So on master, you shot an enemy as part of a group, they came charging; what did you do?


Because a Mage just tosses mayhem/fury/frenzy and has popcorn. Calm last man standing and roast him, or have a minion [censored]slap it up and down.


You could play a Mage naked and kick [censored].


@Hoki: you'd be surprised/shocked how many bosses calm and it's bedfellows work on.

I am playing a Conjuration/Destruction/Alteration Mage on Expert, with a Conjuration/Destruction/Alteration follower (warrior is not necessarily a mage's best follower option). I stroll through the game destroying everything and sustaining barely even a scratch. When I reach high levels I will have 2 atronachs and hopefully so will my follower. Destruction magic may be weak at high levels, but with 6 individuals casting on my side I suspect I may be ok.

I didn't realise Illusion was any good until I found out that dual casting illusion spells with the perk doubles the level cap that the spell will work on. I don't believe that is mentioned in the game so a lot of people may assume (as I did) that Illusion was underpowered.

I don't care how many trees I use, they aren't making destro good. They're filling in the huge gap that destro leaves behind. Keeping destro broken because other trees do fine is not a viable solution.

If I want to do damage as a mage, I have two options: conjuration and destruction. Conjuration is fine, destruction is not. Therefore, fixing is necessary.

It's very simple logic.

The continued argument in this topic is what is ridiculous. It's very simple to prove; take a 'mage' (I wish people would stop using that word when they actually mean any character making the unfortunate choice to use destruction as their offensive skill!), make it as powerful as game mechanics (yes, even broken ones) will allow. Tell me what damage you can do.
Take the same character, replace destruction with archery (or melee, I only use archery for anyone who wants to try "melee should do more damage, it has no range") and make it as powerful as game mechanics will allow. Tell me what damage you do.

The archery character better? Well of course, current mechanics include broken smithing and the enchant/alch loop. Fair enough, remove the loop. Make each of these offensive skills as powerful as possible without using any skill enhancing potions/enchantments. Tell me which does more damage. I'm betting it's still the one using archery. By a very, very long way.

As I've said before: destruction cannot benefit at all from smithing, cannot raise it's damage through enchanting, cannot apply poisons to it's weapons, cannot raise it's critical chance, has half the perk bonus to damage that physical weapons do and receives 0 bonus to damage from increased skill. That seems like a lot of impairments.

To those who continue to insist "Don't only use destruction": I'm not suggesting that you should ever only use destruction but that, as one of the 5 offensive skills (I count 1h, 2h, archery, destruction and conjuration as offensive), it should be as effective as any of the others. A character using archery, heavy armor, illusion, speech and alchemy (for example) should be just as effective if they were to replace archery with destruction; they are not. Skills should offer a variety of ways to be equally effective; they do not. How anyone can argue that they do is beyond me.


EDIT: There are clearly two different arguments going on here and I want no part of the "mages are broken" one. There is no such thing as a mage in Skyrim, classes were removed. Throwing the term "mage" around just begs for people to come and say "use your other spells!". To me that's the same as if dual wield did useless damage and being told "use stealth!". The tree is pathetic. Yes, using other trees fixes the problem for anyone who wants to use magic, but not for anyone who wants to use destruction!

I am focusing on Destruction in this thread... I will add that to the OP...

Do you want me to quote what i said before? Nevermind ill do it anyways..
I was a bit angry when i wrote this so it may come out offensive but that doesn't mean anything
Just read it..

here it is.. ''But for crying out loud! If you become a more powerful mage it just makes sense that you make more damage! Just because you're lvl 50 shouldnt mean you have to use the master spells! They [censored] svck so why use them when you can use the others? Oh right! They svck too, because they don't level with you!
The spells work differently too, what if i want to use a spell that shoots fire continuosly and does heaps of damage(the flamethrower spell)? Oh right i can't! Because that spell was made for me when i was a noob! Now i can't use it anymore because it doesn't do enough damage! I shouldn't be bound to certain spells just because i get more destruction skillpoints!''

That's why they're bad and unbalanced and outright boring...
I also ''focus'' on the lack of spells.. the only thingi'll say is Oblivion had 2000 good spells that worked, Skyrim has 92 spells and the destruction(and maybe some other school too) part of it is very bad...
That should speak for itself!

Try illusion.


A warrior with an iron dagger is a puuuusay too.

Diversify.

I just recently at level 56 took on the guards at the Northwatch keep/hold yesterday and I only killed one of them.

Frenzy everything in sight, the ones that chase you, pacify, eventually something will attack them. They are ripping each other a new strip while you muffle and invisibility up and /popcorn.

