Correct, until you notice this:

Level 100 Enchanting (5 X Enchanter, Insighful, Corpus, Extra Effect: 8 Perks) (26 Perks Total)
Daedric One Handed Sword: 126 Damage

It's still one handed, which means 126 damage in each hand. If you go for dual wield, which is the equivalent of dual cast, the number becomes this:

Daedric Dual Swords : 252 Damage

Not to mention that with a bit of patience, you get these numbers:

Level 100 Alchemy (5 X Alchemy, Physician, Benefactor: 7 Perks) (33 Perks Total)
Daedric One Handed Sword: 180 Damage
Daedric Dual Swords : 360 Damage

Gear fully Enchanted 4 X Weapon Enchants and 4 X Armor Enchants.
Daedric One Handed Sword: 518 Damage
Daedric Dual Swords : 1036 Damage

And this is only about the pure damage. If you include the Dual Flurry (which increases attack speed up to 35%), the effective number goes even higher

This synergies well with the fact that as the level of enemy increases, so does their health, which means one can keep playing without changing their playstyle. But as you can see, the 198 damage thunderbolt stops there, which means as the enemy gets stronger, the battle takes longer

Only if mages had better way of applying the "weakness to element" poisons...

Kinda lame that one major way of buffing magic damage relies on some form of physical combat. Fortify destruction potion chugging is fine with me, but why do I have to stab them with a dagger or use bow to maximize magic damage : /

Look at it this way, there are no + weakness to physical damage poisons. So just be thankful.

I 3-shot a blood dragon yesterday with thunderbolt and I don't even think its weak to shock. :shocking:

Yeah, except they just have it permanently enchanted into their armor and as 3 point talent for maces...

Not sure how you pulled off 3 shot, did you chug a fortify destruction potion? I mean I have no trouble killing these things without potion but I do need to spam cast.

Well I'm just saying, tit for tat. Weapon enchantments do +damage, destruction does more damage by default and you can go rage-mode with a poison and a potion. They are there for a reason!

I only limit my gameplay to prove people wrong on internet forums. I typically 2-3 shot normal level 45 critters and 2-3 shot bosses in caster rage mode.

Actually it doesn't.

I stopped prior to using alchemy. If you use alchemy you can push numbers over 2k per cast. The gist of it is you abuse alchemy poison stacking(weakness to poison > weakness to magic > weakness to shock > fortify destruction). Granted it's slightly absurd to set anything except a boss type enemy but the details are here:
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1275179-2419-armor-6399-damage-using-smithing-alchemy-enchanting-only-33-perks-329k-backstabs/page__st__140__p__19333960#entry19333960

I tend to use weakness to shock with an arrow and a pot to start things if I care to feel like a god but it's hardly necessary. There are many other considerations for dealing damage such as range and area of effect spells. Those values are hard to quantify because of the large variance though.

dont think youve proved anyone wrong there buster, think youve done little more than prove you need to exploit to rely on destruction for damage

Stock deadric sword (14 dmg) with one handed armsan 5/5 give 42 dmg
Two deadric swords will give 84dmg
Power attacking with 2 swords at once and having the "dual strike more dmg" perk gives 42x2x1.5=42x3=126 dmg
Get your math straight.

If you want to dish 126 dmg constant you need to exploit the stamina bug, and just waiting 2 seconds after you stamina bar went to 0 for it to regain 1 point and power attack again is still exploiting the system.

Err, no not at all. 5/5 armsman is a +100% increase in damage XD And to reach 5/5 you need at least 80 in one-handed which by itself also increases the weapon damage.

Yeah I added the 100 skill bonus and didnt add the 100% gonna correct it.
The one sword hit was 21 not 42 dmg as it should becuase I forgot to x2 it but the power attack dmg output had the correct values.
Still the dmg will be lower than that of a thunderbolt.

I don't understand how people can complain that pure destruction mages become useless after 50...

Because honestly, if you're using a "pure" destruction mage, how did you even level past 50? You'd only be using a max of 5 or 6 skills...

im playing a mage 100's in each skill, i will tell you that it is so easy to kill things ... period, you can beat the [censored] out of the toughest dragon once you get you skill to 100, and go with double fisting flame bolt... yes FLAME BOLT!
i have 700 magika and i can spam flamebolt all day long and kill anything that isnt fire proof. if i run up against something like a flame golem then i ice spike it to death.the "power" of destruction is in stunlocking not OMGWTFBBQPWNZOR with some one hit kill spell.

destruction is the most broken tree in the game.

Why don't you count using dropped/bought gear that increases the damage anyway? Since you are using non crafted daedric weapons, I'll assume you are in the 45+ level range for them to show up. At the minimum, one 40% bonus item is mandated, more likelly you have a ring, a necklace and bracers of the 25-35% range which means a 90% damage increase. This gear quality is more or less equivalent to having 3x20% destruction damage reduction.

You'll not be casting many thunderbolts without such gear, for sure not enough to kill the strong opponents anyway so it's a very biased way to compare them. As for power attacks, I'm not sure how much dual wield power attacks consume stamina but my two handed warrior with 0 points in stamina can do standing power attacks 3 times in a single stamina bar That means less than 50 stamina per power attack.


Oh and since we are comparing attack power, let's not mention how much stronger it gets when you use the "Elemental Fury" dragon shout while there's none available to improve magic.

We`re not using any enchanted gear or pots on any character because its a comparision of stock destro vs stock meele / archery.If you want to talk about stock scaling of dmg dealing trees then you cant be using upgraded or enchanted gear, pots, poison, shouts or racials. Deadric sword uses 77 stamina per swing its tested and results posted in the 3k backstab thread. Still your stamina limits your awsome dmg the same way mana limits destro.

