Hah! Take a look at the master level destruction spells. Firestorm and Blizzard are both effectively melee spells and take like 5s to cast. If there was ever a clear sign Beth wants you to wear smith heavy armor enchanted with cost reduction it'd be that.

I'd prefer to think of the master destruction spells as an idiot test. If you use them, you're an idiot.

People seem to forget that Skyrim is meant to be played, not won. Does the term DPS even have a place in this game?

People seem to forget that there is nothing wrong with trying to rise above mediocrity.

First they should fix bugs (like the 25/50% damage perks not working with runes and walls).
Once they have fixed the bugs, then lets look at balancing things a bit.


Some of my ideas;

1. Have +damage/effect enchants for spells too, so gear scaling can continue more like it does with physical damage also.

2. Cap +damage/effect enchants to something reasonable, for both magical AND non-magical damage.

3. Make the novice to master perks something like, adds 15% damage to spells and an additional 5% damage to lower level spells.
By the time you take the Master level perk your novice spells gain 15% (Novice perk) + 5% (Apprentice perk) + 5% (Adept perk) + 5% (Expert perk) + 5% (Master perk)
This type of scaling would give you with the master rank perk:
+35% damage to flames
+30% damage to fire bolt
+25% to fire ball
+20% to incinerate
+15% to the waste of space master spells.

4. Reduce the casting time on master spells. They are limited enough in that they consume your mana fully and you kill your followers by using them, make it so you can actually get one out without dying during the casting animation.

Good ideas, but I doubt Bethesda will take the time to change all of that. I just hope they release the creation kit soon.

I hope they patch some kind of ballance pass for the console players. I have a PC too so I can fix the mess with mods, but console players are screwed if they don't patch it.

Playing as destro/resto mage 1-15 on master :

1. I am squishy. Have to keep distance from everything. If enemy is fast, I have to burst him down or die. If enemy is slow ... he can't touch me.
2. I manage magicka. It's my ofensive and defensive resource. Once I am out, I have zero offense and zero defense. I can't run out of magicka !!!
3. I ran out of magicka.

Playing as 1h/bow/resto melee 1-15 on master :

1. I feel like I am immortal. I don't do that much damage, but nothing can kill me.
2. I never run out of anything. My sustained dps is the king.

I do feel like destro has the short stick here.

I know this thread is about comparing the power of one-handed versus destruction but I don't think that's what people should be thinking about. First of all I have a dual wielding character and have just started my mage, my dual wielding character can one hit dragons, killed alduin in a mere few hits on master difficulty, my weapon damage is up to 260 on each weapon and still increasing. This is due to +% to one-handed damage for sure but either way the class is ridiculously easy to play. I've made a destruction mage for two prime reasons. 1: To make the game more challenging.2: For fun. Magic is undeniably fun. The two classes are definitely different in power that is not a debate people would know that if they've played both classes but who cares, this allows you to play the game differently with each class you decide to be instead of just powering through everything and hoping to be able to one hit everyone like dual wielding does.

The difficulty of combat should not be dictated by which combat skill you use, its as simple as that.

I disagree.

It can be different. But I feel like when playing a mage, you don't really get to experience many wow moments. It's always about abusing AIs patching or about kitting or stunlocking. Never you get to play "I am destruction mage, run away".

Im not wrong in anything, your reply to my post is just showing that your spouting plain BS without even bothering to read my post and comprehend the FACTS.
My calculation show than a stock meele without crafting skills and without exploits svcks big time compared to a stock destro without any crafting and exploits.

Furthemore in that same post I destroyed ( with only one custom made pot ) an ancient/blood dragon with 3,4k HP on master in 5 seconds and still have mana left for another 5 sec while not using ANY mana reduction gear.
Even if I didnt use a custom pot and just went with a vendor dmg destruction pot I would anihilate the dragon before my mana runs out - thats without using smithing, alchemy, enchanting, any gear whatsoever and without exploiting bugs and the AI.
Your meele on the other side cant even compare without custom brewed pots, smithined and enchanted weapons/gear - he even needs to exploit the stamina bug to be able to power attack or else he would need to swing his sword the normal way likr a crazy berserker.

@DieBySword: If you can, make a video of it....the resulting thread would keep me going all day at the office :clap:

When I`m back on monday I might try to fraps it if it dosnt lag me out i got only a GF 8800 320Mb :cryvaultboy:

You have to do it, even drop the detail/resolution/windowed mode for the run.