Alternatively you could simply pacify everyone, paralyze and kill them all 1 by 1. Keep in mind that when everything attacking you is pacified, you regen mana at out-of-combat speeds, so this is actually pretty stupid easy and you don't even need enchantments to play this way.

Way to not read my post at all. Illusion being overpowered is not an excuse for destruction to be broken. Also, you essentially just admitted destruction is about as powerful as a warrior with an iron dagger. Meaning it is broken.

So mages ARE overpowered? Thanks for proving my first post in thread.

:)



I don't see sneakers crying pickpocket is lacklustre, this isnt Warcraft. Stop trying to melt faces.



Maybe I'm just used to pre-wow mages where they weren't pure nukers.

I stopped reading there... What the hell should mages use as an offensive skill if not destruction? Should we just leave it there? Then why the hell would bethesda even put in in the game?!
You can't depend on solely on conjuration as an offensive mage skill, idiot!

I will give you that. I've long since gave up on destruction. And although illusion svcks... ( I don't like the fear/calm spells) Invisibility is the [censored]. Therefore illusion is the [censored], even if it svcks. One of these days I'll play around with hysteria... that actually could prove quite fun if it works. And conjuration. Love that. Half the time I don't even have to "attack" anything.

I thought you said the word mages meant you use all schools. You just said that illusion, a single school, being overpowered is equal to mages being overpowered. Fail logic.

Let me clarify: if destruction being underpowered does not mean that all mages are underpowered, neither does illusion being overpowered mean all mages are overpowered. See that?

He said that you can't say illusion is overpowered as an excuse for destruction being lame...

Illusion isn't even overpowered!

P.S The Visitor is my new favourite guy on these forums!

Quit yer whining and try more full on Conjuration!

you are welcome

I love how this poll is split straight down the middle (disregarding those who opted out). That seems to reflect community opinions as a whole — we're completely divided on the issue. Naturally, people who think mages are fine believe those who disagree with them are just whining and need to learn to play, while those who think mages need work believe those who disagree with them haven't actually played a high-level mage and/or are trolling or bragging.

For my part, I think Destruction needs a lot of work, and I also think the change from Spell Making to preset spells has had some serious birthing pains... the shoehorning of Mysticism into other schools, far less variety in each remaining spell school, Illusion being useless and bouncing off everything unless you take almost every perk as you level, hybrid magic characters being a hard sell in general since it seems you have to totally buy into a school for it to not svck (except Conjuration perhaps, for bound weapons), and so on.

Doesn't bother me, mods will fix it. Well, some of it, anyway. If no one else does it, I'll write a mod myself.

Destruction being lame is NOT the thread topic.

A Mage with conj and illusion will match anything, anything. Only thing that will get close is a sneak build.

Tell me something that with two trees, barring sneaking, can match this.

Sneaking breaks about even but is less forgiving error.

Actually illusion is pretty overpowered. By itself, it is more powerful than even the most overpowered skill tree combinations in the game. And with them it is the ultimate force multiplier.

[censored] it! There are console players too!
Mods will fix it for you yes, but the game will still be ruined for atleast 50% of the community!

Can you kill a dragon with illusion? O-O

Sorry but Oblivion did not have 2000 good spells that worked. It had many completely useless spells, and items, and skills. Oblivion had scrolls that would absorb your enemy's speechcraft skill by 5 points for 15 seconds.

You should be able to use fear on dragons, I get tired of fighting them mf's sometimes... I dont have invis yet on this file.... so obviously if dragons could be feared I wouldn't be doing it. WTH is the high level "fear" even called.

Hysteria, isn't it? From memory, on me phone


Edit noticed MASSIVE typo in my last post. Damned beer. Fixed now

Well, maybe all of them wasn't good but atleast they worked and wasn't overpowered... And if you didn't like them you didn'tneed to use them!

A mage build which includes destruction will be inferior to the exact same build with a weapon skill used instead of destruction. Even without enchant/alchemy/smithing feedback loops.

Take a warrior build, say onehanded and heavy and block, and then swap out onehanded and take destruction instesd, and he will be much weaker.

Meanwhile, warriors dont have to take two-handed weapons for their one handed weapons to be good. Nor does a thief have to take heavy armor to make his light armor not svck.

Hi everyone! I've been reading a lot of the complaints about magical combat (especially destruction!) and made a mod to address the issue. Here's the short description: All destruction spells now scale, magicka in-combat regen and spellcost reduction with proficiency in the relevant school of magic have been adjusted, protection spells have been adjusted, dual casting has been made beneficial (now amplifies damage more than cost.)

This mod should NOT make you super overpowered. (You can read more about the specific damage numbers in the comments SkyrimNexus), but it should make playing as a mage a viable choice.

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2275