Dude you're so full of BS and of yourself it's just funny.

The entire point of Alteration is Paralyze/Mass Paralyze. Dragonhide too if you really need the damage reduction. It still has more reasons to use than Destruction. People see particle effects and just assume that it MUST be dealing "lots" of damage. It's not though and you would deal more damage using Archery.

Illusion is not just about Frenzy/Calm either. You can make assasin builds that pretty make sneaking obsolete and the only reason to level it is for Assassin's Blade.

Those familiar with playing mages, sorcerers, illusionists, enchanters, et al in RPGs/MMOs will recognize pets as the ultimate in offensive capability. The proper pet is a mana efficient DoT that also draws (and hopefully keeps) aggro.

If it was summoned or reanimated good. If it is a charmed or frenzied mob then great; you have thinned the herd and swung the odds more towards your favor.

To view direct damage as the best/only means of offense for a Mage is profoundly ignorant.

Nothing is preventing you from helping out the cause by lobbing a few fireballs for SnG.

The problem with your summons doing "all of the work" is that it's a fire and forget system that does not engage the player in any way. Tossing ineffective destruction spells does nothing to add to the sense of contribution. Your pets should never out damage you if you invested into another school that is entirely based around damage. They should be able to tank for you and be an "efficient" source of damage, but never your replacement.

It's just as ignorant to assume everyone WANTS to use a summons in the first place. In this game, summons can easily exist without destruction. Destruction cannot function without Enchanting + Conjuration.

It's a different playstyle. I like to keep my mage pure and not rush to the front lines. Meaning, only clothe and no melee weapons, not even summoning bound ones. That said I am enjoying the playstyle of my pure mage. I simply have Lydia and War Dog as my companions. If [censored] hits the roof I summon an Atronach. That's a party of 4 doin some AZZZ whoopin. I merely sit in back, throw fireballs when appropriate but more importantly I play the support role healing my buddies and watching them unleash hell, :mohawk:

If I want to get to the front ines I play my warrior. If I want to sit back and play the support role and watch AI vs AI in action I play my mage. In the latter fashion you get to really see Lydia in action, she rocks!

Mages are actually amazing. Conjuration and Illusion can both work as excellent stand alone skills with a few minor support thrown if if you want. Alteration can give you max physical/magic resistance (although annoying to recast, 5sec cast and 1.5 minute length). Resto obviously great healing.

The thing is, the one spell-line (Destro) that people have come to expect as being "stand-alone" in all TES games and most RPGs has become a simple secondary/support skill that isn't quite needed for Conjurers or Illusionists, who are far far more efficient when using Bow.

Destruction is horrible, the rest is fine.

My point wasn't that everyone should/want to be a conjurer. Nor was it that I feel the destruction line is satisfactory the way it currently is implemented.

I was stating how historically pets have been one of the best forms of offense and thus severely restricted in use. That they are not defensive.

Also, I am not high level, but I have yet to run into a situation where any encounter was a summon and wait experience. Maybe this will change, but I severely hope not.

While destruction many not put out the level damage many would like is it so minuscule that it contributes nothing at all to an encounter?

I hope the people wishing to rely solely on destruction for offense get a satisfactory fix. I always play mages of some flavor in every RPG/MMO I play, but I never play the pure elementalist. That, to me, is as boring as the swing your sword until its dead warrior.

Yes, it really is that worthless without the Impact perk.

Your ability to offer an intelligent well articulated rebuttal leaves me speechless. Please return when you have anything useful to do other than behave like a troll.

HAh, what? Warriors are horrible.
Enter room.
spot enemy.
Run towards enemy while flailing weapon wildly.
enemy dies.
WOOT

Get 0% cost on destruction spells through enchants.

Spam iceblast with Stagger perk.

Honestly, there is no end to the amount of enemies you can actually kill that way.... NO END.

Master or Novice difficulty, it doesn't even matter as they won't even hit you and will be stunned most of the time!

Alot of people are complaining about mages because they think the Destruction school is the only school that is used in combat.
Bethesda did not put in those other schools only for decoration actually, and true mages would make use of every school and every spell available.

The first step to combat is to PREPARE for it. Mages are NOT tanks, they never will be. A mage blindly rushing into a fight using only Destruction is only just asking for trouble.

1) Cast Fire Rune in advance.

2) Summon your Atronach (If you've got a follower who can tank, thats a bonus)

3) Enter combat, let your Summon / Follower initiate battle.

4) Use spells from the Illusion school to Mesmer any loose mobs

5) Additional dps from school of destruction if necessary, priority to take down the ranged mobs.

6) Applying healing if required, and recast Summon if required.

7) Keep moving around, don't just stand in only 1 position.

The key to playing a pure mage is to soften up your opponents, crowd control if required and NEVER be on the frontline.
This is not Call of Duty, you do not rush in to pew pew pew everything yourself.

If you apply the above tactics to your battles, you will find playing a mage extremely satisfying and epic.

Yup, because anyone with a stick can beat them if they get out of line :teehee:

These spells cost way too much. I'm level 30 and still getting my butt kicked. I just got destruction to 75 and thought things would get better but its only gotten worse. I duel cast 2 or 3 times and all my mana is gone and the enemy still has over 75% in their health....

Wait until people tell you the solution to that problem is to cast more spells from the other schools thus depleting your magicka bar even faster ...

Mages are not horrible. I'm a level 40 pure mage and I'm kicking ass. I can down an elder dragon without ever getting hurt or running out of magicka.

