I'm at work so don't have much time but as requested, I've read the entire thread now. My post still stands enitrely.

Comparing pure numbers is not entirely fair. As I said, destruction needs a buff so I actually agree with you on that point. I'm merely pointing out that based on pure numbers - and single target at that - destruction should fall behind. Just not as much as it does now - especially since mages should be glass cannons. So they should be able to pull of a lot of dps but die easily. Right now they put out too little damage.

There's no need to be so rude, I was just putting the numbers into a better perspective.

Redesign enchanting and spell damage scaling completely. Right now, all mages are forced to max out enchanting, as soon as possible, or else gimped badly at high level. The illusion of choice, lol.

Or perhaps not if you happen to play as a conjurer? :\ I was quite terrified when found out my skill level was irrelevant to damage output, only perks and item bonus didi. Terrible mechanic design :\



Your point are based entirely on assumption. I play as a pure mage myself and I know exactly where it falls short. I purposely built my mage as a glass cannon with little to no HP, but forced to fork out to conjuration later when spell damage stopped scaling, and my AoE caused so much collateral damage to tanking follower that I had to switch back to fire bolt.

It't fully intended for high level mages to stop caring about magicka regen / magicka pool and just spam away ? I disagree. Only piece of armor where cost reduction enchant makes sense is robe. Stacking mana reduction additively is just funny.

If I were to just level up destruction and enchanting I would never reach a level in which I would need to use other spell lines or enhance my damage with poison and potions. Because I leveled up alchemy and alteration and illusion as well I expect to use them as well. When using them damage isn't meager. I can sneak up on a giant, paralyze it poke it with an iron dagger that has a magicka weakness poison on it, pop a destruction potion, and kill the poor thing before the paralyze wears off.

And this is without using potions to boost enchanting, so completely within the intended bounds of the game.

This is more of an opinion on my behalf, but i think that consecutive efficiency multipliers should multiply against each other, rather than add as they currently do.

For example, with one 50% efficiency robe, a spell would cost 1/2 as much to cast. With two 50% efficiency enchantments on the character, the spell would cost 1/4th as much to cast. Not only would this make perfect efficiency impossible, it would also make these sorts of enchantments much more useful at lower levels, because the enchantments could have higher values without breaking the game.


This same mechanic should apply to all stats that can become "maxed". Armor is an especially egregious example, with a hard cap at 80% damage reduction.

This is just my personal opinion, however. It doesn't have anything to do with the thread in general.

So to simplify things.
Destruction doesn't do enough damage.

Fix: Destruction scales with level and skill.

Fixed?

A better solution would be to get rid of the fortify enchanting potion and all of these *exploits* go away.

Or simply don't use the fortify enchanting potion. This is a single player game after all.

That would get rid of ingredients that make those potions.
Breaking the game probably.

No you'd just change the ingredients themselves to have a different 4th effect. You can do this right now if you like, though challenging without the creation kit.

Magic staggers. You didn't even take a hit and won an ancient dragon!

Melee doesn't stagger. You go into melee and there's a 50-50 chance of who of you die first, the dragon or you.


But I do think magic should have added damage for higher destruction level. Currently, Icy spear does 90 damage at 100 destruction. I think it should be 120 at that high level. Same for all spells in destruction, make them less OP early on and more powerful later on. However, the stagger effect for dual-casting is a bit silly and if damage is added, there should only be a 'high' chance of staggering and the bigger the enemy, the less likely to stagger. (prevents giant, mammoth and dragon stagger combo)

And at the same time balance out enchanting and smithing.

Does not change that the 90% non exploited magicka cost reduction is broken in itself. Flat magicka enchant boosts your burst and sustain, magicka regen enchant boosts you sustain (better than flat magicka) and cost reduction enchants make you ignore the previous two enchants. Working as intended ... I hope not.

I appreciate the TC creating this, but I doubt most of the people who keep their heads in the sand about the issue will even read or agree. One only has to play both of the archetypes to see how glaring of an issue it is, even without knowing what the numbers are. You don't even need Enchanting at all either to show such a large gap. On Adept - Expert difficulty, a Smithing skill of 100 ~char level 30 Daedric/Glass gear is still going to be better than anything you can find, and it's going to be a giant improvement for the phyiscal classes compared to Destruction's best *single target* final upgrade.

People keep arguing that "Mages are fine". Well, I don't agree entirely, but I will say that Mages can compete. The problem is, this involves using anything other than Destruction...which has always been their primary (and funnest) damage school. Conjuration is the workhorse for Magic in this game.

