Okay, people have been going back and forth about this, so I've decided to sum up the difference between the two in one post. Note that I'm impartial; I have never played a character that uses destruction magick, and therefore have no opinion on it. But these are the simple STATS about their damage.

To start, allow me to adress the people that claim the issue can be solved via -100% destruction magicka cost.Allow me to translate this suggestion into an oblivion context:

Person 1: "I cant tank enemies, they hit me a few times and I die. Isn't armor underpowered?"(Not really, just an example)

Person 2: "Can't you enchant your armor for 100% chameleon? Why are you complaining?"



The reason is, obviously(to some of us), that is no different from typing 'tgm' into the console. Why even play if the entire basis for the end game is essentially a tweaked way of accessing a console command?



Now, Moving on to the stats:

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Comparison:

One handed Perks: Armsman(100% damage), Bladeseman(20% chance of doing more critical damage(assume 100% extra damage, so equates to 20% damage increase), Dual flurry(35% extra damage) dual savagery(50% extra damage), Savage Strike(25% damage), Fighting Stance(25% more effecient power strikes). Oh, and they can also do power attacks, that about doubles their damage while they can do them.


Destruction Perks: Destruction(50% more effecient), Augmented Fl/Fr/Sh(50% damage), Dual Casting(20% damage boost, 25% less effecient.)

Culminating in...

One Handed: 400% damage, 1200% damage when using power attacks, and 75% normal stamina usage And did you know you can power attack with even one stamina?


Destruction: 180% damage, and 70% stamina usage.


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One Handed Novice Weapon Stats(first perk used): Iron Sword x2: 17 damage per dual strike with no stamina use, ~25 damage per dual power strike.

Destruction Novice Spell Stats(first perk used): Flames x2: 16 damage/second with 12 magicka/second. No power attack available.


Add a second perk, and we get this:

One Handed Novice Weapon Stats(first perk x2): Iron Sword x2: 20 damage per dual strike with no stamina use, 30 damage per dual power strike.

Destruction Novice Spell Stats(Novice Destruction, Dual Casting): Flames x2: 19 damage/second with 17 magicka/second. No power attack available.


Now, let's jump to the endgame, and no enchantments(single skill only.)

One Handed Mastery Weapon Stats(All Perks): Daedric Sword x2 (100 damage per hit, 300 damage per power strike, power strikes now take 75% of previous stamina and stamina meter is much larger. Assume 500 stamina(most points into stamina) Assume 10 power strikes before depleted: Total damage before depletion: 3000 damage, then damage drops to 100 damage per second)

Destruction Mastery Spell Stats(All perks): Lightning Storm Dual Casting (112.5 damage per second, 59 magicka per second. Assume 500 magicka(most points into magicka), lasts for about 10 seconds, for 1125 damage. Magicka regenerates at 3% per second, base, resulting in 28.125 damage per second once magicka is depleted.)


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Now Include Support Skills(Armorer, Enchanting, Alchemy), but all separate(to avoid absurd alchemy/enchanting stacking)

One Handed Boosts: Legendary Daedric Sword+Smithing= 75% damage boost = 175 base damage, 525 power attack damage. + Alchemy = 30% damage = 220 base damage, 680 power attack damage, + Enchanting = +75% damage = 370 base damage = ~1.1k power attack damage.

Destruction Boosts: Smithing: None. 112.5 damage per second. Alchemy: +30% damage, = 146.25 damage per second, Enchanting = zero magicka cost, making this damage perma.



Final Conclusion, with all forms of enchanting:

One Handed: 370 constant damage, ~1.1k power attack damage every ~3 seconds. Average: 613 damage per second.

Destruction: 146.25 damage per second. No power attacks. 146.25 damage per second.


Final Conclusion, without (possibly broken) enchanting:

One Handed: 680 damage for 10 seconds, followed by 211 damage, with 680 power attack damage, average 367. With stamina potions stabilizes at 680.

Destruction: 146.25 damage per second for roughly six seconds, followed by ~28 damage per second indefinately. With magicka potions, stabilizes at 146.25 damage per second.

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These are the stats. Please use them in the future.


