On my second play through, I decided to build a pure destruction mage on Master difficulty to see what all of the fuss was about regarding level scaling etc. . . I understand that it doesn't really become an issue until you hit level 40. My problem is that I'm going to finish the game way before level 40 on this character. Albeit I am not doing the Companion/Dark Brotherhood/Thieves Guild I am exploring the same dungeons, running through the military campaign, and doing almost all of the daedric shrines in addition to the main questline. Without dipping into conjuration and without using much restoration or alchemy I'll be finished with this play though somewhere in the mid thirties. My thinking is that people complaining about destruction not scaling are actually power leveling other skills and then not using them i.e. conjuration, one-handed, etc. . . . and then expected not to use those skills when battling level 40 creatures.

Has anyone had a similar different experience in finishing the game much faster using a Destruction build? I'm using the atronach stone and not the mage if that makes a difference.

Ummm... no, they're not power-gaming only through the main faction questlines. I explore and do sidequests, etc like TES is meant to do. Also my mage uses smithing and enchanting for my armor and one-handed weapon for melee. My problem is my battlemage-y/spellsword-y character just became a stealth-ish warrior late in the game because magic became useless in the face of the massive damage I can do with my swords

So you aren't a pure destruction mage; you use armor+smithing+one-handed+magic this is a battle mage build not a pure destruction build.

Wait..

You wanted to see what the fuss was about with Destruction Mages having problems at high levels and basically didn't get to a high level because you skipped a load of content and are "finishing" your character before the issue arises? The problem with Destruction is scaling into late game and you didn't go into late game.

So what exactly is the point of this thread?


"HEY GUISE I HERD THERS A PROBLUM WITH DESTRO MAGERS AT LATE. I DECIDED TO TEST THIS OUT I ONLY GOT TO LEVL 35 BUT MY CONCLUSHUN IS THERS NO PROBLEM"

That's basically what I got from your post.

This :shrug:

Do you think I'm going to make the last 16-17 levels on the companion/Theives Guild/Dark brotherhood quest line when my destruction is maxed?

EDIT: My point is that people complain about Destruction magic and scaling when there is nothing wrong with it. What people do wrong is level other skills that they don't intend on using.

Pure mages typically use Destruction for damage dealing, but also have high Illusion, Alteration, Conjuration and/or Restoration...

Your level will get high quite quickly. I have a lvl 30 something mage at the moment who has Destruction in the mid 80s, Conjuration, Illusion, Alteration in the high 60s - high 70s and Restoration around 50 I think?

So you think it's fine that levelling up can be a bad thing?

Guys we had it all wrong. For Destruction to be viable you have to ONLY use Destruction for the entire game and stop playing your character at level 35. There is no problem at all clearly.

Maxing out destruction from 15 nets a total of 4390 XP points. To put this into prospective, to reach level 50 34300 points are needed while only 22425 to reach level 40 (progression is not linear).

4 skills at 100 plus some minor contribution from other non avoidable skills (ie speechcraft, lockpicking) are enough to reach and surpass level 40. So a mage can reach high levels even by using only a few schools of magic and maybe some kind of armor, lockpicking (a necessity, since there aren't anymore open lock spells) and maybe a bit off stealth.

Feel free to level any skills, just don't drink the +destruction potion and let us know how you like the destruction damage output at higher level.

I think a lot of the complaints are hyperbole. My brother in law has been playing nonstop and he always plays mages in rpgs. He is playing on expert ( I understand it isn't master) but he owns most fights. That being said, he makes heavy use of Dragon Shouts, stuns and illusion spells. But still. He plays tactically and has no problems other than bosses here and there and when he screws up.

I thought the entire controversy was that you couldn't do a pure destruction build because the damage didn't scale? I'm not using the other magic classes I'm only using destruction. You are taking my original post entirely out of context because clearly I never said you had to stop playing at level 35, what I said was you'll finish playing at a much lower level only using one main skill set rather than multiple skill sets. Every post in here so far has proved that point, "oh I use armor-enchanting, or I use illusion, restoration" no one that has replied has used a pure destruction mage. I'm not going to reply to anymore of your posts because they are clearly inflammatory and distort what I've said. There's no way to have a logical discussion about it, so you've got the last word, you can further distort, go off-topic, or do whatever you want to do with it.

The complaint is that, as a damage dealing skill, destruction is weak compared to other damage dealing skills in the late game. Very few people, if any, have said they can't play a pure destruction mage, or make the game more balanced by staying lower level (in fact most everybody will agree that staying lower level will keep the game more balanced). Back to first sentence ---> The complaint is that, as a damage dealing skill, destruction is weak compared to other damage dealing skills in the late game.

No the complaint was that you could not use destruction as your pure damage dealing skill like you can with every other damage dealing skills. It is assumed you are going to level other skills, but a destruction focused mage would expect the lions share of his damage to come from destruction not from shooting people with bows because you run out of mana so absurdly fast without working a enchanting exploit. A warrior can level any munber of skills and reply upon one handed for his sole damage dealing skill, a thief can do the same, a mage has a lot more trouble doing this. I am not big into comparing them to other types for balance, but against the game world a lot of creatures just become tedious to fight because you run out of mana all the damn time and then you run around in circles waiting for it to come back so you can go back to stun locking them. Now if that was the intended method of fighting you would expect to see it with every damage dealing type, but you don't only destruction. Which leads me to believe it was not play tested very well.(the stun lock wasn't tested well either) Now maybe the mana exploits were intended in which case there leveling health/stamina/magicka system was not play tested well, but so be it.

I think that's been my point the entire time, there aren't many supplemental classes to destruction magic other than alchemy that help you deal more damage (like there are with other classes). With that said, how can you reach levels higher than the mid thirties without leveling other skill sets, if you don't use other skill sets you won't get higher and the creatures aren't as tedious and can be killed off. If you run out of mana you can always use potions and staffs to finish the fight.

