Asking a sword blade, that is using a strong melee system to also mod his destruction spells, is the same as saying "hey, use this cheat and run through the game on Master fast, its really fun to one shoot things".
You should never recomend the destruction mod to anyone not around 50+ and pure destruction users, at that level it starts to feel but even then hardly required.
Destruction users keep comparing themself to Enchanted+Smithed melee warriors. They should not. Destruction in the original form is very well banaced in Skyrim.
That destruction mages are crying cause they cant 1 shoot dragons on Master does not mean its bad as it is.
Play Adept with Destruction and tell me its bad? If its bad then, then you have a right to argue. But on Master, its supposed to be very hard, not easy road.
Try playing melee or archer with NO secondary professions and see how powerful that is compared to destruction..............
Destro is super powerful at low mid level and good at higher levels. Final.
Every single one of these is a horrible strawman. It's simple, mathematical fact that Destruction's damage output pales in comparison to Archery and melee, and it's perfectly fair to compare those skills because they are the four direct damage skills in the game. Not one person has said that you should be able to 1-shot Alduin with just a Destruction spell (although all the Destruction-defenders seem to think that's the crux of the argument).
Just think about it for a second. Destruction is "viable" if you cover its deficiencies with other skills, like Alteration, Conjuration, Illusion or any other skill. However Alteration, Conjuration, Illusion and all those other skills are still perfectly useable if your main damage source is a bow, or a melee weapon - both of which do far better DPS than Destruction magic. The argument
isn't that MAGES are underpowered. Conjuration, for one, is a very good skill indeed, one of the best in the game at high level. The argument is that Destruction is rather pitiful as a direct damage skill - and if you take away the direct damage function of Destruction, then what the hell is left? Dealing damage is literally the one single reason for Destruction to exist in the first place, yet it's outclassed by the other direct damage skills (Archery and melee) and even INDIRECT damage skills (like Conjuration).
To make it even clearer what we're talking about:
- Character A uses Archery, Conjuration, Heavy Armour. He has great defence thanks to his armour, he has a great companion in his Conjured Daedra, and he can HIMSELF cause great damage from range.
- Character B uses Destruction, Conjuration, Heavy Armour. He has great defence thanks to his armour, he has a great companion in his Conjured Daedra, but he cannot HIMSELF deal any great damage because Destruction is so much weaker than Archery.
Of course you can cover your weaknesses with other skills, you'd be a fool not to. The point is that Destruction does not do what it is supposed to do - namely, DESTROY - and so there is no compelling GAMEPLAY reason (note: not role-play reason) to pick Destruction over a direct damage skill that actually does the sort of competitive damage it is supposed to do. You can't possibly be ignoring all the people who have told how they've raised their fully-perked Destruction to 100 and use Expert spells... but somehow they still take enemies down more easily with their un-perked Archery skill of 40.
PLEASE stop raising these strawman defences, it's quite frustrating to have to repeatedly explain this. Destruction is a damage-only skill that doesn't do any respectable damage beyond level 35 or so. It is therefore a useless and underpowered skill.