I think there's plenty of freedom of choice. I'm sword and board, but I'm free to dual wield if I want, but I don't because I don't want to. I could care less if my sword and board does less damage, it's what I like doing so I do it, I don't demand equal dps with twohanders and dual wielding and archery or even destro, because I know that I'm getting extra surviability with my shield.

That's an awful example. A shield isn't supposed to act as damage; it acts as defense. Of course you're going to do less damage; it would be absurd to demand equal damage. On the other hand, destruction is pure damage. And when compared to any of the other pure damage types, it falls horribly short, with or without other skills (which all of the other pure damage types have access to as well.)

Isn't it absurd to demand equal fun when you're essentially dual wielding destruction spells the entire time? Since your argument has now shifted from damage to fun:



So if destruction is so easy why do you want more damage? Destruction is boring because you're just doing the same thing over and over, dual wielding some fire spell.

I have just got destruction to 100, but I have no master spells yet, I am level 38 and facing Elder dragons, tonnes of draugr deathlords and so on (on 'master').

Destruction absolutely destroys (destructs?) everything. It kills single targets trivially with impact and quite quickly too, it can cause severe damage to groups very rapidly (chain lightning and frost ball are my faves), and all from range. It can kill an elder dragon before it has a chance to open its foul mouth and blast it out of the sky (I wish the scripted landing events didn't run if it is dead and instead it should literally crash to the ground).

Yes, a one-handed sword n boarder can comfortably do 150 damage a hit without too much min-maxing gear, but to a single target. Yes they can also be safer, sheltering behind their damage reduction, shield protection and spamming shield bash. But those shield and armour perks should for a mage be equivalently spent on alteration and another school, providing a near-equal damage reduction (up to 80%), magick resistance, magicka regen and healing.

However, destruction is by no means weak. For variety I would like to see other more powerful, but longer casting spells as it does get somewhat tiresome chaining 10 dual thunderbolts (in a quick 10 seconds) to kill an enemy. DPS is fine and shouldn't be increased, but I dislike the spamminess.

magic spell costs are too high, magic regeneration is too slow and the max magic attack does about 200 damage and the max non magic attack from a bow or sword etc does 800 damage, so thats 4 times more damage, thats unbalanced however you want to look at it. so anyone complaining about "free magic" must have tunnel vision...every school of offense should more or less be capable of the same damage output once you're on an even level, like an archer at level 20 should be doing more or less the same damage as a mage or melee user at the same level, so a magic spell should potentially be able to do the same damage as a bow and arrow, or a sword strike. magic is nerfed so it needs to be fortified quite a bit in a few areas. starting with damage and magic regeneration and spell cost. it all needs to be buffed in order for it to be balanced with the other offensive skills. you should not be penalized for being a mage and using magic, while you are basically rewarded for being a melee user or archer.

Not really since magic damage bypasses armour, whereas physical damage doesn't.

Resistances mitigate magic damage, but the mage has the choice to switch damage types to something suitable. FIre against a frost troll for example is what, double? so that 200 ends up at 400 if you're picking the right element. Phys damage is cut in half most of the time by armour or wards, putting it quite neatly at 400 as well.

It's not like they don't think about this stuff.

I wonder if the sheer amount of destro mages out there who want to steamroll anything without any thought or strategy required will force Bethesda to buff destro damage, I really hope not because I'm enjoying my mage, and I hate being overpowered.

I made a pure Conj mage and did fine. Once I had Frost Atronach, it was easy enough to let it do its thing and get enough skill points to be able to buy Dremora Lord. Once I had that, I just summoned and waited. Sometimes I had to recast, but it was never a big issue, because the Dremora Lord is fairly tough, and hits like a runaway truck...just like if I was a melee.

Even if buffed, Destro would require more skill than Conj.

Yes, even if you get those free spells the speed at which you can kill increases due to non-scaling.

The is no justification for one-handed, two-handed, marksman scaling with level and gear and destruction simply not.
There are no classes in this game only skills, everyone can use all skills, having one gimped is not fun.

Also some people take the "its fine" attitude like they will lose out somehow if destruction gets its needed boost.
You lose nothing, this is not an MMO, you will not face a fotm mage re-roller owning you in PvP with the OP spells.

Again, there is no downside to destruction being rebalanced inline with the other offensive skills, so please stop this nonsense arguing against it.

My warrior does not need to "block and slash", my warrior only has to charge in and go all rambo and everything's dead.



Yes this. Also, if the impact perk was removed from destruction it would be a totally useless skill. right now its just annoying cause you can't do much crap till you get enchantments. And even then you're just spamming spells stunlocking your enemies, which is pretty bland.

But everyone can't use all skills. Almost nothing scales now, have you seen how little impact any skill has on any damage? Perks is where everything is consolidated. Beth did that so they'd have some measure of control when it came to tuning later on, the less variables the better.



Well I don't agree with damage getting a straight buff, but I do agree that the tree is boring.

The current idea is just to scale all the spells and see what happens. I'm pretty sure Bethesda have already tried this, which is the reason they don't currently scale.

lol...double fireball, it is a good spell, i do use it also, but i like the frost spells, ice storm works good too, but yeah doublefireball is a great spell.

The numbers for skills/perks are a bit off I agree, you should get more from the skills themselves I think.
But you need to get say 20, 40, 60 80 skill to unlock the perks, both the skill gains and the perks increase damage, that is scaling!
All physical damage types have an extra scaling element that mages lack, gear! Mages only get +damage potions, which are too tedious to keep making, otherwise the gear only allows more of the same weak(ish) spells to the cast.
Weapons make a huge impact on damage, you get better drops at higher level, you can craft them, you can improve them.

