With all the fuss about Destruction, I decided to play a character who only deals damage through destruction spells.

A few points to make to establish my playstyle:

-I don't carry a weapon of any type.

-No stealth.

-No armor or shield.

-No followers or summons.

-No using illusion spells to make the enemies fight each other.

My character is a Breton. I used the Mage stone until I found and switched to the Lord stone.

Conclusion for those who don't want to read the following very long post: Destruction as your ONLY damage source becomes less and less viable as you level. Enchanting is a must. Bring the cost down to zero and let Impact stunlock everything and feel like you're actually a powerful mage.

Meta-conclusion: Enchanting is too powerful and too useful. Destruction without it is an exercise in gulping magicka potions like a fiend.

Things were pretty easy at first. No surprise there. I made my way early-on to the college to get things started in that department. I favor the lightning spells because I like the instant hit. I'll skip to where the story gets interesting, which was around level 15.

Fights were getting harder. A lot of things died, many of them me. Quicksave was my best friend. It was starting to take my entire Magicka bar to kill things, which was fine when facing solo enemies, not fine when facing multiple enemies. Dragons were a real chore. I developed quite the addiction to health and especially magicka potions. Magicka potions, in particular, were in short supply, so I had to turn to alchemy to keep my stocks up. I'd have to leave a dungeon part-way through to go get more. That was annoying. But then I had to stop making potions, because my alchemy skillups were starting to cause me to over-level. I spent tons of my early funds buying potions, but that also makes Speechcraft go up. Basically you can't do anything without slowly and inexorably levelling up.

Around level 20, things were getting ridiculous. Impact is a nice perk, but dual-casting (even with the appropriate half cost perk) drains magicka like crazy, and things just weren't dying. Without armor, even bandits were chopping me in half, and I was having to abuse every AI pathing trick I could to make it through dungeons. It was fun for a while, but then it just got really, really tedious.

Even having put all of my level ups into magicka, the health of the monsters was outpacing my ability to damage them, and I was a 100 hp wuss. Finally, in a random outdoor fight with a couple mages, I hit a wall. I couldn't damage them fast enough and they kept healing themselves. Even with my 50% magic resistance, their spells were devastating. I kept backing away, trying to buy time for my magicka to regenerate, and if I hadn't accidentally found my horse, I would have had to run away, tail between my legs, for the first time. Watching my horse kill both of the mages was pretty humiliating.

By itself, the main problem is the massive cost of spells compared to my magicka pool. I had to either increase the size of my pool, or decrease the cost of the spells. I'd found a couple items, and I went shopping and managed to pick up a couple more, but at my level, there just wasn't that much out there to help. A ring of +10 magicka, or an amulet of 3% cost reduction, is just a small step away from being useless.

I had to turn to Enchanting. I maxed it out. The levels I gained while doing this worried me. I ventured out with earlier versions of my final gear, and things started to become noticeably easier (despite the level gains) at around -50% cost. Once I got into the -90% range, with spells like chain lightning costing less than 10 magicka, it was like the lightswitch had been flipped from off to on.

Now I could dual-cast to stagger the enemy, and keep them nicely stunlocked until they died. Everything. Dragons, dragon priests, master vampires, master necromancers, draugr deathlords, it doesn't matter. If I can get a dual-cast spell into them, it's all over except the clicking. Once I got -100% cost, I can cast forever. Not exactly a revelation there, I know.

My character is now level 41. Destruction is long-since maxed, so I've been increasing the other mage skills. I still don't carry a weapon, use armor, use summoning, the fury/frenzy illusion line, followers, or stealth. An elder dragon landed behind me and it crouched there on the ground, stunned by the impact of my dual casted spells, until it died. 20 seconds, maybe? In a certain dungeon, I fought the final room's guardians (3 draugr deathlords and a draugr wight) all at the same time, while overburdered, with no summons, no paralyze, no nothing except destruction. Then I killed the dragon priest Hevnoraak on my way out, easy as pie.

Melee and bows may do more damage. I don't care. This isn't an MMO so it really doesn't matter. Destruction's damage, considered by itself, is fine. What is out of whack is the cost of the spells and the size of your magicka pool and the very slow speed of regen in combat. Increasing the size of your magicka pool isn't a viable solution because you simply can't increase it enough to matter. Even with 500+ magicka, tough enemies would still be alive, and lightning-using mages were a nightmare.

Whether by design or by accident, Bethesda has made enchanting, or a lot of loot-luck, necessary to use Destruction as your primary, let alone sole, damage source.

Maxing enchanting and having -100% cost also brings other issues to light. With Destruction spells costing nothing, the half-cost perks are useless. A properly-planned mage would avoid taking those perks except where they are pre-requisites for other perks.

Speaking of perks: Rune Master (cast runes 5x farther away) was very useful to me earlier on, but I never cast runes any more, at all. I was surprised there are no stronger rune versions in the game. Impact isn't very useful until you can chain-cast dual spells, and then it's overpowered. Intense Flame, Deep Freeze, and Disintegrate all seem useless. Who cares what low-health enemies are doing? Just blast them one more time and they're dead anyway. Augmented Flames/Frost/Shock are the best perks, other than Impact. +50% damage is nice, and one of the few ways to boost spell damage.

