Yeah flames svck at higher levels but that dosnt mean destro svck.
Dosnt your stock iron sword svck at higher level compared to your legendary deadric sword, does that mean meele svcks ? NO

Actually iron sword can be upgraded to do 300+ damage.

Hoki, where do you get 470 magicka when you just leveled destruction to 100, and didn't touch another skill? Even if you chose a high elf to ensure you had 150 magicka at the start of the game, I don't think you are going to be gaining 32 levels from JUST leveling to 100 destruction and nothing else. Do you consider using enchanted gear that you found, but didn't make as using another skill? If not, then if you did the same with archery (using random enchanted pieces with just archery) you might actually pull more damage off that way. Using the robes of the archmage, and a few other quest rewards from the college might give you another 100 magicka, but no where near 470. PLUS, that means you can't have any + health enchants, as the gear you find only comes with 1 enchant.

DMed and played D&D for 16+ years
Was top class, raiding magician in Everquest for 6 or so years
Hey I'm even mentioned in Baldur's Gate 2 (Crom Faeyr...yes, that's literally me, "Silverblade")
And lots of other games.
So, I have fair hankering about what mages can/should do.
and you know what? "Wizards" ain't just about raw damage, that is strictly for the 1st-person-shooter-wanna-be's!
Wizards are about control, they are about "tea-bagging" entire ROOMS full of bad guys at once, and sometimes, making them LIKE IT! muhaha! :flamethrower:

now, there is a genuine point about Destruction not scaling correctly since unlike the rest "Ways to damage" (weapons), as spells damage and is tied ONLY to the spell and maybe a potion effect, and there are far too few spells, too few iterations of damage expression where as here's a vasy amount of iterations for weapons, both in basic type of material and also improving it with smithing it.

I can take a bow in game that hits for 16 and make it hit for 26 with smithing, but no such things exists for spells
Enchantment is also borked because it has no +spell type damag ebut also, mana rgeen bonuse son robes crafted by players are the SAME as ones you cna put on armour, ie, mana regen is same in heavy armour as in robes
yet, NPC sold/dropped robes have much higher mana regen maximums.

And melee/ranged get perks to increase damage exactly like spells can so there's difference there, so again, advantage = weapons

Beyond that though, if you ain't using Frenzy, Paralyze etc....um, the low IQ classes use clubs, go pick a new profession!

Now, for me, what bugs me is that Mass Paralyze hits ALLIES as well making it damn near useless, sigh.

archmage robes +50, +15% less mana to all schools, +100% regen magica
racial +50 magica and highborn
base +100
stone +50, 50% absorb magica

thats 200 just from that 200 from 20 lvl (just a quick guess, dunno how much 100 in destro alone would lvl a char) and you can have 3 gear slots with magica,less mana or both. You can use helms with non-caped robes, and masks and circlets with capped robes.



True after exploiting everything that can be exploited and getting 3 scrafting trees. Still an exploited iron sword (flames) will be [censored] compared to the exploited legendary deadric sword (incinerate)

Elder Scrolls isn't DnD. Control spells do not work on dragons, only raw damage spells do. This isn't an MMO where you need a party to clear out a dungeon. Furthermore, your illusuion (control spells) don't work on something like a third of the enemies in the game until you max it out (can't effect undead, daedra, or machines till 100 illusion). Once they do work however, they are extremely powerful and your argument then holds a good deal of weight.

DieBySword: You aren't going to reach level 20 just leveling destruction. Maybe 12-14, but defiantly not 20. So I'll be generous with saying that you have in the best case scenario, 340 magicka. This actually is a pretty healthy amount and works wonders until you run into a dragon priest who eats thunderbolts like a fat kid eats cookies. But then, what if you want to be something other than a high elf?

I agree that destro doesn't svck at high levels. As I said earlier in this post, my lvl 48 mage is pretty much an invincible death machine. That doesn't mean that there aren't areas that need improvement, like higher level versions of some spells. If for no other reason than spamming fireball gets boring. In melee you have sword, axe, and mace. For magic you have, spray, bolt, and glyph. While there are many tiers of swords, axes, and maces, there is only 1 tier of sprays, bolts, and glyphs. There should be novice, apprentice, adept, and expert versions of flames, just like there are iron, dwarven, orcish, ebony, and daedric swords.

100 Skill is ~ 40% damage. You get an additional 100% from perks. Here is a quick break down of some damage numbers from this thread: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1289727-2419-armor-6399-damage-using-smithing-alchemy-enchanting-only-33-perks-329k-backstabs-post-4/





Destruction has 60 damage thunderbolt which gets +50% damage and then dual cast. Which gives it 198 damage. Notice that 198 is higher than anything weapons can do? This is the reason destruction doesn't "scale" as you level the scale... because it's doesn't need it. The only thing that pushes melee/archery out of whack is alchemy. Even using enchanting and smithing you do LESS damage as a warrior than you do as a Mage using the same.

But when you factor in how fast you can swing a sword + power attacks, vs dual casting a spell, simply saying, "you do 126 damage", while technically correct, is being dishonest. You are doing 126 damage something like 4 times in the span it takes you to dual cast one spell. Add in power attacks and that number is even higher. Furthermore, when using archery, you have to take into consideration how much damage the arrow does in addition to the bow. I'm not sure if you counted that one as well.

get full enchanting
put the 'reduce destruction magic cost by 25%' on 4 items that you wear
and then destruction cost nothing
use the expert level spells

You can cast about as fast as you swing a 1h sword once you have the timing down.

Power attacks will produce more damage for sure however at the same time destruction has something else to compensate: Impact. It will stagger your enemy any time you dual cast a spell at it. Any enemy. So while your chain casting thunderbolts your enemy can literally do nothing.