EDIT: Final note on one handed; Because the one-handed skill boosts damage itself, but what it does isn't stated anywhere, i didn't include it in this calculation. Theoretically this could mean it does significantly more, but not less, damage than is stated here.

is lightning storm actually counted as dual cast though since you HAVE to use 2 hands?

Also I believe the destruction alchemy potion goest to 129% or 130% damage. I have a +129% more damage one but 1 piece of my alchemy gear has 28% instead of 29%.

Is this the case? As I said, I have not personally played a mage character at this point. If you can confirm this is the case, I will edit the first post to ensure it is correct.

Response to edit: In addition, I didn't allow for crossing of the different schools of support, due to the way they multiply against each other, so that should significantly decrease that statistic. Would you please make one without your enchanted gear and tell me the stats, so i can include them in the formula?

The master destruction spells svck. They take too long to cast and your immobile while using them. Making lightning storm rather situational.

Oh and there's no chameleon in Skyrim.

Oh and master spells are not considered dual casted.

You're very correct; there is no chameleon in oblivion. The principal is, however, the same.

Response to Edit: Under the assumption that mastery spells are NOT dual-casted, I will edit the original post to include that data. One moment please.

what do you mean? There's no invisibility enchant either. Unless your response example was intended to be like that.

And what do you mean by removing my enchanted gear? There's no gear/enchant that ups destruction power.

I have all perks and 100 in destruction, give me a sec and Ill tell you how much ls does without any alchemical intervention.

The idea is that by abusing enchanting, you remove an aspect of the game that's a normal gameplay mechanic. Via chameleon abuse, you basically remove the 'sneak-detection' mechanic, and via magicka cost abuse, you remove the 'mana bar management' mechanic - which is one of the defining staples of any mage in any game (heck, even fable 3 didn't let you cast eternally, iirc. Fable 3!). Besides that.. even ignoring the magicka cost etc., the damage done by destruction spells, as you can see, is obviously far lower than what can be done with one-handed. And unlike a mage, one-handers do not need to go out of their way and get '0 cost attack' enchants to attack - normal hits are always possible. And they do reasonable dmg too.

it does (lightning storm) 112 damage with no potions. That's with all power perks and destruction at 100.

If I am not mistaken, Dual Flurry does not increase damage%, it increases speed of attacks. If you have broken down the speed of attacks into a damage% increase, then please ignore this.

On OP, I agree that it seems there are many ways in which melee outclasses pure destruction mages in this game.

Okay, i've edited the first post(except for potion stats. Anyone wanna get back to me on that one?)



@Erandur




All of this is, however, besides the point. All I want to do is supply you guys with the stats and let you do what you will with it.

Thanks! I did catch that beforehand, though: i just included it as a damage modifier and adjusted stamina use to compensate. It should, as far as i know, work that way.

Then you should use the 100% spell reduction as an example, not anything to do with chameleon, or invisibility etc. That was seriously confusing, and made me think you thought that that was in the game.

Well, i did say it was an Oblivion example.

Anyone suppose there's any chance this might get stickied? It could stop a lot of threads and posts from happening.

Note : your math on the criticl strike is off - a 100% increase in damage happeneing 20% of the time will yeld an average 20% increase in damage, not 100% - sure on a single strike when it happen that's 100%, but on a longer period it goes down.

Not tht it alters much the conclusion, but it's better to keep the numbers straight.

Thanks for the bump! Gotta keep this near the top!

As for the math....oops! :tongue: fixed that, thanks!

One other thing; Please note that there are SOME estimates involved on the one handed stat, because I don't know exactly what the one handed skill itself does to weapon damage, only what the perks say. As a note of comparison, my Skyforged steel swords on my dual-wielding character do 100 damage together at roughly level 70 in one-handed. Therefore, i believe that I am providing a decent margin of safety, but that one handed could potentially do much higher damage than stated.

A couple of things I would like to point out. First one handed requires you to spend more points to increase the base damage. 5 compared to destruction's 2 if you stick to one damage type.

