So according to Bethesda's blog, they are planning a re-balance/data patch sometime in January. What do you think this means for Destruction? Is it getting fixed or largely left alone?

I ask because not everyone thinks it's a problem, and as it is Bethesda's game, if they are among that group then of course no fixing will be done. On the other hand, if they do believe that it is a problem, what do you think they will address? Damage only, or perhaps re-balancing the less useful (read: useless) spells and perks like the master level spells and the various element effect perks in the Destro tree as well? Maybe the addition of lower level spell scaling? New spells?

Post your thoughts.

Bethesda knows how to build beautiful world, but they have NEVER shown a bit of clue or talent when it comes to actual game mechanic.

So it's highly doubtful that they will fix anything regarding balance, and that's assuming that they will even try since they never tried to fix balance in any of their previous games.

Destruction is the only thing that obviously needs balancing.
Atleast in my opinion, an underpowered and therefore non-viable skill should take priority over something that some people percieve as overpowered.

Bethesda could honestly change any number of things, but after being on the forums for quite some time now, I've learned not to speculate, as it gives people false hope, causes unwarranted pessimism from others, and ends up spreading lies and rumors that end up being detrimental to the community and to people's outlook on the game...

Well if Bethesda plans on balancing out Destruction to scale with skill like weapons do I will be thrilled. But if that does not fall under what they consider to be unbalanced then I'll just have to live with it since I play on the xbox. I still play Destruction and although I have not reached the soft cap for level, so i cannot speak for everyone, it still is useful just gotta use all your tricks rather than hack-n-slash.

I don't have the game yet (I'm getting there only 24 days till the fat man comes down the chimney with it) what exactly is wrong with Destruction?

Is destruction truly underpowered? Or is it just considered underpowered when compared to overpowered players who abuse smithing, alchemy, and enchanting?

What I am asking is, can a mage who only uses destruction to attack be able to beat the game on normal difficulty?

Agreed good point

Well if you have played any of the other TES games Destruction magics damage would scale off the base value damage of the spell with your increasing Destruction Magic Skill. In Skyrim it seems like the only way to get increased damage output is through the perks I may be wrong about this but that is what i have seen.

hey maybe they will make hand to hand a skill again and actually give it a proper amount of power attacks.

People say it's weak, but that's not the problem when you can dish out 400+ damage (90 damage per cast, dual cast it with perks for 200 damage, chug fortify potion for 150%+ increase) every half a second at range with stunlock (impact) at zero magicka cost.

Problem is that it's stupid boring and dumbed down to the point where it really feels like this just wasn't the intended way the game was to be played.

I am currently playing on Normal Difficulty and I find quite awesome. The level scaling mobs might eventually outstrip my static damage output but at the moment I do not have any problems just got to use more tactics than normal.

>Edit:
It does feel like something is missing though, a lot of the variety seems to be lost but most people do not notice this unless they play the "pure" mage.

It is weak though, especially as you approach the level cap. Barring alchemy potions, which are extremely brief in duration and limited in quantity, destruction damage is quite weak. It takes much longer to kill something with destruction spells than with a (non-exploited) smithed sword or bow.

It only feels like that because the novice, apprentice, and adept spells lose there effectiveness. If they added damage scaling , using runes, flames , projectiles, and cloaks would all be viable again and we would have an awesome amount of variety. I am using a mod that does just that and it absolutely breathes new life in the magic system.

Damn, so destruction is worse than even non-exploited smithed weapons That is fine. But I will use it anyway, destruction is too much fun

Continued Game Updates – This week we released update 1.2 across all platforms, and we’ll be releasing an incremental update next week. We anticipate it will be up on PC first, and then hit PS3 and Xbox 360 later in the week. Among other things, the update will fix issues like magic resistance not calculating properly and the rare, amazing backwards flying dragon. Once the update is released, we’ll share the full release notes.

After the holidays, we’ll continue to release regular updates for the game — through full title updates, as well as incremental “gameplay updates” to fix whatever issues come up along with rebalancing portions of the game for difficulty or exploits. We plan on having a lot of these, not just a few. Overall, you should expect updates to be hitting the PC and Steam earlier and more often, as that’s a process we control. Console updates will follow, as they must be certified and processed by those manufacturers.