I am not sure I understand your point then. Are you saying mages should not level other skill sets? He should not open locks, he should avoid selling things, he should never try to get the drop on an enemy, he should only buy potions and that is his only source of healing, he should just kite and never have any protection up fro armor or spells etc. A mage is going to level through a ton of various skills just like everyone else. the only difference is the mages DPS skill can't be relied upon for their damage source without exploiting enchanting or using consumables.

My mage is doing fine, but I don't rely upon destruction for my damage. I conjure daedra, I use bound bows, I sneak, I use illusion to make enemies fight each other etc. I only really use destruction when the foes are sufficiently weak, and that is not the hallmark of a good skill. A one handed focused warrior who levels the same number of skills isn't going, jeez I need to up my destruction skill so I can do some damage and kill these things, it just takes to long without it. So why should a mage say the same with destruction.

I dont understand the point of the magika regen enchantments if it only regen's properly out of battle scenarios.

Besides, your build doesn't seem very realistic.

You'd have dest/resto/alteration/enchanting at a MINIMUM, and that build would level cap before level 40.

I have destruction, restoration, alteration, alchemy, and enchanting, with a couple points in speech, and I hit my softcap at 46.

I don't know if this is what you're looking for but I guess I'm what you call pure mage all around. But that came later. From 1 to 40 I was pure destruction. That is, DESTRUCTION ONLY. And it wasn't easy against enemy mages, which is basically, who can hit the other the most before dying.

When I had trouble with groups of enemies, that's when I departed from pure destruction, and leveled up alteration for paralyze. Even then Alt+Des was hard to play, and I eventually leveled the remaining skills and switch through them depending on the situation. I'll tell you this though, I find myself using Destruction less and less, and the others much more.

No, you will level slowly using things that are unavoidable in play like speech, locks, or sneak (I don't pickpocket with this class as its suppose to be morally good) for example but leveling those skills slowly occurs unless you are deliberately power leveling them. Even using what I call "incidental skills" like speech and lock pick throughout the course of the game isn't going to push you past the mid thirties. I don't have to kite and I don't have to spam mana regen/restore I just don't push my level ups (not even alchemy) I let them occur slowly.

Your whole point of argument relies on the fact that it's possible to... "finish" the game within 35 levels.

the problem comes when someone actually plays the "Role Playing" part of their Role Playing Game, and levels beyond that

At which point, your whole argument is moot. People have already said that Destruction is just fine during the "normal" range of levels. Once you hit "high", Destruction no longer even functions properly except you exploit either enchanting or alchemy due to the high cost of magicka to cast them, and the low damage output ensures that you HAVE to. This pigeonholes everybody into playing a Destruction mage the way everybody else plays. The problem is not that people don't have the time to wait for Magicka to regenerate, or the money to use potions. They do, but if a skill barely functions if not supported by another skill, it's not "synergy", it's pure broken.

The argument by those who says it's fine is that warriors rely on armor skills and smithing to be able to survive. The problem here is that armor skill does not rely on smithing to absorb damage, nor do the weaponry skills require armor skills or smithing skills to be able to do damage. Smithing simply makes them do a better job at something that they're already good at, that's synergy. Now as for Destruction... either you lollygag until your magicka recovers, or you powerlevel enchanting and/or alchemy to make Destruction do its job properly.

And remember the slogan: "be whoever you want, play however you want". The current Destruction mechanism heavily severs the option for mages to deal damage the way a mage should: with Destruction

Pure destruction mage is a waste of time because bethesda f-d up the destruction this time around....your pretty fireballs and lightning bolts will only tickle most opponents from lvl 30 and up.

I really hope they fix this as I was building a pure destruction mage until I found out they're useless in the long run, even the staff of fireballs which is hard earned from kriosis becomes a toy early on.


I think bethesda isn't a fan on mages this time around, most of skyrim abhors them and the game makes destruction useless unless you cheat the game with smithing/enhcanting.

I have a different experience then. My lockpicking/stelath/speach skills bumped me into the 40's before I hit a 100 in a single magic school. I open every lock in a dungeon and sneak through them all and sell tons of crap, but I don't think of myself as power leveling them. I sneak through every dungeon because it would be dumb not to approach things cautiously, not because I'm trying to power level it. I buff myself with an armor spell every time it wears out, I cast muffle to help with stealth, I heal myself when ever I am hurt, I have swithced to conjuration/bound weapons in my 40's and that is getting me a lot of levels now. I had leveled conjuration a bit before because some enemies seemed to be virtually immune to destruction and would drop after a couple hits from a flame atronoch for reasons I don't understand, but it was only in the 40's when i hit level 40.

Now if they had given me magical ways to deal with these things I wold have not leveled things like stealth, or lockpicking but as is the only way to open that locked door is to use a physical skill.

i actually never hear of the term "pure destruction mage" until this thread, and it looks like we dont agree on its definition.

im not sure how you are going to prove "destruction damage output is fine" at higher level without playing one.

I would agree with this statement, my argument is moot after level 35-40. My question is how do you get passed level 35-40 if you're building a pure destruction mage? I understand there are other skill sets that are incidental but I contend that they aren't going to push you 12-16 levels on their own, speech challenges and locks won't level your character that many levels even if if the game isn't "finished".

EDIT: "i actually never hear of the term "pure destruction mage" until this thread, and it looks like we dont agree on its definition.

im not sure how you are going to prove "destruction damage output is fine" at higher level without playing one."

If my destruction skill is 100 at level 35 how is it not a high level are there areas that are locked or shrines that are unavailable at that level?