So your doing 42 dmg a hit ( 64 DPS ) with your best meele weapon while an expert thunderbolt does 90 dmg ( 90 DPS ) or a master lightning storm 112.5 dmg (112.5 DPS). If you power attack then your gonna do 126 dmg a hit ( 193 DPS ) while a double cast thunderbolt does 198 dmg (198 DPS) and Lighting Storm ( 112 DPS). This all dosnt even take into consideration different types of enemies being weak to certain elements ( buff to destro dmg ) or the disintegrate perk ( insta kill on anyone shocked and below 20% health) or even that mages can attack from distance and be safe while meele needs to get in your face first before dishing dmg and is prone to taking heavy dmg.

If this situation we are discusing happened at lvl 81 then I would be a destro mage with 900 mana and 100 health and stamina and you would be a meele with 900 health and 100 stamina and magic (just to not get one shooted without using any gear << our scenario )

So you can what double power attack and then slash at your enemy lets say a Draug Deathlord (1k hp) so your doing

2x126 dmg + Y x 42 dmg = 1000k where Y is the number of slashes needed to kill the draug.
Y x 42 = 1000 - 252
Y = 17-18 slashes

My mage can single cast two thunderbolts at the same time:
2x90dmg x Y = 1000k - 200 (desitegrate)
180 x Y = 800
Y = 800 / 180 = 4.5 single double cast so 9 single thunderbolts

9x100 = 900 mana while mana pool 900.

You know this has been discussed multiple times, right?

Stunlocking is stupidly broken. Might as well play an FPS.

Isnt stun-locking while auto power attacking for unlimited times as cheap a stun-locking with dual cast

They're both broken, but melee without stunlock is more viable than casters without. Why?

Because melee scales, and has +damage enchantments. Destruction magic does not, while, ironically, Conjuration does scale with points in the tree.

You didnt read the thread, destro has dmg potions and can use weakness poision to buff dmg the same way meele or archery can. Just becuase you dont know about it dosnt mean it dosnt exist.

Destruction mages should not feel forced to put points into Alchemy to make themselves viable at high-levels.

EDIT: No other mage tree has this problem. Nobody says you have to get the relevant potions to make Conjuration or Alteration viable.

I'm a mage with destruction, conjuration and enchanting at 100. I have Master robes and other items that make all destruction magic free to use so i haven't had any problems at lvl 45 beating the crap out of foes.

That comparison doesn't make sense and has no basis in the gameplay reality. You are just choosing that rule BECAUSE it advantages the destruction magic damage because there are no enchanted items that increase this damage while there are for one-handed/two-handed.


And pray tell me, how many dualcast thunderbolts a naked level 45 mage can use in the first place if you really want to compare two completely unenchanted cases?

No I never said that if you read the OP I was merely trying to find out how pure destruction mages get past level 35 if all they are using is destruction. The sole answer was they use other skills and every reply had a different skill. You can basically level 4 skills to 100 and some incidentals and still be under 40. So if I use nothing but but destruction magic and some (not worried about going to 100) alchemy how will I get beyond level 35? At level 35 I don't have to use alchemy to fortify destruction nor do I have to use enchantments to keep pure destruction viable and its a high enough level that I can take on any of the leveled characters in the game. You can laugh all you want but there's nothing wrong with playing this way.

Look, the arguments are very specific, and don't apply to your brothers build. Most of the people who argue about Destruction also point out that Illusion is overpowered. Illusion is overpowered, conjuration is overpowered (especially on Master), so it's very possible to play a mage on Master. Destruction becomes weak and nearly useless when you get to a high level. So Destruction is a bad choice that results in very tedious gameplay in the long run. Some people think that having pointless skills in the game (lockpicking, speech, and destruction in the late game) is a bad idea, because then you have a choice of pointless skills or skills that are useful, which seems kind of silly. It would be easy to fix destruction (and lockpicking).

OP, you may have heard about a feature of Skyrim called Radiant Story? If you ever stop to talk to Innkeepers, for example, you'll notice that new quests continue to pop up late in the game. My character is level 38, and I haven't finished the Imperial Legion quests, the MQ, and I skipped the Companion quests, the Thieves Guild, the DB, the Winterhold quests, and most of the Daedra quests. I haven't decided if I'll do most of the High Hrothgar side quests. I haven't finished all of the "help X people from town XX", I still have more than a dozen unfinished random quests, and I still get offers for new quests.

So yeah, if you think about it, it's pretty easy to get beyond level 40.

How will you acquire experience increases once destruction and alchemy hit 100? If you say well you will continue to incur speech or lockpicking increases they are already computed into the below level 40. The theoretical highest level you can hit is 81~ when all skills hit 100. Now look at my soft skill cap; lightarmor (15), heavyarmor (15), archery (15), one-handed (15), two-handed (15), enchanting (20), restoration (probably some in there lets say 100 for argument sake), lockpicking (100 for argument sake), conjuration (20), destruction (100), alteration (20), block (15), alchemy (100), illusion (20), sneak (40 I don't really sneak but just for argument sake), pickpocket (15), speech (100 for argument sake), smithing (15)

with this in mind how is it easy to get past level 40

My mage has similar skills as that and is past level 40 actually. 3 skills at 100 and some others at "high" values like 40-50. I'll have to check better though but I don't see that as difficult with 3 skills at 100. With 4 at 100 I'm sure you are well into the way for level 50.