We all know this is a huge game, and everyone has a different experience. We’ll continue to do everything we can to make the game better and better for as many people as possible every day. We’ve also realized that with the millions upon millions of people playing Skyrim, we need to treat our updates with greater care. If we get too aggressive trying to fix a minor issue, we run a risk of breaking something larger in a game like this. To be safe, we are prioritizing code side fixes right now over data fixes. Quest and balance issues are usually data, and those will start rolling in a large way with the January updates.
-Bethesda Blog

tl:dr
http://www.bethblog.com/index.php/2011/12/01/skyrim-what-were-working-on/

EXACTLY! The lower level skills look the best to me, so what is the point of not scaling them?! Hopefully they will fix this! Fingers crossed

No Destruction is underpowered for the player, why do players do less damage with spells then some of the mages you come across randomly in the game? I remember an Argonian bandit chief that could 2 shot my Breton Paladin/Tank build with lightning spells... apparently 25% magic resistance and the 250~300HP at the time wasn't enough. But a player casts Thunderbolt, with +50% damage, that's only 90 damage, against the 25% magic resistance too, it'd hit for ~68 damage. That is a lot less impressive...

There is a bug with the illusion tree that might be responsible for that, or NPCs actually do have more base magic damage then players... either way there are some issues with the destruction school being generally woefully underpowered. It'd take only 1 cast of fast healing to recover that damage... so it's pitiful. NPC Destruction spells need to be nerfed slightly while player Destruction spells need to be improved. I'm assuming that Destruction is one of the things that will be looked at but I'm doubting it'll be a major fix rather just slightly more damage and being left broken, just not as broken as it is now.

Still with the Construction Kit now due in Jan, I think I may just make my own re-balancing mod... There is a lot of irks and irritations I have with the perk trees. Some are useless and some are too powerful. Getting the Master Perk in any magic tree is pointless, when you can go for enchanting and get free spells instead. 50% off or entirely free, which do I want?

Maybe it's because I'm not playing at a higher difficulty level and I'm currently at level 34 but destruction seems okay to me. Just gotta play your cards right. Get the right enchantments and perks then you should be okay. If you can enchant 4 pieces of apparel for 25% destruction reduction then you can shoot your destruction spells indefinitely. I usually let my 2 conjured dremora lords and my companion distract the enemy while I cast a blizzard.

It's already quite a breakthrough for Bethesda to consider balancing some things out via patches,
so I'm afraid they won't actually do major improvements like adding a larger variety of spells.
Which I think is needed to really make pure mage characters more attractive.

^^^^ this

Any game with cheap, spammable instant healing potions does not know or care what "balance" even means. They throw a bunch of mechanics in but the overall idea is you only fail at anything if you really really want to.

They need to re-balance the freaking enemies. They are all too difficult, on normal difficulty, when you get around level 13+. Enemy conjurers who shoot ice spike and kill you in one hit, and enemy archers with cheap bows who shoot you one time and take all your health, even if you have around 350+ health. That's something I would expect from max difficulty.

Destruction doesn't scale up in damage with your skill level, and I'm not sure the magicka cost goes down with skill, either. I have seen this, and I don't think it was supposed to be that way. Armor, melee weapons and bows scale with skill, but magic only scales with perks.

And for the record, the Disintegrate perk svckS! Enemies turn to ashes, and sometimes the ashes go through the "floor" (or ground, if you're outside), and disappear forever. I have been unable to loot dragons after turning them into ash, because the ashes vanish from sight. They probably went through the ground like the dragons bones tend to do.

Potatoes will be larger. My guess.

I hope Bethesda doesn't make destruction scale point for point with archery, one handed, etc. Honestly if it scaled up at HALF that rate, it would be borderline too good. It just needs SOME small bonus based on skill level.

I hope they don't over-do it.

True. At this point I'd be happy with even just spell scaling, because that would increase the amount of spells to use simply by allowing us to make viable use of all of our existing spells, however paltry in number they may be. That's probably the best compromise between the work of adding new spells and the simplicity of just buffing damage.