Secondly all destruction spells are ranged as far as I know. The damage you deal with destruction generally occurs well before your opponent is able to start dealing damage to you, assuming they're melee. There's also a perk that staggers enemies when you dual cast a spell on them, further increasing the time (indefinitely with potions?) that they are unable to deal damage to you. With one handed there's no way around getting up close and personal with whatever you're trying to kill so you are more or less taking damage the whole time.

Edit: One last thing. Some destruction spells can damage more than one enemy at a time. Under the right circumstances the total damage could be quadrupled or more.

It seems to me destruction isn't about how much damage you deal but how that damage is dealt. You have a lot more options with destruction, letting you decide what spell to use for the given situation. Chain lightning works great for crowd control or striking an enemy around a corner. For more up close and personal battles you may be better off casting one of the cloak spells and go on the defensive, downing potions and poking them with a dagger or something while they take damage from your cloak. You really have to use your head if you go with destruction but it can be devastating in the right hands.

Thanks for the stats. I guess I've not been wrong that this game caters to melee characters over magical ones. Luckily a school like Illusion can flip the odds in your favor.

Did too much blocks fall on your head or something? The numbers don't lie. Anything can be effective in anyone's hands, but on average and unless your some super pro who chugs around 20k mana potions and destruction potions your going to be doing a lot of work for very little pay off. The master spells have a five second cast time, and kill any friendly companions. It's not worth it. Most of the time your going to be shoe horned into using less destructive spells because you need to keep the friendly fire to a minimum. Even in the prime situation a five second cast time? Pffft yea right, I'm not sitting there getting hit while it casts. Assuming optimal build I'll be dieing in only one or two blows.

Destruction just svcks ass, there's no way to use it other than as a set of cheap parlor tricks to wow and impress people before moving on to some real skills to play the game.

Thanks for doing the math on this =)

It is nice to see something concrete instead of pure opinions flying around.

I never said the numbers were wrong. And I never said that destruction wasn't unbalanced. But nothing I said was wrong either. My current character is more or less a spellsword and although the damage he does with his sword is much greater than with destruction, there are some enemies that it's just plain easier to take down with destruction.

You ever try going toe to toe with a giant? Let me tell you, you don't want to be anywhere near them when that club comes down. It may take a while and require some careful maneuvering but you can kill a giant with destruction spells without too much trouble, even at a low level. I cannot say the same for one handed or two handed for that matter.

How could you say though? Your not playing a pure warrior character with archery. Naturally it would be hard if you didn't have some ranged against them, you just happened to have chosen the poorer option. I have 31 in bows and a Dwarven Bow with a 22 dmg fire enchantment that regularly shames my spells. A sneak attack with that and a follow up arrow is more effective than the entirety of 40 hours leveling destruction. So sad. But as a mage fighting a giant at high levels, so what? Your going to have so cast so much stun locks on that thing it's insane.

Mages are inferior in most of their schools to other skills. Just because you didn't take them doesn't mean they aren't there and aren't better.

You are absolutely right. I don't know what I was thinking. Destruction is clearly inferior to everything.

I'm going to bed now.

Part of the issue is that once you get Shouts, distance and range are irrelevant, you're never 'taking damage all that time' as you close in range, it takes you 1 second with a whirlwind sprint, either that or you just turn Ethereal, run all the way over to them, then end the ethereal and murder them melee range (If they're up on a ledge, for example).

Whereas it's always going to take ninety seconds straight of Lightning Storm (Master level spell with 100 Destruction and +30% dmg potion) to kill an Elder Dragon (Done in God Mode just to check time).
Versus a paltry 8 seconds of dual wielding standard enchantment fireshock daedric swords.

Good luck ever getting a dragon to stand still and leave you alone for two minutes straight while you cast lightning at it, rooted like a tree stump.

Conjuration is the dual-wielding school for mages. Dual Wield two Dremora Lords and call it a day. BOSS!

Yes, which is why this thread is called "DESTRUCTION versus one-handed", not "ALL MAGE SCHOOLS versus one-handed".

Y'know, just in case some of us who tried mages actually wanted to play destruction-based builds without resorting to weapons, bows or conjuration. *gasp* shocking, I know, how dare we want to play a destruction mage - the game was so right to punish us for such foolishness.