Yes, another poll, sorry. But looking at the perks for destruction it seems to behove mages to, at least initially, pick an elemental damage to stick with. Of course it's situational, but we all have out personal preferences.

In Oblivion I preferred Frost damage, liked how it dropped enemies there and then and how cheap it was to cast. Of course, bad idea against Undead, but for 'generic' enemies a powerful Frost spell could ruin someone's day.

The relevant perks:

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Destruction

The new effects of elemental magic - take note, as it's been reworked since Oblivion, particularly costs.
Shock damage is cheapest in magicka cost, but is weaker. However, bolts can jump to enemies, drains magicka and does bonus damage against Undead.

Fire damage is most expensive, but causes continuous damage and can set the environment on fire. Dragons however are resistant to it.

Frost damage is in the middle in terms of magicka cost, but slows down enemies and drains fatigue. However, since we're in Skyrim I'm imagining many enemies will be resistant to it.

I tend to prefer ice spells. Though, I suppose in Skyrim a lot of monsters will have Frost resistances

Not a mage, per se, but she prefers lightning.

Use elemental magic? Nah, I like pure damage spells like wither in Oblivion (hopefully Skyrim will have them)

Also when it comes to magic, I love draining life force away and recharging my own. As well as shields, and draining attributes. I rarely use elemental magic and I'm mostly a mage.

Take 'mage' to simply mean 'destruction user' - battlemages, spellswords or any hybrid user. It would just be clumsy to put in the title, I thought.

Kind of figure like this to. Fire against anything you want dead fast, frost against any warrior type creature, shock against spell casters.

I want to say Frost and Shock, so I picked other. If it's possible to skip fire I will; 1) It doesn't have any special effect, 2) It is too destructive for me to RP. Frost will be good for enemy warriors and Shock will be good for enemy mages. Fire is just really powerful, which is cool, but I'm already worried that Conjuration+Destruction is overkill =p Also, Fire would start fires.. That's not cool man, don't burn everything down.. Haha, Shock should hit the ground and disappear but w/e =p I can't wait to bounce it like Todd did in the demo. =]

Why must I choose only one? I'll be using fire in my right hand and frost in the left.

For stylistic reasons, shock is my favourite. I will be taking many of the perks in all three, but not all of the perks.

I do find it odd that shock would do less damage than frost. It is also odd that shock does not paralyze, since realistically lightning can sometimes produce results not unlike those of a stroke, if it doesn't kill the victim outright.

U forgot to add that

FROST--- lowest health damage--- also drains stamina (also slows down enemies)

LIGHTNING--- medium health damage--- also drains magicka

FLAME--- Highest health damage


I havent voted yet... i like lightning + fire the best though i think

I'm upset with the lack of magicka and poison based damage.

Other I'll spread my perks out among the 3. I don't like the idea of focusing on one of them, once you do that it becomes your hammer and everything looks like a nail. It sort of defeats the purpose of them having different effects IMO. If your fire is doing 2 and a half times more damage than your frost/shock spells no matter how cool the side effect you just wont bother to go for the other spells because dead that much quicker is just more effective.

i prefer damage health, but thats gone now... :sadvaultboy:

other than that i prefer lightning just for the thematic appeal of lightning. maybe i'll recolour the shock effect to be red and pretend its damage health :shocking: .

Quite; Frost has always been my favorite, too.

Lightning does damage to your magic now.

I'll be using Lightning spells. Alduin will pay the price for his lack of vision...

Not sure yet, but I'll likely focus on either fire or lightning. Fire sounds like it gets good damage and is easy to hit lots of enemies with. Lightning as it usually gets the highest projectile speed. But I'd really want to see a lot more of them in-game to get a feel for them... much of determining which element is subtle and possibly unrelated to game mechanics - things like which element blocks your view least while using it, allowing you to retain your tactical awareness while blasting away.

And even when I pick an element to specialize in, I'm not sure I'll actually be buying element-specific perks.

I'll take perks of the three of 'em. Guess it depends on their weakness, or if it's a mage or fast.

I'm gonna take all of the shock perks. Lightning is my favorite element.

Frost, my favorite element to use in games, is well water/ice. So of course it will be natural for me to prefer frost