Best magic school: Restoration

Switching with the favorites menu is a little annoying but that aside it's the tiny tiny tiny tip of the iceberg on why weapons(bows and melee weapons) VASTLY outdo magic in the game.

magic is for sissies.

Yeah, i guess they did it to make room for shouts. Shouts basically destroy magic. a warrior with good shouts and maybe one magic school is most likely going to do a lot better in combat than any mage, given he has right enchantments and smithing

Evil-Ish Ranger was far more powerful feeling than most of the trip with Mage. At 55 with destruction 100, and a good collection of magika regen gear, I send targets flying like they've been hit with freight trains, and cleared herds of mammoths and giants with light jogging and wall spells.

Of course just about everything larger than a Skeever with a cough can kill me in 1-2 hits, the trick as Festus Krex says... You don't have to skulk in shadows, just walk up, politely introduce yourself, then melt their face off and run like hell!

Last step is the 3 final destruction spells. but even without I'm having quite a bit more fun now than when I was puny.

This is essentially admitting that the destruction skill and its corresponding spells not scaling is broken, though.

Edit:
How did I not notice this topic had more than one page....

I agree they really should have added more spells (and better varieties). I don't know what the hell Beth is thinking some times.

They are both ranged.
Archery can deliver damage per second via poisons. E.g. spider poison, that you get within the first 10 minutes of the game..
Enchantments.
The concept is the same as that of quick scoping. Aim before you shoot. Magic doesn't let you sprint, and master spells don't even let you move.

I'm not comparing the damage figures. I'm comparing my own experiences involved with them. I haven't even looked at damage figures. I'm comparing my ability to take down a normal dragon (which couldn't move due to a glitch) at level 20 using the best ranged spells I have available, with perks placed in destruction and destruction being my highest skill, vs my ability to take down the mobile blood dragon defeated just 5 minutes beforehand using an enchanted iron bow I found in my inventory.

Result: Normal dragon still alive after 30 minutes spamming with spells. Blood dragon dead and forgotten.

Also conjured weapons. You get a non mana chugging superior damage spell that also requires a mere 2 perks in a strong perk tree that also fills all your soul stone needs. Still a blast to use in one hand while summoning astronauch's,etc and firing off other spells but still a little disappointing.

Darling. If you had a little reading comprehension whatsoever, you may have noticed that the argument I was talking about was that destruction needs to be supported with other skills, such as enchanting, to make playing a mage viable, and cannot stand alone by itself, and that that was a funny argument.

If you had the tiniest amount of RC you would have identified that I'm not talking about a pure mage. I'm talking about a crossover character.

No, because you don't have to train/kite if you spam staggers. That time you spent setting up walls and glyphs (which scale like utter trash and do horrible damage) is better spent just SHOOTING A DUAL CAST fireball or incinerate, and doing 2-4x damage STRAIGHT OFF. You spend setup time to do less damage ->> Dungeons clear slower. Fact, ive tried each method so many times and I realized glyphs were a waste of time at level 40. If you constantly stagger they won't even hit the glpyh or wall, unless you stop dual-casting and use glyph/wall mid chain, which again makes your dps drop considerably. Its silly really.

Also this doesn't adress the problem of sprays and cloaks also absolutely svcking worse than runes/walls.


Anyways, this is all off-topic. Lets just agree that the lower level spells need scaling and master spells need changes, as there is barely any spell variety since you can easily get away with spamming fireball and/or incinerate and doing anything else is just for novelty and probably will slow down a dungeon clear.

Not to nitpick your experience but either that downed dragon had bugged health or you are using a bit of hyperbole to show your point. While it may take a while to take out a dragon with just destruction it should never take 30 minutes of spell spamming. 2 firebolts do 50 damage a second, so roughly 3,000 in a minute that would be plenty got a level 20 dragon encounter. Now sure you have to factor in regen time, but not 29 minutes of regen time.

It took 30 minutes. I was using frost, because for some reason the fire was glitching through, while it was nowhere near lightning range. (If I moved closer, the dragon would unglitch and move unpredictably around the screen.) At 25% health it ditched off and hovered out of range above one of the high mountains eastish of High Hrothgar.

To be honest, example is probably completely invalid because it's a glitched dragon, which has been hanging out there for about 10 levels.

If you're going to make a game without spell making there to correct your mistakes you might want to look into actually balancing the spells you're stuck with.

It really shouldn't be that hard to have spell effectiveness increase each level and then modify that increase by your skill in that school. There should also be some kind of mana to damage ratio kept in mind so that when you buy a new spell (and they really should be available for purchase no matter your skill level) you shouldn't have to use your whole mana bar to cast it once and only see a slight increase in damage.

Bethesda should really look into fixing this, or they can at least make the stamina bar matter for melee. How about a huge damage dropoff on all regular attacks when you stamina bar is empty?

^This...yeah it blows.

You can enchant all sorts of clothing to make yourself look boss, and still have it work for you.

Just sayin'

I love playing as mage in this game more then any other of the elderscrolls games (:

I originally went Restoration/Destruction, then flipped the latter over to Illusion, found it more interesting.

Ping ponging enemies over Runes via Fear spell is a good laugh too. Starting to pick up stealth too, so I can sneak around causing mayhem without being detected.

Guys i found this video... I killed those draugr with my archer(lvl20) in 2 minutes... look how long it takes for this MAGE..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhyntO9oWMM&feature=g-u
This guy is awesome btw

Yeah thats pretty bad. I take those Wights down in a few whacks with my enchanted 2H weapon on my warrior. His dual fireballs barely scratch it.

If only they would remove the ridiculous perks that half the mana cost for spells and just HALF THE BASE COST OF ALL SPELLS then it would be better. Its plain ridiculous that we have to spend 5 perks on a school of magic JUST FOR THE SPELLS TO BE VIABLE.
And meanwhile warriors can hack away even at 0 stamina.

I under level my destruction mage and it works for me so far, it is more difficult to play pure destruction with robes on masters than it is to use an Archer or Melee Warrior. Then again you can always reduce the difficultly

I honestly had trouble watching someone that bad play. Maybe he was distracted by the talking or he gets better a few minute sin after I stopped watching but he would hurt a dragur get it close to death then start firing at another one instead of finishing it off, he missed a lot and he kind of svcked at utilizing his summons.

I agree. It is one thing to make people better because they devote them selves to a style, it is another thing to kind of force an all in attitude. Requiring perks for skills to be functional is not something I like. Though honestly one handed is not functional without armsman, a 40% damage swing over 85 skill points is not worth mentioning.

If you compare damage-wise, destruction (and perhaps dealing damage through magic in general) is less effective. This is because very few ways exist to improve damage capacities of spells, whereas you can use perks, smithing and enchanting to improve damage of weapon styles. However, I've built a battlemage (dual wielding swords with light armor and destruction spells) and I found myself using destruction spells more than dual wielding. This is because chain lightining could strike two targets at once (which made taking out many weak enemies easier) as well as bypass the wards of enemy casters (by making the lightining jump from a wall behind them) and thunderbolt would stagger stronger foes so I'd be better protected. The only time I resorted to dual wielding was when I wanted assassin-type sneak kills or when I came up on dangerous mobs that I could take out quickly through dual wielding power attacks.