This ... again?

Note: I am currently playing on Master with a Destruction mage with no problems. I have been anolyzing the game since release so I take it slower than others. I didn't even spend any perks at all until I was in my early teens with this particular character (I was anolyzing build potentials/paths).

Some people think that Destruction has a problem because it doesn't have the same max damage amounts as other skills. That is false, though, aside from pure number-crunching. In game, it doesn't matter because all that matters is that you survive. It's pointless to worry about killing something with 1 extra HP or 1000 extra HPs of damage. Either way, you achieve the goal of survival.

By 'pure" class of any type, no player is going to level only one single skill, not even in one of the three general schools (i.e., Warrior/Combat, Mage/Magic, or Thief/Stealth).

Having said that, it's critical to understand the specific breakdown of skills within a school, particularly for magic. Basically, you have 6 skills in each school. In magic, Enchanting is a general skill (i.e., it is also useful for other schools, not only magic school). The game design requires enhancements from Enchanting to cast very high level spells. The game design tells you other tbings, too, such as lower level soul gems being not much use for actual enchanting, and that such items should be used for recharging weapons (including staves). You will use Enchanting in any magic-based build as it makes no sense at all to violate the game lore by avoiding it (and on Master, it would be difficult to do so). You don't need all Enchanting, of course, because only the middle branch really applies for a pure caster (although you might take the right branch if you use staves a lot).

Of the other 5 skills in magic, two are support, and three are primary offense. You do NOT need all three offensive skills, and it would probably be rather pointless to develop all of them, or even two of them (one exception: see below).

Note: Alchemy is no longer part of magic school, but rather is in stealth. Therefore, it is not a skill you need to level early on, not until you finish developing the primary skills for a pure mage, if at all.

Exception: you WILL level Conjuration simply because Beth made the very silly choice to include Soul Trap in Conjuration rather than Restoration where it actually belongs (logically, anyway... I have no idea what they were thinking, and never have understood why they refuse to put Soul Trap in Restoration for all TES games). However, using Soul Trap is not really using Conjuration in its offensive capacity (i.e., you are not conjuring daedra, undead, or weapons).

Now, to build a practical character, you would select a primary offensive ability and a support ability. Example: Destruction plus Alteration (probably the best combo) or Destruction plus Restoration (okay, but I think Alteration is superior to Restoration for a Destro mage). Or you could do Illusion plus one of the other two, or Conjuration plus one of them. Those are the foundation of a mage build.

Early perks go into Enchanting, of course. You can also throw a couple of points into Destruction just to get the damage up, but it can also wait if you like. Once you get Enchanting to about 50, you can flip flop and continue to develop both skills (i.e., perks into them). Yes, other skills will develop, but not by putting any perks into them, of course.

Alchemy is one option to switch to once you have developed the Destruction/Enchanting skills. You could also use other offensive magic (Illusion or Conjuration) and it might be worth it to put 2 or 3 perks into Restoration just to get magicka regen, although it really shouldn't be required. Obviously, you could also choose to develop Archery or One-Handed as a support if you want. It's up to you, but it's not primary. Whatever you choose, switch the stone blessing appropriately (e.g., Alchemy would mean you switch to Thief/Stealth stone for development).

Bottom Line: you will not have problems with doing enough damage to survive if you follow this approach. At least, I certainly do not have problems.

Addendum: People have complained about one or morre mechanics in every TES game. For example, people found Illusion to be way overpowered in Oblivion. I find it bewildering how people can come onto these forums and state that Destruction is underpowered (or even ruder terms such as unplayable) just because the skill requires varies styles to be feasible while making other styles unfeasible. This is true for any skill set and any style (i.e., not all styles are compatible with all skill sets). I could not play a warrior type of character, for example, because I really do not do well with melee combat (at all). Likewise, Enchanting is MEANT to be used with Destruction. This is obvious when reviewing the way magicka works in Skyrim (i.e., anything that would be cast multiple times in quick succession would need Enchantment, as well as anything with very high - beyond maximum possible magicka - spell costs). Some people enjoy summoning daedra to fight. I find that boring and pointless, not to mention breaking my character concept (she is purely good, so would not be a conjurer, per se). Similarly, some people prefer upfront melee combat, but I cannot understand why (my characters don't like to get hurt).