If you're having so much trouble with a mage, either turn down the difficulty or change your playstyle. Of course mages don't have combat prowess, they're MAGES, not warriors. They're squishy and die easily in melee combat. That's just the nature of being a mage, and that's how it's always been in just about every fantasy game. Build up your magicka pool, learn lots of spells, use more than one type of magic, keep moving (don't stand still, use Conjuration to summon critters to take the heat, use Illusion spells to disrupt and confuse the enemy, use Alteration spells to protect yourself and eventually paralyze the baddies, use Restoration magic to heal yourself and protect yourself from enemy magic with the Ward spells, and lastly use destruction spells to blast the crap out of them. And always always always have plenty of magicka and health potions available.

The trick with destruction is to not always use the "most powerful" or highest level spells. I'm level 40 and have had Incinerate, Icy Spear and Thunderbolt for a while now. But I still always use the lower level versions, Firebolt, Ice Spike and Lightning Bolt. Why? Because they cost barely any magicka, and you can dual-cast them all you want and stagger enemies with the Impact perk. I almost exclusively use Lightning Bolt for everything, since I have both damage perks for lightning. I just keep dual-casting lightning bolt at an elder dragon, and it constantly staggers so it can never use its breath weapon and eventually goes down and I still have magicka to spare. But if you try to use Thunderbolt or something all the time, you'll only do a fraction of the same damage before running out of magicka. Wait to use the high level spells until several levels after you've gotten them, by that time you should have enough magicka.

BTW, you *are* putting 99.9% of all your level up points into magicka, right? If you're not, then of course you're running out of magicka. It's all about the magicka. At level 40 I have almost 600 magicka and it's enough to get me through every fight almost.

Actually I'd tell him to enchant armor to make the spells from one or two schools free.

Then I'd also mention that even being free doesn't change the fact that Destruction's damage stops scaling, entirely, while the game, health pools and other damage delivery methods continue to scale for tens of levels - long after Destruction's advancement stops. Entirely. Stops. Dead. Not moving.

Great tips!

:D

I find it funny when people's solution to a skill's abilities not scaling properly is, "Turn down the Difficulty" instead of, "This is broken and needs fixed."



I think you mean, "Use destruction spells to make enemies laugh at you." I find it hard to believe you're 40 and finding destruction useful unless you're on novice, and even then it's a stretch. The hard capped damage of destruction means the game, health pools and other forms of damage will keep scaling well beyond the point at which destruction stopped dead with no way to further improve it.



Because people enjoy constantly staggering opponents to make up for the fact that the core function of Destruction, "To Destroy, to do Damage" is lacking terribly. I now find it even less likely that you're 40 and on a decent difficulty setting, and doing decent damage to opponents, if you're using that tier of spells because even the Master Level spells do too little damage on real difficulty settings in the high levels.



Eventually being the operative word here.

Honestly, the fact that you think you need a large Magicka Pool at all tells me how little you know about being a Mage in this game. You only need enough to support your more rarely used schools, probably 500ish at the most if you've perked right. Why? Because the one or two major schools you'll be using? You can make them free.

Entirely free.

-

Abusing the fact that you can infinitely stunlock things to make up for Destruction's damage not scaling properly to content, if anything, is an argument for why Destruction is so utterly in need of major changes.

So...using a broken perk is the only way to make Destruction viable? Let's face it; every Destruction playstyle here essentially boils down to stunlock.

I play on adept (aka "normal" difficulty) and can kill most enemies with destruction spells. I use the Wall spells (especially Wall of Storms) to trap baddies while my summoned Storm Atronach keeps them in the same place. Storm Atronach doesn't get hurt by the lightning, enemies are preoccupied with the summon and stay in the field of lightning. Throw in a dual-casted lightning rune every now and then, or stagger them with a dual casted lightning bolt. In fact, I just fought a certain Dragon Priest located in a certain dungeon using only destruction spells and Restoration spells (wards to block his magic) and did not die once or run out of magicka.

Essentially, it's almost the same play style as melee warriors. Melee warrors power attack, which staggers/stun opponents, and they keep doing that until they can't. Run around a little bit till their stamina is back up, rinse and repeat. It's the same for mages, just it takes longer.

Why does it matter if it takes mages longer to kill an enemy? What, do you want to one shot everything? That's boring and stupid.

And how is it better to ABUSE the enchanting system instead of "abusing" the stunlock mechanism?

One way or another, *Every* playstyle "abuses" some game mechanic. :rolleyes:

I summon my Dremora Lord
Fullstop.

Meanwhile, your spellcasting enemies actually have an entirely separate spell system from you, the player. One that actually scales by way of ranked spells that span the course of levels instead of your Destruction spells that stop dead prior to level 30 leaving you some 40 levels of your damage never getting better, never getting better spells, never even seeing new spells, and everything around you from levels to health pools to content in general to other forms of damage continuing to scale far beyond where you stopped dead.

Why are you bringing up Conjuration? It's viable all on its own. Conjuration and other schools scale to the top tiers of the game just fine, without abuse of any system. Conjuration is an example of a school done right, of course summoning a Storm Atronach works - it's from a well balanced school that has proper scaling.



Ah yes, the "You just want to one shot things" argument in the face of all reason, especially nonsensical when what's being asked for is Destruction that's balanced and scales to content, not, "Destruction that can one shot everything."



They're both broken, I never suggested it was better. However, it makes talking about Magicka pool requirements rather insipid.

I think all these tips are great! It seems there are a lot of expert players out there that have learned to play Skyrim like a champion! I commend your talents, people!
I do have to agree with those players that magicka cost vs. damage output is horrible.
I shouldn't have to dual blast a restless draugr eight times(after using all my pots of course) just to make them go down.
And that says nothing for the three other draugr in the room all looking to eat me alive.
Somewhere in all the play through's that quality control tested for missed the fact that unless a player exploits the crafting system they are never going to
get the character they want. For those of the players that actually want to shoot an enemy a hundred times and spam mana pots, good for you!