Let's go further away from that.

As soon as you exit the starting dungeon, head into town and level enchanting to 100 without participating in any fights. Put all level up bonuses into health cause you'll get to 100 enchant before you need to cast one spell. Once that is done, you didn't waste a single level up bonus into magicka and got the "-100% spell cost" set ready. You can now start leveling your destruction spells and save all your perks not putting them into the wasted "-50% spell cost" ones.

You forgot to include the ~+200% damage you can get from enchanting your armor for archery/one hand/two hand. Suddenly that bow is doing over 400 damage a shot. Of course this is seriously OP IMO.

Though I do agree that spells do not need to scale with skill level. Though there should be higher level versions of some of the low level ones.

Quick question. Do you consider stun locking enemies to death cheap? I mean, there is no challenge in fighting an enemy who just stands there.

Anyways you can't really chain dual casts unless you have the 'enchanted gear of free magicka' and that brings up a whole other problem of why do mages get to ignore their magicka bar once they max enchanting. Although, I would like to know whether it was intended that mages can get 0 cost to their spells. I really would like to know the answer to that. (And just because it is in the game doesn't mean that it is intended. There are several bugs in the game, doesn't mean they are intended.)

Hmmmm, I just noticed you are right on that. I thought the thread would have included those in the numbers for enchanting. It would be 160% unless you use the feedback loop for alchemy/enchanting. Bows and Greatswords would likely meet up with thunderbolt at that point considering attack speed. Although 1h swords would surpass it.


Yep I think it's cheap. That doesn't stop me from using it to overcome obstacles though. What is intended or not is largely irrelevant. What matters is what is actually available to you. Just like weapon users can use crafting to do 3k damage swings we can make our spells cost 0 mana. Is any of it truely intended by the developers? doubt it. However any developer learns that anything they do will often result in players getting "creative" with their ideas and doing things not intended.

In this case I think it's just garbage design though.

It essentially boils down to customization. Every other form of dealing damage has ways of juicing it up later on. You can customize all weapons to make them a lot more impressive. You can one-shot most things with stealth and a bow, or you can be a human blender with dual-wielding. With destruction, all you've got are the perks and a few subpar enchants.It stops scaling at a relatively moderate level, and its damage potential doesn't even come close to the others.

However, I also think the extent is an exaggeration. I play a sword/spell spellsword and and over 40 now, and have yet to have much of an issue.

This is the problem. You have to cheat to play one skill effectively.

I'm still waiting for the unenchanted unsmithed unalchemy'd non-sneaked setups that I am supposed to be comparing destruction-only against.

I realize it is a ridiculous comparison but people keep insisting on comparing it that way so

Waiting to be amazed by the extremely non-overpowered damage of non-tradeskilled swords and bows. Remember our ridiculous restrictions that we're using! :vaultboy:

200% only requires a potion with 25% bonus to enchanting. I think you can buy those. You can get even higher if you use the feedback loop.

The fuss isn't about using "only destruction". The mages complaining also use alteration, restoration, and probably other things... they just don't want to rely on conjuration or melee weapons for their damage, which is what they are kind of forced to do since destruction becomes incredibly weak after reaching level 40.

To be fair to destruction spells, you can cast them pretty fast, like 0.8 second per cast. You don't have to charge them up. There is no way you can squeeze in 4 swings per dual casting time, unless you use dual wield power attack with attack speed buffing shout.

There is no denying that destruction is weak in comparison, but I think it's actually the least broken while other main damaging forms are just way too good.

If destruction simply had damage scaling with skill level up (like 100 destruction level giving about 25 ~ 40% damage boost), I think it would fit in nicely with the game barring the weird stunlock mechanic and zero mana cost (we should have option for high burst with high mana cost with enchatns...)

I'm sorry but that simply is not true. Destruction damage is perfectly fine after reaching level 40. Its not at the same level as fully decked out smithed/enchanted weapons but that's because those weapons are too strong not because destruction is too weak. On my lvl 48 mage even though I have 100 skill in conjuring I don't bother to use it because I find the summons get in my way more than they help me. My fireball is more than enough damage to get me by. I could use incinerate to do even more damage if I wanted but I prefer having the blast radius.

so destruction is fine because you shouldnt level up past 35? thats laughable, buster

This seems like it will be a never ending argument. Even if it's patched, fixed, modded, or whatever, people will still argue about it I think. You've got people like Hoki, Svests, and myself who have mages into the 40+ area and aren't complaining and like them quite alot without using conjuration and focusing on destruction. Then you've got people who want to try a middle path and say, "well not eveyone wants to play like you!" Though that's sort of the entire point. Either you want to play destruction or you don't. Then you've got people who are telling us who actually do it and enjoy it that it's impossible, it svcks and it doesn't work. That's like telling an airplane pilot that it's impossible to achieve flight, and then giving him the math to prove it (which there was actually math given to prove that prior to the first airplane flights, haha). Point is, some of us do play destruction, and we love it, and some of you are just going to keep telling us it's impossible, no matter what. It really doesn't matter if anything is more powerful, because I never have to play against them. It's a single player RPG, so I don't see why that would matter? And to some of the other posts, I also have a dual wield warrior in the 40+ area, so I have experience with both, and the mage does just fine. My warrior is also using fur armor and skyforge steel swords, maybe I just love ridiculous challenges. But the whole destruction argument is starting to be pointless because it always come down to, "I like it." "No you don't it svcks." "what?"

I'm level 54 I believe. Whats level 32 have to do with anything?
Regardless you can get 10 mana per level and start out with 100 so you could have 410 mana at level 32. Expert spells are OP as [censored] at level 32 btw, I was still using firebolt at that level.