Destruction is fine just like other damage-dealing skills, but like others, it has its own requirements to be effective at high level. K7Avenger and other posters who claim that continuing to level makes you weaker are incorrect, as I have explained. Such a view is correct if poor choices are made once Destruction/Enchantment are developed, but that's also true for any build. However, if you level by making choices that support a Destruction build, you will be fine. That's for most cases, of course. Even in a TES game such as Oblivion, there were cases where certain enemies had Reflect Spell and were extremely difficult for pure casters (i.e., you could easily kill yourself by accident).

Sure you got it. If you want to be a mage you must pick from among the other caster trees to back you up, It can be Illusion, Restoration, or Conjuration. If you're a complete utter [censored] which im not convinced you escape that category and you feel like you want to TAKE A STAND and refuse to use the other schools made specifically for casters and go FIREBALL NUKELOL with maybe archery or sneak, well then it's deserved for you to get your butt whooped. What do you expect? There are stuns and control abilites in every caster school, pick one and shouts have defensive abilities for you to control the situation as well. I dont know what you expect it sounds like you want to go around 1 shotting everything..sorry but that is pretty boring.

What the hell are your other schools of choice just curious

It looks like nobody bothered to put some thoughts into my post before they post:

It sure would be fun, but...its not happening in this game. Frost damage is without a doubt, the most limited weapon in the game, and to make matters worse, it hardly slows anything down. Furthermore, the stamina drain it gives is laughable. By going 'nova' I assume you mean the fire master destruction spell. There are 3 glaring issues with that spell. First is the range in which it is effective, which is essentially melee range. Mages in melee range don't exactly live very long. Second, it hurts your enemies AND your allies. If your enemy is in range of the spell, more then likely so is your companion, and companions aren't exactly tough. Third, and the most damning, the charge up time. The only way to get this off in combat is by using stealth to walk right up to the enemy. Not very practical at all.

Its as if Bethesda said screw practicality, we want flashy!

I had the same problem. I wanted to create a character which weilded destruction in left hand (usually fire of some sort) and an axe in the right. As a part of my build, I chose light armor. I wanted a sort of battlemage/spellsword, but found myself struggling with damage output. I switched to dual wield half way through, and haven't looked back. Unfortunately Im still heavily invested in the light armor. So now Im and dual wielding warrior with light armor and way too many perks wasted in destruction.

Hey what are you mages using for armor? Just robes or some leather/elvish stuff?

No you don't. IF you pick conjurer or illusionist you don't need the other schools. At most you take them for their passive perks. Stop the misinformation. It has been done on Master.

This only holds true for the support schools, which sadly Destro has been reduced to.



Why should an Elementalist(Destro) be forced to play a Warlock/Summoner when 2H/1H/Archer/Assassin/Sword+Board/Conjurerer/Illusionist don't have to change their entire class/playstyle?

I don't disagree with any of this, I've done under-leveled characters in Oblivion which will be a somewhat similar mentality to this destruction only build, the only problem with these builds are that you don't get an abundance of nice weapons, etc at lower levels. However I don't don't need any of those things provided by leveling. Furthermore I understand what everyone has said about damage scaling at +40 lvl and I've acknowledged that there is a problem with damage scaling past lvl +40. However I'm convinced that I will have everything I want this character to do done and be satisfied by by the mid thirties. Thus this pure destruction mage won't suffer the same problems everyone else has had that's tried to an all purpose mage lvl+40.

