Magic, and how it has been effectvely neutered in Skyrim is a hot topic for debating. What do you think Bethesda needs to do for future TES games regarding magic and the various applications of it? Destruction magic is VERY inefficient end game, especially on higher difficulties and that is an undeniable fact. Smithing provides a permanent buff to melee damage and enchanting provides an elemental buff to melee damage while alchemy only provides a short-lasting buff to destruction spell damage.

Yes, there are magic enhancing/balancing mods and various overhauls out there but I don't like overhauls unless it's a graphic overhaul. I never have and I never will.

M'aiq is fine with magic. It is just fine for him.

Too much magic can be dangerous. M'aiq once had two spells and burned his sweetroll.

I'm quite happy with magic the way it is and I'm also in the group that thinks destruction is neither inefficient or under powered.

Maybe I'm wrong about it being inefficent. How much damage does an untempered dragonbone sword/greatsword do at max skill? I think of destruction as "untempered" and that it's slightly "tempered" with the use of a fortify destruction potion (deathbell + glowshroom), in lack of better wording.

From my perspective, Destruction is actually the most balanced skill in the game.

I find that the real problem is due to (what I believe is) a poorly-designed level-scaling system in which high-level NPCs have ridiculously large health pools and become nothing more than damage sponges.

With such imbalance, melee players are pushed to use the Alch-Enct-Smi exploit/loop if they want to use weapons that are viable past Level 50.

True that. I also think NPC mages need to be nerfed. I mean, a generic higher leveled bandit mage has MORE health than magicka and is WAY under my level. His/her magicka pool also seems near infinite when they're not even wearing a single piece of cost-lowering gear and they fling spells like crazy while having a ward up.

Couldn't really play a mage in Skyrim without mods. Destruction magic and bound weapons are almost worthless in vanilla, wards very certainly so. The variety of spells has suffered rather badly as well which is a shame because I generally like the controls for casting magic in Skyrim. Was there really a reason for taking out slowfall spells? And waterwalking, which wasn't in Skyrim at release, and is still buggy now?

I get murdered by magic users on a daily basis... I see no problem with its power.

Magic is perfect in Skyrim.... almost. Just bring spell making back for TES VI: somweyr, and use the same or a similar magic sytem to Skyrim = Perfect.

I think magic is just ok in balancing, but i think that the variety is lacking so much. Fortunately , there's mods that add plenty of spells, but it just shows that they really could have made magic something special.

That's the general idea. Magic is supposed to be dangerous and scary.

In case you haven't figured it out by now, (IMO) magic most certainly needs to be given back some of it's power that's been lost...especially Spellmaking.

But if spellmaking comes back I might spend too much time making spells!

A thousand times this. If PC magic could be that good, there would be no complaints.

As for the OP, i dontthink it needs to be buffed. But Destruction needs to be restructured. In Skyrim its more about quantity over quality; how many fireballs you can throw out, instead of how much damage you can do with a few. It gets progessively less effective.

I love magic how it is, I just wish it had a sneak bonus.

There is nothing wrong with destruction magic. The problem is that weapons can be massively overpowered when you abuse all the crafting. Using just smithing and weapon skills your weapon is going to do around 100 damage which is on par with destruction. Of course you can create your alchemy and smithing gear and make your four fortify one arm pieces and smith and enchant a weapon that is one shot ting everything. That doesn't mean destruction is underpowered though it means you found a way to make weapons so strong that the game isn't even worth playing. A fight with a dragon priest or draugur death overlord should be an epic battle even more so on master or legendary but people are killing these guys with their god weapons before they even get to stand all the way up out of their tomb and then complaining that destruction is underpowered. Lol.

Overpowered in Oblivion, too limited in Skyrim. It's prettier, but less fun. No point worrying about power, BGS never got balance right, it's the lack of effects that hurts it. Variety is good. No touch spells? Too many effects from enchantments or alchemy that could easily have been spells. At least there won't be Thu'um next game: nice idea, great fun, but so much magecraft was replaced by it, rather than being complemented by it.

Perhaps they thought "no one will use that spell, there's a shout for it". Wrong. Someone will find a use for any spell, even if it's just messing with the game world. This 'spreadsheet' nonsense took out one very important part of the previous games' magic - experimentation. Aren't mages supposed to experiment?

My healer can't cast a cure disease spell. Really? I mean, come on, how does make any sense whatsoever? "Yeah, but there's a potion for that." She can eat a hawk feather too. On the other hand, frost breath? Fire shouts? Beth, what are you doing? There are spells for that.

I never bought that "too spreadsheety"excuse in the first place. Personally, I think they used that as an excuse to avoid telling the real reason it was left out...and I believe that with the magic system like we used to have, while still having shouts, that Beth probably felt people wouldn't use those shouts.

Yeah, man, and my mage is forced to pick locks because for some dumb reason Beth removed that from being a viable, whenever I need it spell.

Something I consider is if you run out of stamina you can still block or strike. Plus you have armor. Having no stamina i think = no power attack

If you run out of magicka you can't caste magic whatsoever and you are left to run away and hide until you have some more. I think this should be changed somehow.

Mages shouldn't need to rely on potions more than warriors. Melee fighting is with physical strength and magic is with mental strength. They should be able to toe-to-toe equally with their own ways. Mages being able to write scrolls to help them out could be an asset.