So my Destruction-only mage lives on, and is thriving, and frankly, I'm not sure there's anything left in the game that will challenge her. But without Enchanting, it would be a very different story.

I'm not sure where you're at now, but in the Restoration department there's a perk that regenerates "magicka 50% faster". Wielding a resto spell isn't necessary for the perk to work, but obviously you must level that up. I'm basically a Light Armored Paladin: wielding a sword in the right hand and "Fast Healing" on the left hand

Magicka Regeneration is pointless. I spent ages trying to get it as high as possible and then I realized that it doesn't work during battle only after or before... You can just use enchantments to remove the cost of say Destruction spells by 25%. That way 4 enchantments = 0 Destruction Magicka cost.

Hevnoraak gave me a really good fight, I remember that. His mask is now on display as a mark of respect - my Orc values a good fight and respects a tough opponent, no matter HOW evil. :thumbsup:

dont know what they were thinking when they did what they did to magika regeneration i also dont know nwhat they were thinking with the damn altmer being the only ones to get a magicka boost :intergalactic:

I went on a similar path, playing as a Destruction only mage specializing in Fire spells, meaning unless something that was immune to Fire spells or some elemental spell puzzle crossed my path, I only used Fire spells. Being my first character and playing at launch, I was completely ignorant to the eventual cap on my Destruction spell magic damage. So I threw points into the rank perks and Fire spell perks, with Dual Cast and Impact, even Rune Mastery, thinking that the spell damage would scale up. And even though I put points into Magicka and rank perks, the mana cost for the spells still drained my mana badly.

The end boss in Labyrinthian was the first time I caught on to something amiss. It took me 10 tries to switch from my Fire spells, which had everything perked except Augmented Flames Rank 2, to some two-hander I had in my inventory to finally beat him. I could stun lock him with little damage done with Firebolts, but my mana would drain very easily, and he'd literally two shot me. I had a Flame Atronach out that did nothing for damage either. The 2Hander's power attacks kept him stagger-stunned long enough to eventually kill him. He was probably the only and biggest obstacle I had faced since then until level 35+, but it wasn't very satisfying killing him with a melee weapon.

Things went along pretty well, although, unlike the OP, I had gotten a Follower, and after getting the Mastery Perk and AF Rank 2, I went to master Conjuration for two Permanent Flame Atronachs. Now, at level 40, I had gotten about 80-85% Destruction Mana Reduction, with the addition of a mod that tweaked my Destruction Tree a bit, and then I created gear for my follower for about 100% Fire Reduction. I can get one-shotted still, but using my Fire Spells with impunity on my targets is a welcome change than the early levels, even if I must stun them to Oblivion.

My only wish was that I could stay on the path I've chosen, Destruction only, but still successfully fight enemies myself without having to use this boring tactic of hiding behind followers and summons, Dual Casting Incinerate til they die.

Yeah you pretty much have to exploit enchanting on Master, no other skill requires such cheese.

And even then its mindnumbingly boring. 2 spells, spam for minutes. No glyphs , cloacks, sprays - they get phased out big time. Master ones svck.


Creation Kit, come and save us.

Couldn't have said it better. Having -100% cost and impact completely trivializes things and removes any form of difficulty or fun from the game. There's no split-second decision making for whether or not you should swap to firebolt to kill that basic draugr to conserve magicka for the scourge deathlord that's also in the room. There's no need to worry about whether you brought enough potions for emergencies, because there will be none when you have effectively unlimited magicka and enemies are permastunned by your free DCed spells.

It's the same concept as playing with 100% chameleon back in Oblivion. It trivialized the game. Sure, keep the option for players to use -100% cast cost if they want, because this game is about choices, but don't make it so that the only viable solution to fix being horrifically underpowered is to become horrifically overpowered.

The reason why players want destruction's damage increased rather than making spells more efficient is two fold:

1) If spells were low cost, it removes the challenge of managing your magicka during a fight, and only serves to perpetuate the "impact chainstun godmode"

2) It's just FUN to blow [censored] up with big ass fireballs, but the fun of that gets dampered a bit when those fireballs feel more like spitballs.

Being a glass cannon isn't fun when you're really more of a glass machine gun that shoots beanbags.

Agreed. Having "reduce spell cost to zero" as the only viable route isn't fun. Casting unlimited low damage spells is less fun than casting a few really powerful spells, in my opinion. The "Fortify Destruction" enchant just reduces spell cost. The game has only a few ways to increase the actual spell damage, and it never gets very high.

You can use blacksmithing to craft up some crazy-powerful weapons, but you can't do that with spells.

My friend is a Destruction Mage and it's working like a charm for him. He's lvl 45 now, but even before he got to that lvl, he was still able to end battles with destruction.

If you guys have such great destruction mages you claim to have, then you should have Fire/Frost Storm, Lightning zaps that disinegrate enemies, etc. and be utterly demolishing your enemies without a problem and without fear of dying. My friend has had no complaints about his Destro Mage and in fact brags about how effective he is.