The point of this thread wasn't to say see I told you it was easy, . . . It was literally how did you get you destruction mage past level 35. I got my answer by multiple people, by leveling other things no matter if they are lightarmor, one-handed, conjuration, illusion, pickpocket, etc. .

dont worry OP your point is valid the problem here is that the forums are overrun by destro haters and you know what it means - haters gona hate

If you would please use your... your... um... brain eyes to read, OP had already agreed with me.

Nice troll, though

Pleas don't post off topic and continue to derail this thread. It seems you and the OP are on different pages and topics. Either take it to pm or drop it. Thanks.

I laugh everytime I see someone complaining about Destruction and claiming that it's:

1. Only a problem on Master difficulty
2. Only a problem after level 35+

See, here's the thing. Compared to every other damage dealing source it's a problem even on Adept, and it also starts showing it's warts well before level 30. Can you still beat the game without too much difficulty on Adept in the later levels? Yes, but it's still painfully impotent compared to everything else. Stop pretending that it's only an issue on Master difficulty and in the much higher levels. It's always an issue, it just stands out more on the higher difficulties and levels.

For those that think "everything is fine", either stop playing on Adept or lower difficulty, or play a physical damage playstyle. It's quite obvious that most who comment that everything is ok because they can exploit enchanting and also have their summons and companion "do things" have never played a physical class on the same difficulties and up to the same levels.

We could just blame level scaling and the removal of spell making. If we REALLY want to get to the heart and soul of it, that is whats causing our problems.

So far I've found robes that fortify destruction by 25%, and a ring and necklace that fortify by 22%, though 25% versions probably exist. Theres probably a hood of some kind that lowers it by that much as I've found Minor Destruction versions of hoods before.

So with only destruction perks and shopping you can lower destruction mana costs to 4.5% of its original mana cost, which is absolutely perfectly acceptable. You can easily kill an ancient dragon without using a mana potion, and do so more quickly than a melee or archer could.

That takes care of any whiner saying that its enchanting dependent. Any mage should take up enchanting anyways, but this eliminates the argument that it is a dependency.

Alright. Whats next? I suppose now the complaint will be that you're forced to wear a robe? :lmao:

LOL! sounds like Fable or something more structured is better for you. TES games aren't about shooting straight through questlines like a bullet train.

You really should stop playing while high. It's like all you see is BIG NUMBERS and forget about charge and cast time vs auto attack and power attack or even bow shot speed.

This is actually a really good point. People are saying that this guy didn't do a lot of quests so he can't be in the "late game" that people complain about with destruction. However, his point is that if you are a pure destruction mage, your level CANT be that high because you are basically only leveling up Destruction. You can get destruction to 100 and still be a low level if you don't use many other skills. And a PURE destruction mage wouldn't use many other skills. If you aren't a pure destruction mage, and are leveling up a bunch of other skills and getting to a high level due to that, you can't complain that much when your destruction spells don't work by themselves; YOU LEVELED OTHER STUFF YOU ARE NOT USING AND THEN COMPLAINING THAT YOU ARE WEAK! The way this game's leveling system works is if you level up a bunch of skills you don't use you will be weak.

If you would read the OP first post you would now it was refering to not going past the level when detruction gets "weaker" for you haters if you only use destruction. The OP might have agreed to you that past your "weak" level destro starts svcking but he didnt change his first post claims.

So whos got problems with eyes here Nice troll, though

You can only kill a dragon faster with melee or archery by improving and enchanting your bow.

With only perks and loot dropped or bought your damage isn't ridiculously high. No smithing. No enchanting. No sneaking.

Destruction is a consistent 200ish~ damage per second depending on the enemy. If the enemy is weak to fire (jackpot!) then its a good bit higher cause of the stacking dot.

Oh no my good sir, it is YOU guys that forget about charge and cast time. Destruction fires spells VERY quickly, about 1 per second, much faster than a bow.

