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.

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.

and no you dont need to level or perk enchanting AT ALL, to make mage gameplay viable as you can get decent support mana efficiency with droped loot and vendor loot.

Wut? I love my mage, but no, you are not going to get decent support mana efficiency from caster loot drops or vendor buys. Not even remotely. Maybe @ level 15. But no way, no how, above level 30, will any game based mage loot be acceptable.

@ level 44, using only destruction spells, I'm melting Elder dragons in 30 seconds or less. I dont' even bother with a conjure. Once I find out if it's weak to frost, or if it's weak to fire, I just dual cast and spam impacts, and it's done.

When I'm lazy, I'll just distance launch a dremora lord into a room and sit back and watch him talk smack and beat some dudes around. Sometimes I'll send him in after I launch a fireball down the hallway to get eveyone all uppity and such.

In short. Mages are fine.

Nah, i am(was) focusing on conjuration/destruction and some of the other schools... didn't really find it entertaining :S Just the same thing for a loong time... Summon fire atronach, spam fireballs, loot body for nothing but heavy armor and swords...

bellow lvl 20 is hard obviously, but in later stages you can easily get acess to "xxx item of destruction" and "xxxitem of magicka" and with that alone you can reach about 60-70% spell cost reduction with some small boost to mana,
its nowhere near as good as having enchanting obviously since you can have 100% (exploit) or 80-90% and 200+ mana with it, but its very much so viable.

I'm actually not that bothered by a mages combat effectiveness. I think it is lame that it does not increase but that is more because of the general feeling of getting weaker due to level scaling. You can still kill things at a somewhat reasonable pace, don't get me wrong at certain points vs certain mobs it is a bit tedious and I think it could have been better but it isn't 5 minute slogs to kill anything like some people imply once you perk/skill/archmage robes things. Longer than other styles sure, and against certain monsters with ridic health pools it gets to be a long time. But hey that is what master is, huge health pool slogs. And sure it is nothing like Dark brotherhood x30 dagger strikes, but still you do fine.

My complaints are like I said I don't like getting weaker as I level since damage stops scaling.
But mostly variety:
No spell making
A huge loss of effects.
The spell effects used have huge holes in them(flames stops at novice, runes are only destruction, need more AoE variety etc.

"they dont scale" hwo dont they scale? they scale the exact same as any spell... they get cheaper to cast and they get perk multipliers... exactly the same as all spells...
I dont have a need for staggers either, as I use paralysis as my form of control, wich is vastly superior to staggers, it allows me such control that I rarely miss spells, and almost always have them where I need them (on top of my walls)
but even if you are so stagger dependant, you can stagger with incenerate.... and just by using incenerate you are increasing your dps significantely when compared to just spamming thunderbolt.
you also loose what? half a second? 1 and a half seconds at most to spray the ground with a wall... you loose the dmg of a single cast tops... but get it back times 10 in long term dot it gives...



you dont really NEED enchanting, its just a great advantage to get it tbh... even without enchanting by lvls 30 or so you should have acess to either vendor or loot gear that lower your spell costs by 40-60% enchanting allows for more reduction and more easily while still having room for other stuff like extra mana.

but it is true, the most damaging techniques require medium or even short range to work, wich is why I think the best destruction setups envolved alteraion, for paralysis, and no companions or conjuration, so that mobs are continuously ganging up towards you, so you can train them to your walls and traps.

I am playing a pure mage with a complete focus on destruction and Alteration. I play on expert, and at level 24 I am nuking everything. My destruction and alteration are both 85. Its quite fun.

Question, is alteration the school for paralysis, and what level can you start getting the spell?
,

you should already have acess to paralasys, its an awesome spell.

What vendor sells it? I have yet to see it

I believe its the old guy that looses the alembic, dont remember, just look at all teachers that are in the college

Tolfric, the Alteration guy?

I agree theres lack of variety and spell mechanics such as spell making, wich are dearly missed, but the usual repeated "I get weaker as I level" claim is just wrong... you dont get weaker... you get stronger... you get higher rank spells that do more damage, and as you level you get more mana and gear/skill to reduce their cost allowing you to spellsling for more and longer damage and combos... I dont think anyone with mage experience that knows how to properly use/gear destruction can honestly say they are worse in any way, at lvl 50 than they were at lvl 30---

as for the damage propaganda, fact is, it takes leveleing AND perking AT LEAST two crafting trees to make melee/bow do more dmg than spells.
full smithing and two handed perk and skilled, unenchanted daedric two hander hits for 138 dmg every 3s or so
expert rank full perked and skilled thunderbolt hits for 90 every 2 seconds or so and you can cast two per cast (speed depends on target proximity/miss rates and ofc how good you are with your fingers ).
when you get enchants on weapons and armor you get about the same dps single target but destruction still outshines it in aoe and control so yeah...

You can have fun with a mage if play on novice

I have a lvl 42 mage and using my entire mana reserve is equal to one smack on the bonce with a glass (legendary) mace with 25 point fire enchant on expert lvl. I have no points in 1hand and I wear archmage robes, morokia, and all other armor is enchanted for either mana or mana regen. The frost astronch gets one shotted by mobs on expert lvl. My only cause off action is to grind my skills up by cunjering pets for an hour or so great fun. lvling destruction is even harder and more boring.

I don't know. I just had no where to go with destruction once it hit 100. I guess the same could be said for a master smith once he caps one handed, but for me it felt like I was getting weaker since I was not getting stronger, but I was bumping into what were once boss mobs as normal enemies.

And I also disagree with your facts. I think the constant stream of fast attacks you get with melee out paces destruction on its own, add in that it synergises(sp?) with more things and it gets to be a lot better.

You can have fun with a mage if play on novice

I have a lvl 42 mage and using my entire mana reserve is equal to one smack on the bonce with a glass (legendary) mace with 25 point fire enchant on expert lvl. I have no points in 1hand and I wear archmage robes, morokia, and all other armor is enchanted for either mana or mana regen. The frost astronch gets one shotted by mobs on expert lvl. My only cause off action is to grind my skills up by cunjering pets for an hour or so great fun. lvling destruction is even harder and more boring.

Nah, i am(was) focusing on conjuration/destruction and some of the other schools... didn't really find it entertaining :S Just the same thing for a loong time... Summon fire atronach, spam fireballs, loot body for nothing but heavy armor and swords...