And do you know what the real kicker is? Those that seem to think -%Destruction cost gear is the solution don't seem to be understanding that a Warrior can wear that same enchantment. Sure, they won't be casting anything but Novice spells unless they raise their skill due to vendors not selling anything, but it's possible. They can also raise -%Conjuration cost gear to summon a single Dremora for free. Leveling your Conjuration skill is extremely easy compared to Destruction or anything other than Alteration (Alteration svcks for leveling until you can get Telekinesis...then it becomes cheesy).



I doubt it's working as intended. Just like I doubt forging 500+ damage weapons was intended. It's almost as though Bethesda forgot that many of it's core fanbase are RPG nerds (I say this in the nicest way possible ) and a large portion of them min/max and find ways to break the game. It's as though the testers were off the street casuals who had never played this kind of game before in their life.

It might be broken as you say, but Destruction is unplayable without such high reduction at higher levels. It takes me 5 casts of the expert single target spells to kill the strongest non boss undeads in the game and I'm at the point I can face up to 4 at once in a room, sometimes with a boss too. That is on Adept difficulty mind you.

You can take Bladesman up to 3 times, which I presume gives you a 30% chance of doing a critical strike, not a 20% chance. I doubt power attacks do double damage, and even if they do, I think it would only double the weapon damage, not double the weapon damage and double all the perk damage. I don't know how you get 1200% damage when using power attacks.

I wouldn't consider the damage per second (DPS) dealt by you without looking at the DPS delivered by your opponent. With Destruction you have ranged attacks, which can significantly lower an enemy's DPS. The above percentages don't factor in other aspects of Destruction. With flame attacks, for instance, your targets will burn for additional damage beyond the stated damage of your spells. Also, some beings are probably weaker against some magic types, and others are probably stronger.

Statistics don't mean much taken outside the context of practical applications and tactics. The only thing that matters with Destruction is whether or not it works. If it does its job, then does it really matter how it stacks up against One Handed and Two Handed? I would be interested in hearing from players who apply Destruction intelligently and creatively. So far, the complaints about Destruction make it seem that mages are being played just like swordsmen, but with spells for blades.

Destro has ranged attacks, but if I compare how sturdy my sword&shield&resto war is and how sturdy my destro&alt&resto mage is it's night and day... mage gets 2-3 shotted by anything that catches up to him or can hit him from range, war survives much more and when he is in melee range ... enemies get destroyed. With staggers he can land 5-6 hits before enemy can do anything about it and by then it too late most of the time. All war needs are decent resists to pawn. Mage on the other hand I dunno ... he would need armor and resists and health to match war in survivability. So far alt is very underwhelming in providing that for me ... it gets better on higher levels however.

31 mage.

Pure destruction + Restoration for the ills.

Creatively.. Well, I don't have silent casting so I can't set up rune traps without getting heard.
Even if the rune trap goes off it doesn't dent the +1 or +2 mobs.
Once mobs know you're there, you have three threats: The humpers, the pokers, and the yous. If the humper is the +2 and he has minions, you're screwed. Pokers (bowmen) are rarely +2s. If the you (mage) is the +2, odds are everything you kill is coming back, so it's a game of "Can I stagger the mage while I'm getting beaten by minions", because if you try to kill the minions you'll run out of magicka way before you get to the boss.
Stagger is OP, unless there's more than one +1/+2 mob, or if that mob has more health than you have magicka.
You either have to use companions and single-target spells (CAREFULLY), or no meatshield and AOE spells, hoping you kill +0/+1 minions fast enough.
If, unlike most situations, you are out in the open, it becomes a game of "Can I outrun/kite the humpers long enough to kill them". Unless you get one-shotted by the pokers, which are now +1's at least. This happens often. [censored] bandit archers.


In the end, I've had to rely on AI and/or pathfinding glitches a lot of the time.

I play a mage in lots of games. I haven't found how to play destro focus well at all. There may be a way, but it doesn't really work until you have the USEFUL skills in the other trees, like frost astronarch, or 4x armor, or silent casting, etc. Which (usually) put you behind severely in destro.

And, this is just my experience. I'm sure other people have different experiences.

Now excuse me while I go roll a Heavy Armor/Conjuration orc.

Heh. My Altmer mage is chilling in an inn awaiting a patch or mod. I tried a warrior and was shocked by how much easier everything was--despite not having assigned perks because I couldn't decide between archer and light armor sword and board. Easy to the point that I was thinking about turning up the difficulty level, and I always play on the default. Sadly, though, the game isn't magic for me without magic, so yesterday I started a Heavy Armor/Conjuration Breton mostly to fill i the time until my Altmer is less of a struggle.