That is just it though! There are only 3 things that compliment destruction in the whole game. Silent casting perk in illusion, enchanting, and alchemy. Even then, leveling illusion just for silent casting is stupid. Destruction doesn't mesh well at all with other skills, unlike physical damage. Well, that's not quite right, I think its better to say the skills that destruction would work well with all use the same limited resource pool, and while I think that is one of the things you SHOULD deal with as a mage, destruction spells currently cost too much to for the amount of damage they deal.

Hoki, what you said up there is a lie. You can improve bow damage just by leveling the archery skill, or using better quality arrows. Furthermore, you aren't going to pull that kind of damage off with a mage, we already did the math on that. AND ALSO, the quick draw perk makes your last point incorrect, as it is most definitely faster than charging up a destruction spell, AND the basic hits still have a chance to stagger enemies, and the perk @ 100 gives you a paralysis effect on top of that. You also increase the damage from archery by 100% through perks, and you have a chance to crit on top of all that.

And if you really want to go into the depths here, you can get sneak attack bonuses with a bow and arrow as well. All that without touching enchanting or smithing. Or alchemy.

He didn't change the first claims, but if you read my posts before, neither did I challenge his claims in the first post about Destruction is good during the normal levels (in fact, I stated it as so). What I DO challenge, is that Destruction is still good enough once the level gets higher



Like I said, nice troll. A troll, but nice nonetheless. It proves that you didn't read the thread through

Except that it's a bit of a straw man, because folks playing mages and wanting to rely on destruction for damage aren't saying that they don't want to use other skills for other purposes. Just as someone who uses a bow or melee weapon as their primary source of damage is likely going to use other skills for healing, defense, selling loot, opening chests, etc. It's true that you wouldn't level very high if you used no skill but destruction, but since I'm not aware of anyone wanting to do that, it's not a useful answer to the problems some mages are experiencing. Personally, I'm on the verge of rerolling again and using bound weapons as my primary source of damage. Hiding around a corner while my summons kill things--because I may not have enough mana to resummon the real damage dealers if I try to help out and then need to heal myself--is the opposite of magey fun in my book.

Continue to conveniently forget the fact that you are using gear that has -%cost on it. Because we all know that doesn't count since it's automatically a requirement for Destruction to cast anything. Let's also forget that it does not matter if you used Enchanting or farmed vendors to get the gear, because we all know it's impossible to find a bow from a vendor that has enchantments on it!

The rest of your argument is pointless and all you do is theorycraft when it's painfully apparent you have zero experience with anything other than playing a caster, and spending all of your time trying to prove to everyone else why Destruction is fine. You have no real experience with the other playstyles, yet keep acting like an expert. The same four people can be found in most of these threads, posting the same nonsense. None of you have played any other style to any reasonable level, because if you did, then most of what you post would be considered trolling.

You don't need Smithing, and you don't need Enchanting for physical damage to be much better than Destruction. Adding them in also widens the gap significantly.

What's the name of the necklace? Because I didn't find any so far. Circlets that reduce destruction costs are common though.

As an aside most dragons are weak 25-50% to either frost or fire

EDIT: I know that doesn't fully address the point but I didn't feel like I needed to say anything other than destruction mages can switch damage types to take advantage of what seems like everythin in the game being immune/weak against frost/fire

EDIT2: "Except that it's a bit of a straw man, because folks playing mages and wanting to rely on destruction for damage aren't saying that they don't want to use other skills for other purposes. Just as someone who uses a bow or melee weapon as their primary source of damage is likely going to use other skills for healing, defense, selling loot, opening chests, etc. It's true that you wouldn't level very high if you used no skill but destruction, but since I'm not aware of anyone wanting to do that, it's not a useful answer to the problems some mages are experiencing. Personally, I'm on the verge of rerolling again and using bound weapons as my primary source of damage. Hiding around a corner while my summons kill things--because I may not have enough mana to resummon the real damage dealers if I try to help out and then need to heal myself--is the opposite of magey fun in my book."

You don't have to use restoration to heal nor do you need much defense if you are a stealth archer.