Like I said

- Level up enchanting

- Get 100% magic cost reduction

- Get dual casting

- ?????

- Blow $^#5 up

You don't need every perk nd you don't need only mage armor.

Yes, and conversely just because people found a way to make melee overpowered doesn't make magic fine.

The reason why magic is and remains gimpy:

1. You simply cannot ever have enough magicka to kill tougher enemies without using enchantment to break the magicka system alltogether.
2. Unlocking more powerful offensive spells is not at all rewarding, because their magicka-efficiency goes down, not up.
3. Crowd Control only works on stuff that's not worth controlling in the first place.
4. The damage from magic simply doesn't scale, there are no perks that seriously increase it, it doesn't go up with skills, there are no enchantments that increase it...

All those things + Levelscaling makes magic gimpy, whether you like it or not.

Add spell making problem solved.

Mage is very fun to play, and have much more spells and buttons to press then warrior.

Playing underpowred char in single player game is more fun cas its harder especially on master difficulty.

I'd like to thank you for your reasonable reply, keeping me from having to type out the same thing in no doubt a less concise way =)

So I'll just add to it a little.

1 - I don't like breaking the system either. It's cool for a minute, but if I wanted unlimited magicka I have console commands.
3 - Not to mention there isn't that much crowd control to begin with. For a example, there is no classical freeze-the-enemy control spell (Not counting low health destruction talent that defeats the point), cutting down on options in approaching a combat scenario.
4 - As many others have noted, it seems like spell crafting would help this, and other problems. I never got into it in earlier games, so I just have to speculate =\

:huh: ........................Touche

And should it? It's "safe distance" fighting for the most part. Low risk / low reward. Seems fine to me.

The complaint is that even with 0 Magicka cost, destruction powers don't do enough damage per cast/over time to compare with melee damage. They mad that Dual-wielding works as intended (You can tear through everything quickly as long as you're in knee-biting range, but have no defense.)

Though the lack of firepower Destruction brings/fails to bring to the table is a valid complaint. It's not that it's less effective than other combat types: it's that it's impractical when compared to enemy combat types.

Yet those who are complaining about "gimped" magic damage are comparing it to brokenly overpowered melee damage.

If you're going to compare "vanilla" magic to anything, compare it to the base damage of a bow with perked archery or a sword with perked 1H, not with a 100% smithed double enchanted legendary ebony weapon. Yes melee can be broken if you try to twink it out (smith/enchant/alchemy) and so can magic (via 100% cast reduction+enchant/alchemy)

Comparing the basic untwinked caster with the twinked out swordsman is ridiculous. If you try to break both of them they both become overpowered

You don't need to smith a single weapon for physical to be better than Destruction, even on Adept difficulty. As you increase in difficulty, all you "need" to make things easier is your basic smithed gear and an upgrade. You don't even need +%smithing gear created items either. One (Legendary) Daedric at skill lvl 100 smithing is the most powerful item you need to blow through the game on Expert level. You can also beat Master with it, but Master is the only difficulty where using Enchanting for smithing gear is even warranted. Destruction has nothing at all that can come close to any of these scenarios. It does "ok" on Adept and then is just a chore as you raise in difficulty with nothing that makes it even worth the effort.

Hell, the best Magic "spells" for damage are pets and bound weapons.



Have you ever played an Archer build? They are infinitely more powerful than Destruction builds when it comes to single targets. You can also one-shot just about anything that would come swarming in a trash group that contains 1-2 tough enemies and then all you have to do is focus on those two enemies. With the time slowdown and stun perk, you'l lhave no problem killing them both. Add Shadow Master on top of that and you pretty much have an invisible, no risk, all reward sniper.

Oh, and this is without the "OMG uber smithed gear111!". People need to stop acting like that is the only thing that makes physical classes strong. It's not at all. It just widens the gap.

Tell that to the foes I killed in one shot with for example flame and weakness to flame and magic one hundred percent.

So I mostly kept quite about this because I didn't know about how late-level magic works, but then I saw my brother playing a full mage around level 35, killing everything by spamming fireballs...


