while the test is pertinent, its not really a fair one, at least not on its own, as even with an iron sword a warrior scales alot with his perks and skills while mage spells scale with their attack speed/spell hits per second aswell as spell rank more than with perks.
flames is but one spell, and mages are able to chain spells together, especially at high level.
for exemple using only the noice spells, you could make some spell dancing between flames and sparks that would significantely increase the damage output, at higher levels a combo like traps+wall+thunderbolt would yield incredibly high burst compred to a legendary upgraded one handed daedric blade.
there are also other factors not taken into account such as armor reductions (spells arnt affected) and elemental vulnerabilities that many mobs have.

most people who whine about destruction damage, are clueless of how it can be used, and even more clueless about the ffects it can make that other stuff cant.
and this "test" doesnt really put destruction and one handed in a clear light at all, I dont even think you accounted for attack speed properly.



only for those that dont know how to use it... not everyone works well with a hammer as they do with a wrench... solution is to either learn to use the hammer, or stick to the wrench, whining doesnt make you hammer better

Where is the armour bonus offset that your enemy has when engaging in combat OP? Haha, you can't just take damage vs damage as the sole basis for class strength, when there are other modifiers at work.


Magic does not get effected by armour (unless there is a resist magic enchanct on said armour).


I went from lvl 13 in destruction, to level 62 in destruction just running around the plains outside whiterun in about 2 hours last night. I took out 2 giants and 2 mammoths (on master), who I aggro'ed, with the expert level lightning bolt, just by staggering them. I only had the 25% increase in shock damage too. If I would have engaged them with sword and shield, I would have been annihilated - fact.


All the tools are there for people to use Destruction effectively. Being a "pure" destro mage, running around in robes and not using any other skill, yeah, you'll get owned.... But that's like a guy with a sword running around in clothes will get owned in the same way.


You have to use multiple skills in this game to saty alive, wether that be suiting up in heavy armour or summoning something to take the damage for you. You can't be "pure" anything in this game if you want to survive, especially on master diffilculty.


Learn to play.

All the know how in the world doesn't change the facts, the fact is that Destruction damage is hard capped well below any other damage delivery form in the game, and is readily - even easily - out scaled by leveled content in terms of sheer numbers alone, not even getting into the hindrances of Master spells with easily interrupted, long casting times and the dual casting perk not applying to them (even though you're forced to use them dual handed) amongst various other oversights, shortcomings and more. In short, no matter how you use your magic, it will always be limited in terms of hard numbers that no amount of know how can overcome.

You can easily pick up the maximum amount of damage you'll ever get in the game, very early on, leaving up to forty levels of never seeing a single form of advancement to your destruction damage.Given that's what destruction is supposed to do - Destroy, do damage - that is a truly tremendous oversight beyond all logical reasoning.

I`m so glad that weapons arent hard capped and level with me ... erm :cryvaultboy:

I believe you must have skipped over my post...I will ask you Destro haters again..Why is this relevant? I understand that melee can do WAY more than magic. I get that. What I want to know is that if a mob has 500 hps (which NPC player race guys tend to do at my level (52) on normal), and I do about 100 damage a second via Destro without twinking (no alchemy lets say), and it takes them about 5 seconds or more to get from where they are standing to me (or much longer if I am not standing still), how does it matter? (And if you're telling me you can never ever engage enemies at rage as a mage and keep them at range for about 5ish seconds or so, I am telling you that you are a bad mage)

So seriously, why does it matter that a mage is hard capped at around 140ish damage when twinking and a melee character is capped at about 1 bazillion damage while twinking? Yes, the melee character kills the bad guy 4 seconds fast than the mage...BIG WHOOP! You also have to get right up into their face, so unless your sneaking, about 66.666666% of the time, you'll take damage before you get there (mages/archers/melee seems to be approximately equally represented among the baddies, maybe a bit more favored towards melee cause more monsters are melee only, but still...), where as with the mage with the destro stagger perk, they never ever ever ever ever get unstaggered and they die...horribly, in firey/lightningy/icy pain....

I just don't get the point of these discussions...and I am honestly asking for your reasoning behind making such a big deal out of it. Is it an issue? Yeah, I guess, if your a super munchkin AND your playing on super duper hard difficulty. Yeah, it MIGHT be an issue. Is it worth 500 threads about how much magic svcks and how the world is gana end if someone doesn't fix it NOW? Not really...so please, enlighten me!

Because people who play mages on modes higher than normal don't want to waste 15 incinerates on one enemy.

my friend plays a mage on master diff setting, after playing through for some time one day he met a dragon in plain land out in the wilds, he was left with 2 option, tune down the difficulty or load a save before this encounter (the only alternative save was few hours ago), is this what a game with emphasis on freedom should be like?i dont think my friend can beat that dragon up with s/l no matter what he does, thats the problem i think