Pretty much what I'm doing, really =\

I pushed enchanting to 100, enchanted 25/25 destro/resto gear, and didn't even make it to finding a enemy to fight - didn't feel right, and reading this thread I knew it still wouldn't cut it..

Here's hoping it will improve. I love my mage character, he's what I think of myself as in most games like this. Well, the idea of him is, anyway.

Exactly. I fought a necromancer yesterday and he hit me with an ice spike spell and I was dead in two hits. On the flipside I was hitting him with an apprentice level lightning attack and he could take it all day. And BTW I just switched to bow and arrow and murdered him in a handful of shots. Upon checking his gear there wasn't a shock resistance item in sight.It's annoying seeing uber powered mages running around when I can't do any meaningful damage whatsoever

Surely the arguments for melee closing range can be equally applied to a mage opening/maintaining range? Therefore any mage will always have X seconds of damage a melee character will never get.


Imho, the metagame is not so simple as he does X damage and I only do Y. To illustrate why looking at a part of the picture is wrong, consider the fact that Impact changes the dynamic greatly, but it doesn't add any actual damage to the theorycrafted numbers. If your enemy can never hit back, what does it matter if you kill them half as quickly?


Casters might be fine, casters might not be fine, but this thread is not looking at the full metagame therefore an informed decision cannot be made on the basis of damage alone.

Every person trying to tell "mage is fine" is either playing a melee class, or at low level mage where everything seems to be one or two hit by his awesome nukes. You have no clue. Mage s broken, completely. The signs appear at mid-level (around 20), and getting worse as you level up, to the point you are stuck: your strongest single target spell does shjt to more than average mobs (which are common in group of 3 or up), OR your strongest AoE conveniently obliterates the tank/follower, while the mob its tanking is largely untouched.

Dont tell me I have to restrain myself from skilling up, forgo anything but conju/des to keep my level low just to beat the game as pure mage. Its ridiculous. Bethesda is bad at game balancing I know, but this time they failed hard, unless you choose to exploit the obvious glaring oversight @100% spell cost reduction. Its even more frustrating knowing that you happen to play a melee/archer char at the same time.



This thread started out as a dps comparison sheet, but as people commenting on it, the issues on mages on this game were pointed out repeatedly. You didnt read it at all, did you?

I see a lot of people looking at stuff in isolation, comparing 'normal' characters to rampant exploitation allowing melee to roll with insane weapons. I do not see much balanced debate from either side tbh.


What I did not see, interestingly enough, was a class selection screen when I started the game. Perhaps I missed that.


Also what seems to be missing are decent videos evidencing the terrible shortcomings. That said, also missing are the professed level 4x-50+ mages who have no trouble anywhere.


As I said, maybe there's issues, maybe there's not but right now all we have are people making odd complaints, comparing things directly which should not be and hyperbolic statements on both sides. This doesnt help get the point over.


Edit: Lastly to add, when you're confining yourself to a given playstyle, that is when you eschew viable options available; it makes it *very* hard to take balance concerns seriously purely because if it was fixed for those guys then the people using the entire toolkit would be stupidly godlike.

I don't recall for certain, but I think magicka regen stalls while you are casting.

@flooble: I'm not in the position to give you direct comparison, since my other char is a lvl 15 archer. Perhaps I should upload my mage game footage here? Or you can search for a few console commands to fiddle with character stats/perk/skill/lvl to try it yourself. That would save us all the hassle, wouldnt it?

And abit off thread, dont you find it odd for such a game with much freedom like Skyrim there isnt a viable pure nuker/glass canon build, which would certainly be one of the default archetype classes in a more 'conservative' game?

I'd say the glass cannons are more the sneaky ones here. That being right or wrong isn't for me to say.


To be clear I'm NOT saying the notion of a pure mage being broken is wrong, I'm questioning the evidence presented, the thought process behind the idea of that class and the ramifications of changing it.

This will be perhaps overly brief (I've got work to do ) but if destruction was buffed to the point where being a 'pure' destruction mage was perfectly viable and could compete with melee would we not then see the absolute trivialisation of content to mages who used all the schools? I do not recall seeing any dispute that the other mage schools do fine, even at master - therefore *surely* changing destruction would risk giving them too waaaay much power? As a poor anology it would be like a naked 2H warrior being made viable, imagine what would happen when people took that power and slapped it in massive armour.


[Yes, one could say don't use it and I'd agree, but look at the smithing complaint threads >.< ]