And about spells being useless because enemies scale up to you? No they're not, stronger enemies appear when you are higher level, but the weaker ones will remain.


And smithing/melee being more powerful... well, I don't remember melee combat being called useless in Oblivion/Morrowind before, just because you could make overpowered spells...

But that's just it. You do have defense. As a dual wielding character, you can be running around in a set of Daedric Armour that gives you a ridiculous Armor Rating, and you don't even need to worry about blocking. The armor makes any melee damage done to you negligible.

Wow so many misinformed and wrong people in this thread.. It has been proven so many times in countless threads before that Magic is far far worse than Archery/Melee yet people KEEP saying magic is overpowered..Wow. It's like no one wants balance

I'm still fairly low level, so I don't know how well it will work later, but at this point I'm killing pretty much everything with dualcast firebolts. With the perk it staggers enemies, so I just keep blasting them and they can't do anything about it. It seems if you could get -100% destruction costs nothing could stop you. Is this not the case?

1) When you play on higher difficulties it's essential unless you have a huge stock of potions.
3) Paralyze is an expert level Alteration spell. Illusion also has a ton of control. You have a shout to freeze people as well.
4) Spell crafting depends entirely on what they let you craft but to be honest they need +damage enchants as well as much much better perks.

2 weeks ago people said dual wield would svck ass, haha.

The problem is not so much that it's underpowered, it's the thought of spending up to a minute doing something that would take 2 seconds with the sword.

I'm a level 73 (very close to 74) and have most of the "offense" constellations, such as weapons and destruction, maxed out. I occassionally switch from one-handed to some expert destruction spell but it's just horribly slow.

Many of these people:

1. Have not played anything but a Mage
2. Have not played anything but a non Mage

I am level 20 right now with my mage and if I don't have a conjuration out when fighting things like falmor I am in trouble. Even Lydia get's owned fast while using DWARVEN armor against 2-4 falmor. BUT, with the stagger ability for destruction and with a frost atronach out (so that when it does it doesn't do damage to my downed lydia causing her to die permanently) I just equip dual hands fireball and just blast them away. I have even pulled out healing hands and just healed Lydia and kept her going. I would say that Lydia is becoming mostly just a distraction for me to get magicka up. But I don't struggle all that much to be honest. Of course this is level 20 and not 50, although a lot of people on the boards are saying that they start to struggle around 20. I have the archmage clothing, moroki helmet and other enchanted items so my magicka regeneration is awesome so far.

So it just goes back to my other point that magic isn't necessarily underpowered, just melee is overpowered.

If one is inclined to listen to morons then every skill, every aspect of this game is broken. The bow is game breakingly broken, destruction magic is game breakingly broken, thief skills are useless, smithing is useless, pottery is useless... wait, there is no pottery skill in this game. Dammit Bethesda, why is there no pottery making skill in this game?!?!?!? This game is broken unless I can craft pottery!!!!!

My advice is play the game and have some fun, and do not listen to morons living with their mom who whine because their mother doesn't cook them steak every night.

Magick is arcane powered channeled from your body that can regenerate

Destruction can make your enemies burn over time, slow them with frost or shock the hell out of them with lightning

You ammo is infinite and the powers are not of physical nature.

in pure logic magick should not do more damage than swords and bows, they do in many other games but that just doesnt make any sense to be honsest, i think a sword in my gut would hurt ALOT more than a fireball thrown at my arm.

besides magicka is a unlimited regenerating resource that does not cost you any gold unless you need potions (Which you can make so it is also free in a way) while for bows or swords alot of money goes into upgrading and maintaining especially for bows (unless you are intending to survive on iron and fornsworn arrows)

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1282138-master-level-destruction-spells/page__p__19361516__fromsearch__1#entry19361516

Thats my problem with destruction.

Nothing is broken...the people complaining about melee are hating how they become powerful after taking advantage of trades....mages can also become invincible after investing in enchanting and smithing....not really a problem.