I don't get why people say destruction is UP because it has less damage, do they forget you can just stagger people.dragons and pretty much EVERYTHING to the point they can't hit you?

Add that with atronachs, dual casting ice spells to not only stagger, but SLOW them down and drain their fatigue.

Also dragon shouts are considered magic, or so I assume given I absorb a Druag's fus do rah.

I have not hit above level 30 yet, but I'm around the 20s. And I bet even after 30s I'll think destruction is okay.

even if its not after the 30s I'm sure they'll address it in DLC or something.

For the love of god, IT IS BROKEN AT HIGHER LEVELS.

Oh then for the love of your god more of a challenge for me.

Is it only broken for the player character? Because I'm level 45 now, and the only thing that consistently kills me are mages with fireballs out of [censored] no where.

Not sure, I have no problems at all so far.

You haven't even broken 30 and you're trying to insinuate that Destruction, the direct damage school, is not lacking in damage?

Sorry, but I don't see this thread going anywhere good.

Because for some reason, NPC magic level scales, while yours doesn't.

And magicka runs out too quickly. One chain lightning and I'm out of magicka. I have 600 magicka.

I agree with that one guy. I'm a level 31 and one of the only things I'm scared of are mages.

At level 56 playing on master and all my kills come from using destruction. I don't bother with summons (even though I have 100 skill) because they die too fast. I see no problem with the effectiveness of destruction. It just seems that some people want an easy button while playing on master. They are upset because you have to use strategy with movement, damage avoidance, equipping yourself and making use of other skill trees.

I feel your pain. I just hit 50 and the only reason I'm keeping the difficulty at Adept is because of mages with ice spells, who slow me down to a crawl and do ridiculous amounts of damage next to melee users.

How does being able to stagger things so much they can't hit you make it fine?

Bad damage + overpowered mechanic = fine?

Does the magicka cost increase as you level the skill? My destruction is 25, I have 200 magicka, and I can cast that [censored] 3 times before I am OOM.

I do all of that too, and get by just fine. "Fine," of course, being relative. It just svcks to have to do all that and still put out piss poor damage compared to the melee character who takes no skill and dishes out more damage than I do. At least reward good mages for their skill by giving them good damage. I don't want an easy button or anything like that, and to imply that everyone who wants a destruction buff does is just asinine. If the devs won't buff destro damage, then nerf melee/archery damage. That way they can require skill too.

When you get to level 50 your only option is abusing the stagger through enchanting to remove the magicka cost of your spells. This tactic is time consuming and it ends up feeling cheap and repetitive. It will take around 15 expert level spells to kill a draugr overlord, and there will be occassions when there are 6+ overlords on your screen at one time, as well as other more powerful creatures which I wont spoil for you, but I will say you'll need to crank out over 100 spell casts in that situation on master difficulty, which is just ridiculous considering a few whacks from a decent 1 hander whilst they're under the effects of an Unrelenting Force shout would do it in a fraction of the time.

Destruction doesn't scale well at higher levels, which is to say destruction doesn't actually scale at all and whilst the opponents you face continue to gain in health and damage output you'll find yourself somewhat lacking in the latter as a pure caster.

When I first heard about the Magicka system I was under the impression that due to the removal of spell crafting and the reduction in the overall number of spells that each individual spell would scale in power according to skill level of the school of magick it falls under. I figured the flames spell you start out with would remain viable for close range combat indefinatly whilst other ways to utilize the element of fire became available at higher levels in the destruction skill. Since this clearly isn't the case I'm kind of confused as to what exactly Bethesda were thinking.

Some people have confirmed that problem starts to appear around level 30s, 40-50 for most others (whose playstyle is strictly limited because of this). Before that, Destruction scales just fine.

The problem is that Destruction magic requires a lot of magicka, and you're guaranteed to run out of magicka after every few spells, unless you exploit enchanting and/or alchemy. And even then enemies still have some HP left.

At which point it's not even about Destruction not dealing enough damage anymore: you actually have to exploit an entirely different skill tree for Destruction to even function properly

Destruction is boss

Cheers

To the OP: of course a generalist mage build is fine, or any destruction + conjuration build. That was never the complaint. The problem is that Destruction doesnt compare to other damage approaches. So, a character built with Heavy Armor, Block, and Destruction will be a lot weaker than a character who is Heavy, Block, and One-Handed. Or a Light Armor + Destruction will be much weaker than Light Armor + Archery; or Light + Two-Handed. Similarly, a well balanced mage (Destruction, Conjuration, Alteration, Illusion, Restoration) will be a lot weaker than you would be if you went with the exact same build, but switched out a weapon skill for Destruction. Using Archery, One-Handed, or Two-Handed in a build which is otherwise a generalist mage without destruction will be much better.

When people tell warriors that "of course you cant expect to be good as a warrior if you didnt take both two-handed and one-handed and both light armor and heavy armor, duh!" ... and until the day its also true ..... then it will continue to be nonsense to tell people who complain about destruction to take 4 or 5 other mage things to balance it.

The elder scrolls series has long had a tradition of heavy armor characters whose main attack is destruction; not to mention many other cool hybrids. But since destruction is a bit weak in this one, your warlock/battlemage builds suffer. Sure, you want to play a generic warrior or a generic generalist mage, fine. If you dont, well, tough it out I guess. I did.

wah wah i try to play the game using ony 1 skill. Try using only daggers but not using sneak or alchemy potions to + dmg ect.

Try playing with only Speech. :hubbahubba: