Does it work if made with a single potion? Using ctrl+f and the elder scrolls wiki, I found out that there are ingredients with weakness to poison+weakness to fire(bleeding crown), weakness to poison+frost(abacean longfin) and weakness to poison+shock(giant lichen). Does the weakness to poison enchance the other weakness? Cause if it does, I could make a very strong destruction build using a bow to apply these poisons, while using fortify destruction potions myself.

I'm not sure if one enhances the other in the same potion, but even if it doesn't you'd still have a powerful poison there. My guess would be it works like this:

You have a poison that does Weakness to Magic 50% and Weakness to Fire 50%. You apply the poison to an arrow and shoot it at an enemy. That foe would now be 50% weak to magic and 50% weak to fire.

You cast a Fireball, which normally deals 40 damage. Your fireball now deals 2 extra instances of that 50%. 50% of 40 is 20, so your Fireball now deals 40 + 20 + 20 = 80.

This is basically a worst case scenario. If the poison effects apply to each other in the same poison, you'd have a Fireball that deals 40 + 20 = 60, then 60 + 30 = 90.

I think, anyway. Regardless, these numbers would be further affected by your perks, Ahzidal's mask, your Fortify Destruction potions, and, in the case of some fire spells, the 'afterburn' effect (which can lead to some crazy damage). If you're fighting Draugr, vampires, or Dragon Priests and take Necromage, that would factor in, too. If you use *all* of those features, you may find it becomes overkill on Adept difficulty.

I've never tried a poisoner Destro mage myself. I've used every trick *except* the Weakness poison route - mostly because it seems a bit cumbersome to pull off. Speed is the main issue, so choose the fastest bow possible, which I believe is the Longbow. As you level Archery, you may want to put perks toward Quick Draw.

I know about weakness to magic+weakness to fire/frost/shock. I want to know about weakness to poison+weakness to anything else though.

Thanks for the reply nonetheless, long bow, ahzidal's mask and necromage is what I'm aiming for to get the most out of destruction.

Some info on http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Weakness_to_Poison mechanics. If that is how it works then you'd want to put a WtoP on your arrow, hit the target and then reapply a different poison like WtoMagic/Fire or Weak to Fire/Frost combo. The combinations you can make can be seen using http://skyrim.melian.cc/?cmd=cmdSkyrimAlchemyWizard nifty alchemist's website. Hope that helps. Cheers! Bram

Did a quick check on the alchemist's website and there does not appear to be a potion that has WtoMagic and another weakness.

Weakness to poison and damage health don't seem to work, but I want to know about weakness to magic/fire/frost/shock.

Wow, reading fail on my part. Sorry!

Anyway, as it seems like you'll need to hit twice with your arrow to get the full effect, you may want to consider the Slow Time shout to make that more likely - especially if you're facing melee types who just want to hit your face.

Alternatively, see if you can get any slow/paralysis effects in tandem with your Weakness to Poison poison; that'll help you get more time.

All 3 words of Slow Time (augmented by the Stability perk in Alteration if you feel it's necessary), plus a Quick Drawn longbow (or maybe Zephyr if you want to deal more damage - not sure which is faster), plus a suite of poisons (created with Fortify Alchemy enchantments), plus the Augment Fire/Frost/Shock perks, plus Ahzidal's Mask, plus Fortify Destruction potions would be *extremely* cool to pull off. You'd need something like this for a perk setup:

Destruction: Novice-Master, Dualcasting, Augmented Flames (2/2), Augmented Frost (2/2), Augmented Shock (2/2), Intense Flames, Deep Freeze, Disintegrate

Archery: Overdraw (1/5), Eagle Eye, Steady Hand (1/2), Power Shot, Quick Shot, Critical Shot, Hunter's Discipline, Ranger

Alteration: Novice-Expert, Stability, Resist Magic (3/3)

Alchemy: Alchemist (5/5), Physician, Benefactor, Poisoner, Concentrated Poison (this is of questionable use... I guess you'd save it for when facing multiple opponents, since it would be wasted against single-foe fights)

Enchanting: Enchanter (5/5), Corpus Enchanter, Insightful Enchanter

The Destro perks assume you're not specializing in any element, and also assume you're working toward the Master spells. Impact isn't needed, thanks to Slow Time and other CC effects (poisons of slow/paralysis and Power Shot).

Only 1 perk in Overdraw, since we're not trying to kill stuff with the arrows. The right side of the tree might not be strictly necessary, but Ranger is a fun addition, and allows you to keep distance in order to make that second shot.

It might be considered overkill to perk out Alteration just for Stability, but on the other hand Magic Resist is a great passive effect. I don't think it's necessary to grab Mass Paralysis, but you could argue that, since you're grabbing Stability anyway, it's not too far out of your way.... You might also want to pick up the Mage Armor perks, if you're feeling squishy.

I'm still debating Concentrated Poison... on one hand, it would have great utility against masses of foes, allowing you to apply poisons twice as fast. On the other hand, it'll hinder you in 1-vs-1 fights, since you'll *have* to shoot 3 times in order to apply both poisons (2 shots will be Weakness to Poison, and your 3rd would be Weakness to X). I guess for those single fights you could just live with a single poison effect?

Enchanting might not be necessary, really; it's just to amp up your potions/poisons. I guess it depends on difficulty and how OP you want to be.

You could also work on Sneak as an alternative way to get poisons in before a fight begins. Problem there is, why not just become a sneak archer?

Thanks for the help, this is gonna be good. Didn't know stability affected shouts.

Considering I have all crafting skills maxed with relevant perks, and thanks to the waking dreams black book I can completely overhaul my build. I've already changed from a melee warrior to a sneak archer till I was able to one-shot Giants, then back to warrior. This is probably gonna take longer, but I'll tell you if I can one-shot giants with destruction. According to the wiki froki's bow is the fastest shooting bow in vanilla skyrim, and I don't have dawnguard.

Well, Zephyr (via Dawnguard) is fast, but IIRC its speed is relative to other Dwarven bows; in other words, I'm pretty sure a longbow is faster.

I hadn't heard about Froki's bow, though. Will need to check that out.

As for one-shotting stuff with Destruction, it's definitely doable. Proper application of Firestorm can one-shot Dragon Priests, according to some interesting articles on the Skyrim Blog (look up "An Argument for Firestorm" by James). My own experience with it bears that out (you could also check out my Character Build: The Evoker, also on the Skyrim Blog). However, results may vary with difficulty level (I play on Adept), and also with character level (enemies become damage sponges).

I'm really considering tweaking an arcane archer build based on this idea. It always bugged me that the only way to apply Weakness effects in Skyrim was via poison, but a hybrid character who embraces that idea might be a lot of fun.

I'm not gonna take any archery perks, and I use froki's bow because it's weak. No archery/magic hybrid, just magic.

Edit: >2.5k damage fire storm? Wow! Weakness to poison+weakness to fire will make that a lot stronger though

Good, that leaves it for me!

I checked the UESP, and it seems Froki's bow is pretty much just a longbow with a Damage Stamina enchant. Damage Stamina is a pretty useless enchantment as far as I can tell, but still a plain longbow would arguably be weaker (and just as fast).

Dang, you're right, long bow is just as fast. I'll switch to that then, cause I want to keep unique items in storage/on display.

As for my progress, I used cuirass and necklace for fortify destruction(so it isn't zero cost, but very cheap) and ring, boots and bracers for fortify carry weight, to make the game more convenient instead of more easy.

I only have fireball, and I forgot to make weakness to magic potions, but fortify destruction alone is often good enough, as it boosts damage by 198%. I only use weakness to poison/fire on strong enemies(so far I only did it on a dragon) and they go down ridiculously fast. Still gonna have to get a proper expert/master fire spell.

The build is very promising but I can see why no one else does this: it relies on really high crafting skills(in my case, maxed with all relevant perks) and it relies on potions, which need to be carried around, can run out, and occupy plenty of carry weight. Fortify carry weight apparel and a hearthfire garden fixes that partially.

Yeah, I've never liked potion/poison management - far too menu intensive.

Did you go for maxxed Enchanting to create Fortify Alchemy gear for those poisons/potions? I wonder if Enchanting is really needed.

The advantage of such a build is probably the lower reliance on Magicka (always a concern for Destro mages), since you're making your spells more effective via potions & poisons. Given that, you may not need much in the way of Destro cost reduction gear, which further argues against delving deeply in Enchant.