It'll be hilarious

This assumption is meh. Non spell reduction cost enchanted mage has to invest a lot into magicka, that makes him squishy. And once he runs out of magicka, both his offense and defense drops to zero. Warrior can dump everything into health and be basically immortal while wielding 2 weapons with +100% dmg, +35% swing speed and 20% crit chance for double damage, he does not need to power attack ... that's just to spice things up.

The numbers from pevious page about non enchanted fighting.

21 weap dmg per 1.1s + 100% dmg from perk +35% speed boost +20% crit chance for swords = 21*2/0.65*1.2 = 77 dps for just autoattacking with warrior. Compared to 112 dps with mage who runs out of magicka in 10 seconds which makes him drop in dps like a brick and makes him lose all his defenses. It's not that bad for mage, but warrior can boost his dmg very comfortably to new hights, mage has to drink one pot after another.

Just to clarify, the general difficulty of the game should not be dictated by which combat skill you use, but the difficulty of each fight should be.

Just because your exploiting the stamina glitch dosnt make it any less valid. Do you understand, enchanting your weapon with +1 stamina drain is exploiting power attacks, hell even waiting for that 1 stam to regen on its own is exploiting the system.
A mage with 300 mana total cant cast a 250 mana spell if hes below 250 mana atm. A meele can exploit the stamina and hit unlimited times if only he has 1 stamina point. If you meele needed to have the appropriate stamina level for a power attack you would be screwed.
In this case you can only deal dmg with basic sword attacks that take 65 miliseconds to swing.

Furthemore you too didnt read the post. It was about clean, stock, non enchanted, not upgraded, not poted comparision of meele vs destro. So dont spout nonsens with your maxed exploited meele here.
A mage can be the same tank as your silly meele, I can get 0 casting and have all the level ups into health only. I can have the same armor as you with the same dmg cap and resistance cap.

What ? The numbers I post were for basic sword attacks while being naked ... no power attacks or exploits or what not. 21 weapon damage, 100% bonus from armsman, 35% speed bonus from dual wielding perk, 20% dmg bonus from critical hits ... that's 21*2.0/0.65*1.2 = 77 dps with basic attack using rusty unenchanted sword, compared to the 112 dps of mage that lasts for 10 seconds and then stops.

As for mage being as tanky as warrior ... impossible without exploits or without leveling the mage as warrior.

Edit:The dps may be 70 as warrior since basic sword swing may take 1.1s to execute without perks. Can't find reliable info on that.

Aren't you missing a time component before making the dpS calculation?

Or do you attack once/second (genuine question, I don't know).

Yeah I edited it .. sword swing 1.1 sec without dw perk. Will try to test this.

Yeah I edited it .. sword swing 1.1 sec without dw perk. Will try to test this.

Edit : Ok the sword swing is by default 0.75 sec. That's crazy strong Have to try again.

Edit2 : 26 swings in 20 secs ... that's 0.77 swing speed.

Probably need to double it too since you'd be using two weapons (only way the faster attack perk kicks in)

:)



It is an interesting comparison, seems that naked, single perk approaches come close to similar DPS. As other trees and gear are added, melee diverge into more damage, casters diverge into unlimited ranged damage (with 'stunlock').

The logical end point of this is melee does more damage as the game progresses, magic does the same but magic users ceases to take return damage (for the most part). Melee damage > magic is at odds with many peoples expectations but I can't decide if they are 'even' in terms of ability to progress through the game for the most part.

I think we've long since established the game did not intend for destruction to be a completely stand alone skill. (nor did it intend for any single skill to be so.)

If Beth were to scale solo Destruction (one tree) up to the point where it matched the total output from the full set of melee skills, what would that do to the output from those casters who used their full set of skills? They'd have the substantial damage from conjuration, on top of the now super-charged destruction output, on top of all the utility advantages from other mage abilities.

For this reason, if you want to provide numbers on the potential damage output of a magicka-based build, you need to include conjuration. You should also include the benefits from AOE, ranged damage dealing, and crowd control, all of which are superior to their counterparts in the stamina-based builds.

I understand you'd prefer to use just Destruction. We all already agree with you that a single skill build is inferior to those using multiple synergistic skills. As it darn well should be.

But seeing the passion that some folks have for Destro only, here's what I'd do if it was my game. I'd offer a new mid and end tree perk in conjuration and enchanting and maybe one other tree. For conjuration, it would be a new spell along the lines of "sacrifice pet". Destro-only mages could cast it every 5 minutes or so. While active, it would prevent them from having any pets out, but would double the damage of all destro spells and double the magicka cost. Something similar for the other two skills. That way the single-minded destro folks could create the pure fireball nuker they want, while still having to invest in a reasonable number of skills just like everyone else.