that is not the part I adressed now is it?

and I am using walls and runes because they increase my dps.... period.



bolded part is what is wrong
and NO spell scales in damage, not most... NONE.
spells never scaled in damage with skillups or gear in TES, they scale by becoming cheaper to cast.

NPCs cheat ...

Fortify One-Handed 47% x 4 = God that kills everything in one hit on master.

You do that in heavy armor = Invincible God that kills everything in one hit on master.

you need more than enchanting to one hit everything on master... way more...
and even heavy armor is vulnerable to numerous threats that can kill you. even if most melee attacks you shrug off, magic poison bleeds and maces are still a threat.

well we were discussing the specific cases of spamming one spell vs chaining spells only.
but yeah obviously using pots and poisons stacks up the dmg even more, I dont use a bow, but I do have an enchanted dagger for fast swings enchant procs and to apply poisons myself... but I usually save those for bosses or specifical high HP mobs, still very much so use walls and absolutely mix in fire with my lighting spells

I dont have alchemy perked but even if it was I doubt you would be 2-3 shoting bosses... they have huge HP pools.

but I do agree more variety of spells is always welcome, hell even liking these spell system I still miss alot, spellmaking.

They can increase by 50% damage, but that is barely helpful for a spell that does 8damage compared to a spell that does 60 damage.

In the end, the hyped spell types barely do any damage and are nearly useless for Master. Switching to a rune drops 180dps to 50 dps. Spamming bolts is more than enough, the other spell types are only used as novelties or people that miss with bolts alot.


My question is why you are so much against new ranks of these spells which get completely phased out? Would a direct-spray that did the same dps and dpm as incinerate really ruin your day?

Well paralyzing dudes and having them fall down while your fire wall rages on them and you blast them with Incinerate is pretty fun lol. It kills guys too!

It might be better to just straight stagger-lock them with all out Incinerate barrage but I'm not sure it is as fun.

I never said I was against new spells/ranks, at all...
and your math still fails... again runes do more than 50 dmg... and again you dont use it in between chain casts... you use it when you are not shooting at mobs... either before combat or when you are training/kiting so you never loose dmg to use them... I dont know why you are talking about a novice spell that does 8dps either... I never mentioned any of those, and yeah new ranks would be welcome., but thatsn othing to do with our discussion...
I simply showed how and why chaining spells is more dps than spamming 1 spell... wich you seem to still not be getting it.... so the best I can do at this point is say, go for it m8, keep spamming thunderbolt... I'll keep chaining spells in elemental fury, and we both will be happy yes?

That sounds pretty fun too!

Gods, I remember the board before release.

"We wont even miss spellmaking, we have these awsome glyps now and streaming spells."
Yeah, that turned out well.
We lost spellmaking but now we have gimmicks that dont scale and get obsolete when youve still got 90% of the game to go.

A lot of this could have been avoided if the spells did not become useless by levelling. You would think that people had actually playtested the game. Its instantly noticable that glyphs and streams are pointless past level 20.
Many, many people noticed on release day.

Wrong. I said spamming bolts. I never said I don't use incinerate. Incinerate is a bolt type. I guess I should have said "projectile".


If i were to use glyph my dps would drop by 1/4th, i'm not dumb enough to do that. If I used a direct-spray my dps would drop by 1/10th.

no you said that you used 1 spell, thats what started this whole discussion...





you still dont get it... Ill say it for the third time, you dont use runes in your chain casts, you use them when you are NOT SHHOTING at mobs.... is this concept so hard to grasp? do you know what pre combat is? do you know what kiting/training is?
and again... noone even mentioned novice spells, see I think you dont even know what wall spells are... do you?, heres a hint: they are NOT novice rank and they do NOT do 8dps.

but yeah you are a lvl 50 master difficulty mage player ye? *right*


you do know that 90 < 90 + 75 right?

Why heavy armor, and not light armor?
I would have taken heavy armor if the perk tree wasn't all stupid.

The thing is, enemy casters DO scale. They do absolutely ridiculous damage. So people assume that's what it's like to be a mage. Well, it is not.

prly cuz you can get to the armor cap faster and more easily with less perks taken., I dont see a point taking light armor as a mage, unless he takes block... but even so...

For strict destruction DPS purposes, it shouldn't be too difficult to determine what the most efficient combination is. I'm going to make a lot of assumptions to avoid getting too in-depth.

We'll ignore magic cost (since it will probably be close to zero), the +50% bonus (since it buffs all DPS proportionally), as well as any extra damage being on fire causes (all fire spells cause burning anyway). I'm also going to assume that single-shot spells are fired once a second (makes the math easier), ignore dual casting (Fire Storm takes two hands, so halve it if you want).

Lets consider the fire spells. We can get the base damage, and use that to calculate the DPS. Since the cloak spells last for 60 seconds, I'm going to use a total damage possible over 60 seconds.

