You should reread my earlier post about destruction. No where did I mention that destruction is fine. My assessment of it is a constant, "it is overpowered if a player has infinite magicka and is able to stagger lock foes via Impact. It has weak damage."

In other words, it is pretty lopsided. Compared to Oblivion where weakness to shock/fire/frost/magic exists as spells, it takes effort to get alchemy potions to do damage stacking, which is much more of a hassle.

FFS: there are 1092830980483 thread about this already and another FFS: use -destruction cost if you worry too much about mana. POS :brokencomputer:

I agree to an extent. My inceneration spell requires 194 magicka per cast. I have 600 magicka and that spell drains me in 3 casts and it only does like 80 damage. So i can get off 3 casts then im useless or i can switch to a low level spell like flames and spam.

Well people are doing similar tedious things to make uber weapons that one shot dragons. We're just saying the option is there. It's up to you to decide if you want to use it or not. There's still the advantage destruction has of stagger locking which results in an easy kill.

I'm curious, WITHOUT exploiting smithing/enchanting/alchemy and using higher end weapons and armor with a maxed one handed/two handed skill and all level ups allocated to health, exactly how many hits does it take to kill a dragon at roughly level 50? How many breath attacks and bites can you survive?

Thunderbolt does more damage btw...

But why wouldn't you take advantage of cost reducing gear? It's not like you're going to be gearing for archery damage or block absorption. Even if you don't enchant gear you should by a fairly high level have been able to find or buy enough items to get like at least a 90% reduction in cost to your spells. And even then it's not like it breaks the game because the other magical schools will still cost you full magicka.

Maybe to a single target...

I don't really have a problem with my mage... I'm at lvl 54 with Conjuration/Destruction/Alteration perks almost at maximum with:
- 100 enchanting (to the point that i can enchant twice on an item and 5/5 on enchanting)
- 84 alchemy (to the point that i can upgrade the perk "Benefactor" and 5/5 on Alchemy)
- 0 smithing (coz i wear 0 defense armors but i have the "Mage Armor" perk from Alteration).......

It's difficult at first but when you get to the point when you have the perk "Impact" and get Destruction enchants and fortify magicka/regen... Enemies like bandits/bears/trolls cant even lay a finger on you.

This
why does using melee and arrows feel infinitely more badass than using fukking STREAMS OF MAGICAL FIRE ,ICE, AND LIGHTNING FROM YOUR HANDS!

I'm level 30 with my first mage character, and I can get through just about any fight by spamming dual cast with the stagger perk, but it takes forever compared to a melee or archer fight because of the pathetic damage. No challenge + takes longer = tedious. Here's what I think would help, bump up the magicka regen rate and lower the spell casting costs so that normal spells like firebolt can be cast indefinitely, for roughly the same base damage that they deal now but scaled up with destruction skill. Then add in higher damage, higher magicka cost, higher charge time power attacks (like melee combat has), with only these power attacks, dual casted, able to stagger. Then nerf the enchantments so that its impossible to get 100% spell cost reduction, maybe 50% tops.

I'm not too bothered by the lack of spell variety, it's a first person game so having to change spells all the time would be annoying (melee only really has ax, sword, blunt, with very little difference between them, and its still fun). It would be nice to be able to craft spells though, a soul trap + flame spell would be useful, or muffle + stoneflesh. That would also help cut down on the number of hotkeys/spell switches needed.

Thats my biggest concern. I use the same 1-2 spells forever. All the big hyped ones don't scale, and master ones svck

One thing hurting the variety is the way spells become obsolete as soon as you've got the next one up the ladder. Taking the basic fire spells, Flames should probably have higher damage per second than Firebolt, since its limited in range, that way it would continue to be useful throughout the game. Maybe even change the appearance of the spell (bigger, more intense flames) as it scales up.

It takes some play experience to discover how the game expects mages to play if they want to flourish.

1. "Mana regeneration" is a red herring of an equipment ability, since mana doesn't regen fast in combat regardless of what you do. The trick is to enchant for mana price reduction of specific schools, not for overall mana regen. Since the game is still so new, most of us had to learn this the very hard way. (Note that I think the game's mana regen model is deeply flawed; what's the sense in putting a stat on gear that is essentially useless and outclassed by ANYTHING else you could put there?)

2. There are no intrinsic advantages to choosing cloth over armor. You have a 100% chance to cast spells with 100% power even when wearing the heaviest of heavy armors. Furthermore, all the default cloth robes/hoods/etc are covered in the useless mana regen enchant discussed above, and there is no simple amor enchant you can apply to turn your tissue paper into something survivable. It seems to me that a lot of players with would-be mages did all the obvious things for those characters (dressed all in cloth) and went out and got savagely mauled by animals, two-handed weapons, and arrows. I certainly did.