And yes as you said, this for me is not really about damage it is about fun and the feeling like the tree is worthwhile investing in and using.
The spells are nice looking and sounding mostly, I just wish their bite matches their bark!

Hi,
Sorry I don't really get the OP Point.

First thing first the OP is making a mistake as there are 3 Mage dedicated standing stones: atronach, apprentice which both have negatives and the mage one which does not have negatives (Magic skills improve 20% faster). So right there the OP is making a mistake.

Second I am playing a mage focusing on destruction and the slow leveling is definitely part of the Gameplay...Mastering Magika is more demanding than mastering One or Two Handed Weapons. You do comparable damage at the same level with twice more Perks overall than One or Two handed Weapons.

So to me there is no need of rebalancing. Except if you play a Mage as you would play a Warrior which to me does not make any sense.

My 2 cents

Alchemy is the only (and quite an effective) way to further buff destruction damage with weakness to elements/magick. The problem is a pure mage has no way to apply poisons. If destruction had a way to apply poisons it would be a great buff. It will however force you to also take up Alchemy. But synergy between skills is not necessarily a bad thing. I'm afraid applying poisons to spells is not going to happen though.

Apart from that, I think the Impact perk proc chance should be slightly reduced to make it harded to stun lock, but on the other hand destruction needs an all-round medium damage buff and perhaps scaling damage. It might require a slight nerf to Alchemy's weakness to elements though to reduce Alchemy/Destruction to reach ridiculous damage.

who has a full magic bar all the time? even with low magic cost, you're only able to make one field of magic low..you're exaggerating a lot, you can't get totally free magic very easily and if you're using all schools of magic, you don't have a full magic bar all the time during combat. so not sure why you're exaggerating so much. but magic costs are high and magic regeneration is slow and magic lacks some oomph at higher levels especially, so you're talking about nerfing something thats really nerfed pretty badly already and barely viable as it is. so if anything they're prob make some adjustment to magic regeneration and spell cost. reducing magic cost is a game mechanic and as you increase your skill magic costs should go down a lot lower, as it is, they only go down 30% from leveling up alone so thats not very much. so you need to get some stats straight before you just start talking about nerfing magic, its already nerfed.

Bear in mind though, that in this game at least, spells are supposed to be equivalent to swords, in that you get new ones and ditch old ones.

Yes swords can be upgraded while spells can't, but swords fully upgraded do the right amount of damage in most situations. If you take a look at my earlier post where I mentioned about damage resistance and magic resistance, and exploiting elemental weakness.

As for variety, I do mix in other spells from other schools, but it is a shame that the early destro spells become useless.

This whole balancing problem in the destro tree between fun and functionality is a very tough one. If you improve fun by adding scaling to make say flames viable to use, then the spells at the end of the tree become hideously overpowered. Or certain spells just lose relevancy altogether if they all do about the same damage. Also if you don't add enough kick with your scaling, like how weapons are currently scaled by skills, then it would hardly make any difference anyway, and there would still only be one choice of spell tier to use. I don't envy the guy who has to figure this problem out, if they ever do address it.

But as a mage it would be nice to be able to control the amount of power you can use. (up to your current skill maximum)
This is one reason why spellmaking is so missed, you could use your spellmaking to improve the existing basic spells to have them scale much past the few damage perks.

With other physical damage trees you also have the option to smith gear, so if you like a particular style of weapon it can still be viable, with spells you have to discard low ones as they cannot remain effective. No high level flames, which is a shame.
Which is not min-maxing or wanting to be a god, simply wanting to have greater choice, which is what previous TES games offered.

Edit: I agree it is difficult, I think the system as a whole needs to be redone.
I dislike hugely having perks that become obsolete, if you are a bit OCD that can cause a lot of re-rolling!
The whole zero mana spells and huge regen on gear suggest to me they realised it wasn't right and put this in as a crutch, those are just not fun mechanics to exploit, at least for me.

Why on earth are you arguing against it if you play a warrior anyway? There has been countless threads about how [censored] distruction is, and yes, it is [censored]. It needs something done about it. There is no point whatsoever in taking distruction over a bow on a sneak character (which I always think is freeking cool) and it doesnt measure up to weapons in any way. For a Bow User, you get range, more damage, and you can have more HEALTH AND STAMINA, because you dont need to waste time with magica. If you say "enchant your equipment 100% distruction" that just takes away other fun enchantments that a bow user could use. Not to mention you can then equip poisens to your arrows (oh and sneak attack)... seriously. Distruction should be a weapon choice for a mage, just like 1&2 handed/archery are for other classes. But it isn't. It isn't even close.

Different combinations of skills give you different strengths and weaknesses. One doesn't focus on speechcraft and pickpocket and then complain that speechcraft and pickpocket need to be rebalanced because they don't kill things as well as blades and bows do. Actually, some really do complain about that, but they shouldn't. I am guessing that Destruction works best in combination with certain other things.

Does having a warrior exclude me from mage conversations? I have a mage as well. I understand destruction pretty well too, I can even spell it

You know what they say about assumptions.

Guessing is not assuming. My choice of words was deliberate.

Nice of you to ignore the rest of my post and then pick my spelling. Sorry that my English isn't good enough for you. I could write it in Svenska if you would like?

Yes because clearly destruction magic, the one based on THROWING AROUND FIRE, is not intended to deal damage at all, but a support skill designed solely to allow you to blow quest objects out their hiding places.

Seriously