced at all. I disagree with scaling enemies to your level, because I really feel no satisfaction out of it. I don't ever feel as if I'm a mage no one can mess with, when truthfully, as a master in the schools, I really should be. If you're going to scale their (foes) strength and health, at least make things fair by upping your damage output significantly if you're meant to be a top level at them. Obviously, not ALL enemies would be weak compared to you, I feel it would be carefully balanced to ensure the stronger foes to be a challenge. I actually have to put the game at Apprentice level just to make the role play of me being extremely powerful realistic.

Simply seems as if being a pure mage in Skyrim just sets you up for disappointment from the game mechanics.

A lot of people will disagree with me I'm sure, but I had to get it out of my system.

Please place your thoughts and arguments.

yes. destruction needs some sort of buff but im not sure about wards, i'v never really used 'em before

It's incredibly frustrating. There isn't as much of a problem in melee fighters though.

If you're a mage centered around using Conjuration along with some Illusion, you're all set. Alteration spells before Paralysis kind of svck but it has a great perk tree. Restoration has a pretty nice tree as well.

The disappointment comes from playing a glass cannon type mage. The cannon is more "pew pew" then "Blam! Blam!".

What are the chances of them being buffed/scaling in next patch?


About the same as Todd and Pete getting fired. About the same as Betehsda learning how to write a compelling story. About the same as Bethesda discontinuing their continual removal of gameplay aspects from TES.

Yeah, that's my point. If you dedicate the time to being a master at restoration, you shouldn't ever be "made of glass". The same goes for your point about working towards 100 at Destruction. Your anology is correct, the "cannon" you can become is more a twig and elastic band.

The real frustrating part about destruction is about that point when your skill is between 40-49 right before you get Adept Spells. Your enemies are getting tougher and you're still using firebolts. That and the master spells are kinda crap. Of course one can get Aspect of Terror to buff fire, but thats technically an exploit.

It is irritating that one needs to use an exploit to simulate the way things should naturally be within a skill.

Destruction magic would be fine if they fixed the wall spells.

The whole thing just seems overly underpowered to me. I have seen this discussion come up often though. Hopefully Bethesda are taking notes!

The problem I see is, Bethesda gives enemies gobs of health when they should have gobs of armor.

Its really not underpowered, expert spells do 90 damage with perks, thats what, 198 dual cast?

but really, destruction is all about stacking damage, wall of sparks works well enough as is, throw in a cloak and start spamming adept spells and you can do serious damage, and then there is blizzard, but the damn thing is broken, which can be an advantage or disadvantage, but the point is you can do massive amounts of damage to large groups way faster than melee or archery can.

that is a huge issue in my opinion, it would also allow them to fix the 1H and 2H weapon type specific perks, if they tried to fix it now, maces would be left behind. I don't know why they haven't implemented this in a patch yet. I mean is it that difficult? It would also help alleviate the destruction issue as you said. Seems like a no brainer and would hugely improve the game. Or is it sacrilege to change things on your game after it is released?

Sorry about the consecutive posts, but another thing. I recently played a shield and spell mage and absolutely loved it. I thought that Spellsword was my favorite style of play, but I may have been holding the spell in the wrong hand all that time, haha.

I had no dual-casting, and went with alchemy over enchanting and I really didn't have a problem with destruction magic being my only offense aside from shield bashing. I went with restoration, alteration, and destruction for my magic schools and I had to put more points into health than most mages and it was fine. As a level 60 vampire, I was able to shed do fine with no cost reduction gear in favor of magicka regen if I chose so, which I did for awhile when grinding light armor, though the shield may have made it a bit easier, impact affords pretty much the same opportunity to allow your magicka to regen. dualcast to stagger, regen, then dualcast again! thats how you are supposed to do it with destruction. I think a lot of people just spam fireball/incinerate as fast as they can and when they run out of magicka think that the problem lies in destruction rather than them not utilizing the games mechanics properly.

It's definitely one of the top 5 things that needs to be done immediately.

oh yea, sure, 'cept that isnt possible unless you abuse potions or enchanting to the point that magic really starts to svck even more

But in my view, it shouldn't have to rely on any stacking or potion spamming in any way. If you're a powerful mage, your most powerful bolt of lightning should be sufficient enough in 85% of the cases. Spamming adept level spells seems pathetic if you're a supposed master.

Agreed, it disrupts the balance and means that when you're up to a high level, it's as if you're moving backwards in power, not forwards.

When it comes to dealing damage, destruction is vastly inferior to melee. As I discovered on my first character; lots of perks/skill in Destruction was still no comparison to an unenchanted Skyforge Steel Sword and 0 perks in 1h weapons. Plus you don't burn up magicka that can be used on healing or utility spells.

Alteration's armor spells/perks are also really disappointing for me. Topping out at 300 armor with a skill of 75 and maxed out perks is just weak, especially when that drops to 100 should you put on the Mage oriented Dragonpriest mask that one obtains during the College of Winterhold quests. Wearing armor - even light armor - will give you far better protection while being less of a hassle. I really wish that defending ones self with armor and/or magic was mostly a matter of playstyle choice, but it isn't; magic is very clearly inferior, and by a fairly sizable margin at that. Sadly, I don't expect that to ever change (but maybe a magic-focused DLC can prove me wrong?)

I'd also like to see a cap put on spell cost reduction enchantments (with a simultaneous decrease in the magicka cost of most spells). Dropping the cost down to 0% makes playing a Mage character pointless; just play as a Warrior until your enchanting is 100, then voila - you're now the most powerful type of spell caster a player can possibly be, since your hit points aren't terrible and you'll never need more than the magicka you had at level 1. That realization was a huge disappointment for my first Skyrim character; I could have avoided all that getting 1-shot by Bandit Chiefs, Saber Cats, etc...and still been just as capable of a spell caster in the end (except that I refuse to "abuse" cost reduction enchants, since I find that to be a really gamey and nonsensical "playstyle").

You couldn't get the higher level spells though; they appear based on skill, not on level.

While I do agree that a lot of people don't properly utlizes the spells that are available and just want to blast away with their strongest projectile attack, destruction is still underpowered overall. There are no elemental debuff spells (forcing you to use poisons), there are no DoTs (damage of time spells), and there are only three elements: Fire, Frost, Shock.

Increasing skill really isn't that hard, especially for certain magic schools (unless Muffle was nerfed, you can get to 100 Illusion without ever leaving the room where you buy the spell). Getting Destruction up wouldn't be hard at all when every spell is free and you have the survivability of a character that put most/all level ups into hit points. It may take a little more time to reach X skill level in Y magical school when starting off as a Warrior archetype, but that will still provide you with the most powerful spell casting character available in Skyrim (excluding mods, obviously). And that's not just an opinion - it's objective fact, and is why spell cost reduction enchants need to be capped (along with a reduction in base spell costs, of course - sadly I don't foresee Bethesda bothering to do either thing).

These two quotes outline my thoughts exactly. Destruction is held back immensely in terms of its potential.

Agreed

Wards are pretty useless. However, I doubt Bethesda will do anything to fix this. At least magic looks pretty.