(single, 60 s total)

Flames - 8 / 480
Fire Bolt - 25 / 1500
Fire Rune - 50 / 3000
Fireball - 40 / 2400
Flame Cloak - 8 / 480 + Other
Incinerate - 60 / 3600
Wall of Flames - 50 / 3000
Fire Storm - 150 / 1800

There are obviously some issues with the assumptions (Fire Rune can be cast beforehand, but has unreliable DPS; the AOE spells can hit more than one creature, Flame Cloak can be combined with other spells but has a short range, bolt spells can cause stagger, dual casting bonuses, Fire Storm takes two hands and a charge up, etc.), but we can make some observations:

Against a single target, Flames, Fire Bolt, and Fire Rune are all trounced by Incinerate; it does more damage faster. Incinerate is better than Fireball and Wall of Flames unless there is more than one target in range.

Flame cloak can be combined with other spells to (almost) add 480 damage to the 60 s total assuming that enemies are constantly in its range. Admittedly, though, it's usually better to not have enemies at close range for 60 seconds, so this one is probably a pass.

Wall of Flames and Fireball are close in multiple target damage, though I'll probably give Fireball the win because it can stagger and doesn't require the enemy to stand in the effect. Otherwise, Wall of Flames trounces Fire Rune (it's almost a rune hose).

Fire Storm is useless tripe.


To conclude, I'd say that the go-to destruction spells are the fire/frost/shock equivalents of Incinerate and Fireball, depending on the targets. Wall of Flames also might be useful if you can ensure it is reliably doing damage. Everything else is a waste.

Both of you are doing an awesome job of quoting each other and not understanding a thing the other person said.

To Sum up.

Ganen is saying it is faster I set up these spells in advance and then the fight goes fast.

Booheads is saying I am not wasting time setting crap up I run right into the room and kill everything with chain staggers, and since I am in the fight any spells with weak DPS lower slow my killing speed down.

Guess what you are both effing right. If you set crap up before the fight your DPS will be higher during the fight. But also the fight will be over sooner if you just skipped the set up stage since running into the room requires 0 planning and precision.

I haven't played a mage kind of character yet, but uhm..

Well, people say that "well playing a mage character works, you just need to take advantage of what the game gives you and fully explore what you can do" and I think that this is a poor argument.

Cause I'm an archer, I did not need to do this really.
I just needed to up my Sneak, Archery and Smithing.

Like, can you play as a mage? Yeah, but it apparently requires a lot more thinking, strategizing(?) and builds to truly maximize it.
While I just had to spend some points in Sneak, Archery and get some Smithing.

So even if a mage character works in Skyrim I think it's flawed if it requires way more detailed builds than what assassin/warrior types does.
Cause imagine if a assassin/warrior type did just this? Wouldn't they still end up in top over mages?

Okay, let's put this into simpler terms as my brain doesn't seem to work the way I want to:
If Mage's are like a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle to reach what a 100 piece jigsaw puzzle is for Warriors then doesn't it mean that a Warrior that does a 1000 piece puzzle is still way stronger than a mage will ever be`?
Combat-wise that is.

So I don't think that argument is very valid.

It's sad but one of my favorite things about playing a mage or non mage khajiit is.................................not needing torches.

What the hell is the point?

If I'm not killing enemies then I'm moving on to the next room to find more enemies not standing around setting up runes that will never do anything. By the time you do 90+75 I've done 90+90+90+90+90+90+90 looted everything and gone on to the next dungeon.

Don't know if you know this already, but there are stronger versions than those atronarch's. There are Thrall's you get at the 100 level once you do a quest to get them...or at least I think you have to.

http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Conjuration_(Skyrim)

The Thrall's are permanent mage pets at that point.

Bethesda's focus for TESV was primarily melee and battle related characters, not so much magic and wizardry. I know, it's disappointing to me too but at least we can recreate Skyrim for TESIII in the construction set! (Unless you're not a Morrowinder then I guess that statement is rather unnecessary).

II'm playing a sneak Mage, lvl25 so my out look is rush to get invisablity before enemies get to hard, other mages with any AOE spell like fireball are to difficult, at least I can stun lock melee enemies, I also should add that I use h2h on skeevers and any low threat mobs any souly destruction on anything else... You know what screw that, I'm restarting with a conjure-sneak Mage that uses staves and pick pockets posing onto peeps. And above all I need to focus on my core skills, i'll go back to ob or mw for a pure-ish Mage

The dissapointment factor came for me when my Bound Sword spell with Perk upgrade but still relatively low one handed and conjuration skill levels still VASTLY out damaged most of the Destruction spells even when using appropriate spells against enemies vulnerable to fire,frost,etc.

ever since they took magic off the right bumper (xbox)

and made it impossible to cast and have weapons out. (especially annoying with alteration)

i said fook et.
Skyrim is for the melee