I honestly don't care about the attritubte loss, most of them were redundant and did not effect much to begin with. There is, however, no excuse for the complete and utter destruction of the mage role. Not only did they remove most of the really nice spells (unlock, drains, real invisibility, weapon destruction, waterwalking, DOTs and poison related damage from spells, and from Morrowind to Oblivion already removed some awesome ones like levitate and recall) but they have taken out any aspect of roleplay within the mage class. All that is left for a mage is weak offensive spells. There is no more utility to being a mage.

You no longer feel powerful or mage like. You know longer feel like you are anything different than the 12 year old's character next door in heavy armor, with one handed and a fireball. Except you feel A LOT weaker. There is almost no incentive to wear robes for mages, seeing as heavy armor can be enchanted with the same bonuses most robes come with and beyond that there is no incentive. The destruction spells don't scale and you end up becoming the equivalent of a snow ball chucking bully by mid game. By then, warriors and assassins are one shotting just about everything and in better armor.

When confronted with a lock, what is my MAGE forced to do? Whip out a rusty lockpick! Why? Because Bethesda took out all the non-combat oriented spells! But hey, at least I can still cast magelight..... However, I'm sure that will be removed in the next TES game, so don't get too attached.

This game has turned into a hack and slash, sorry to say it but that's the facts. And it really makes me mad to see Bethesda alienating the core group of RPG fans that made Beth what they are today.

News to me, my Breton and Altmer beg to differ.

I play a mage and many others do the same so...it has to be you not the game. It's single player after all, there is no need to do the most damage, have the most badass equipment etc.

How so? Everything I stated were factual aspects of the game, not opinions. Destruction spells don't scale, all of the the utility spells were removed, robes have no incentive. You trying to argue with facts?

Ya and if you read through the forums, I'm far form the first person with this issue. Get your mage past level 20 and then come talk to me. I bet you have never even played morrowind so your opinion doesn't matter.

I'm finding mage gameplay to be enjoyable, which is the first thing I look for in a build. The second thing I look for is viability, which it also has. It may be EXTREMELY difficult, but it is viable. If you use all the spells to their full potential, it's very flexible and useful.

That said, mages are fairly weak, compared to before. But that isn't such a bad thing. I've seen shield-mages and sorcerers be VERY effective now, because of the need of defense.

So, mages may be weakened, but they are far from 'getting the shaft'. As much as I love getting shafted http://27.media.tumblr.com/avatar_6feb8634e3d0_128.png , mages did not receive it this time.

I've got an epic invisibility spell for my assassin!
I don't really understand what you mean with real invisibility because it works perfect for me. Unless you mean that people can hear you walk.... :confused:

More than just the fact that they are quite weak, im hurt by the fact that they have no real utility. All the neat spells that made a mage, well.... a mage, are gone. I'm tired of them removing everything every game that comes out.

I do hate that they removed the open lock spell :/

She is past level 20.

And yes i never played morrowind but guess what? I don't want to, it's an old out-dated game and i have found the best elder scrolls for me. And you are writing in an open forum so don't behave like a child..

The fact that you need to be an assassin with high sneak skills for invisibility to even be viable is what I am talking about. Without high sneak skills the enemies follow you around and keep attacking you even while sneaking and invisible. I'm a pure mage, I don't want to be forced to play a hybrid class with heavy armor and sneak and weapon skills. I thought this was a game that allows me to play anything I want? Why is one of the core magic skills and one of the only utility spells left, not even geared towards mages?

What do you mean theyre weak? Mages are basically the only ones that can even beat me in a fight. I have died at the hands of mages more than any other enemy.

It's sad to say but I have to agree. I wound up putting 50+ hours into my mage thinking that he will eventually feel powerful but he was weak all the way through. I started over with an archer/assassin and can't stress enough how much of a difference it is.

Did you play morrowind?

Also here's a little secret, learn ice spike. Itll help you. A lot.

Mages got the shaft?

Hmm, that's funny. Cuz my Breton mage got no shaft.

NPC mages don't operate under the same rules as our mages. Their spells scale with their level. Example: a level 35 npc mage will still use frostbite and kick your ass with it. Frostbite for a level 35 player would do absolutly nothing to a bad guy of that level.

Mages just feel terrible now, especially compared to (heavily modded) Oblivion.
I was amazed at just the utter lack of versatility in the mage's spellbook, especially on top of removing spellmaking.
This, naturally, gimped Enchanting even more, though it's not as weak as spells are due to new enchantments being made (fewer than they removed, of course).

Did you read the post or just the title. I gave valid factual reasons why.

Here's the real secret, math. http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1283497-destruction-versus-one-handed-statistics/page__gopid__19376384#entry19376384

You won't notice a problem if you're playing a spellsword or anything else that uses magic as a back up plan or support.

The issue is with pure mages. Sure, the stagger dualcast perk is great if you use magic AND a weapon, but it ends up being the only way to survive the time it takes(usually 30 to 40 spells after hitting the level cap) to kill a single enemy because spell damage doesn't scale with skill so you're stuck doing ~200 damage per spell forever.

As I play a sword and board guy, this doesn't really effect me. I love this game. That said, OP is correct about almost everything regarding mages. More than the fighting ability, the lack of utility is baffling. It is strange that a mage can transmute iron into gold, showing magical manipulation of metal, but can"t use that to say, open a lock, or disintegrate armor. Basically it looks like Beth didn't do anything for mages if they couldn't make a cool visual effect out of it.

my gf has a pure mage and if she needs to sneak around a bit she uses muffle + invisibility + sneak for the best effect. Is it really a big problem using the sneak skill?

It is true man, but people who have no idea what they are talking about will defend this issue all day. I don't know why I bother other than to have it heard by Bethesda. Play Morrowind and the originals, then come tell me that mages feel A OK. Go back to Call of Duty please.

Call of duty comment was not to the person I am replying to, but to everyone saying mages are fine and have never played the series

Personally I entirely agree. I see Skyrim in its current state as a blank canvas thatll be fixed by mods. We'll ressurect Magic from the ashes.

But if I was playing on a console I'd have never brought it given the state of magic in Vanilla.