Again... the game is so new that for most of us, the only way to learn this was the extremely hard way. That sort of frustration and shock fuels understandable hyperbole like "ZOMG SPELLS ARE USELESS!!! WAAAAAAAH!!!!"

3. The absence of spell customization means that you can't design new upgraded-damage spells to fit your growling levels of skill and mana, and I think this leaves people feeling under-gunned. In -Oblivion,- it was almost inevitable that you'd design Super-Ultra-Mega-Killer-Death spells to suit your play preferences. You could launch massive AOEs, efficient DOT spells, and on-touch spells that would blast enemies out of their boots with one cast. You could add Silence and Paralyze effects to Destruction damage to truly send enemies up [censored] creek without a paddle. Skyrim's spells are not actually under-powered, but in comparison to the near-total freedom of Oblivion they are very restrained.

I'm now playing a dedicated mage for the first time in Skyrim, and it's finally going well... but you have to do a couple counter-intuitive things to make the play style work (you must wear armor, you must avoid mana regen enchants, you must seek school-based mana efficiency enchants). You must also discover the utility of the perk that makes dual-cast destruction spells stagger your enemies. Without it you're boned; with it you have the room you need to maneuver and think.

Destruction is extremely useless IF you attempt to keep on playing in the "look at me, I'm a flamethrower!" style that gets you through Bleak Falls Barrow and not much further.

Install one of the many destruction buff mods.

Enjoy play.

Destruction is a chore on master. Draugr deathlords take 15+ hits to kill, and there are frequently 6 or 7 of them at the end of tougher dungeons. Without at least -90% magicka enchants you run out of magicka in seconds, and with enchants you end up doing nothing but spamming the same spell over and over. Definitely need a fix.

I'm hoping Bethesda fixes the spell scaling. If spells work the same way they did in Oblivion and Fallout, the only way to do it via mods would be to create novice/adept/expert/master/etc. versions of every spell, then write a script that checks the players level, removing the old version of the spell and replacing it with the more powerful version whenever you reach the next destruction skill milestone. It would work, but it would be a little tedious to set up, and maintaining compatibility with the inevitable spell variety mods would be hell. Maybe the new scripting language would allow the new spell creation to be done via script as well?

I have to disagree with you as this is the only type of offence that I use (not counting my dead thrall conjuration spell). I think it is simply that you are not accustomed to the mage class.

Whenever I see a post like that, I cant help but wonder: What level are you?

Because so far, whenever the question was answered, it always came down to one thing:

"Im level 32 and I dont see the problem with scaling when scaling stops around level 40!"

/facepalm

I would like to see Bethesda respond as to how they feel about high level destruction play. Even if they just feel that it's working just fine I'd like to know their thoughts on the matter.

We need more spell variety and spell creation to bring back the depth to our mages. Also destruction is terribly underwhelming. It's the worst magic school and alteration is also sad.

wall of flame: 50 points of damage every second.

sword: 15 points of damage every 3-4 seconds.

hmmm.... which one sounds better? :confused:

That's a pretty awful sword you're using. You should probably, you know, do something about that.

wall of flame: will always be 50 points of damage every second.

sword: keeps doing more damage every time you gain a level in 1h skill or every time you gain a stronguer sword.

Spells dont scale. Its not about the base damage, no one cares about that: its about how that damage never changes while everything else, namely ennemies' hp, does.

well i made a mage character second, and got my destruction to 100.
lemme tell you, the ultra spells kick butt, but are incredibly expensive, magicka wise
however, i recommend that you go to the college of winterhold, and complete that quest
upon completion you will have obtained sever mage essential items
such as: Arch mages robes which lowers ALL spell cost by i think 15%, boosts your magic by 50 (at least for me) and increases MP regen speed by 100%
also the Morokei mask, which increses magic regen speed by 100%
the previous archmage's amulet, for me it boosts magic by 50
and the mages circlet, which i do not think can be used with morokei, but boosts your magc by a whopping 70
also if you get the apprentice stone, then it also increses your magic speed by 100%, and with all the equipment together, your magic speed is at 400% and if you get the spell perks your spells cost half
so for me, i can cast fireball for only about 32 magic, and ive got 380, so along with the 400% magic speed, i can pretty much garuntee that i wont be needing to worry about fireball, but when i get into the high spells. I.E. incinerate, or FireStorm i have to be careful, because without master destruction perk, fire storm costs 720 magic!! so its only really possible with the master perk, even then it costs all my magic.
but lets think, do you really NEED firestorm or the other ultra spells? not really, they take forever to use and are over priced, and i just stick with fireball and i get the job done fine
so really all you need are the adept spells and youll do fine as long as you have the gear for it, and thats the thing with having a mage, is having the gear to support it

Huh, Wut, How?

LOL!