Bump down your difficulty setting.

So, I am reading far too many posts complaining about how difficult running a pure mage is at higher levels.

My first play through is as a mage, now level 53. I just got the Master spells, (Which are freakin' amazing). And I am having no issues.

If you are scared of a challenge, if you want to be godlike and toast things in 1-3 spells before they can even get close to you (including dragons)...
PLAY ON NOVICE.

It's a single player game, all that is important is that you enjoy it. If you enjoying it means you easily kill things,
PLAY ON NOVICE.

If you like a little bit of a challenge, want to have to quickly heal and run and hide on tough fights, but still destroy things with your mighty arcane skills...
PLAY ON ADEPT...

Get the picture? There are settings, they adjust game balance, use them.

Btw, Bethesda thank you very much for your fantastic game - I am supremely pleased with it, and want to congratulate you for yet another amazing Elder Scrolls game, been loving them from the start, and you have not disappointed.

This a copout 'fix' to a major problem with the game, the complete lack of challenge on novice isnt fun whatsoever and adept is also comparably not very challenging, destruction spells just do crap for damage and cost way too much magicka, and they should be made viable for every difficulty

I agree with first 2 posters.

At best its a temporary workaround. I'll just mod it since I'm on a PC, but I feel bad for console mages.

Can't help but to not play on Master because I just can't stand the fact knowing that I'm playing on an easier setting.

Maybe if someone sneaked in and changed my setting to Novice without me knowing though...

It really is that simple if your a Destruction Mage and getting torched scale the game to your character, if the difficulty was static i would agree with the Destroy-magic is broken crowd, it's viable on lower difficulty levels. This may not be an ideal solution but then again Skyrim isn't a perfect game in many ways.

Heh, Heh.

I can understand the feeling. But frankly, if anyone is finding it so difficulty on master to play a pure mage, that it is causing frustration, just bump it down one level, not all the way down. No big deal.
You don't even have to tell anyone else you did it...

Playing as a mage you should be taking zero hits unless being careless, looking away from that rare arrow that is completely impossible to get away from. The Become Ethereal shout makes it so that you have to be SUPER careless to take damage as a destruction mage, and be incredibly unskilled to ever take melee damage.

I play pure fire destruction mage with bought gear. No exploitation or even use of enchanting, alchemy, smithing or sneak, and I haven't died in this game since testing how much damage a giant does when I was level 5. I play on master and am now level 26.

The game has presented zero challenges for me so far, and i've been playing a standard role play character, not even thinking about maximizing my damage. Just recently I found out that, with the staff of fireballs that I've had without bothering to use for 10 levels now, I could EASILY use walk only in every single battle I have left in this game and never take a melee hit. Vs multiple archers not taking a hit now and then would be impossible in walk mode though.

If I for example wrote player.setlevel 36 in console now, I would have level 36 difficulty enemies while nothing changing with my characters damage or health, correct? If so that could be a possible fix for those having an easy experience.

wait wait ... wait... wait....................ok, wait

So the spells are too weak at high levels, and too OP at low levels... yet you refuse to adjust the settings to where the spells kill in the same amount of time as you'd like? That reminds me of people crying on BF3 forums about how weak the bolt action sniper rifles are, even though they are the only 1 shot kill weapon at that range if you shoot them in the head. Their argument isn't anything about game balance, it's "Yea but I like aiming for center mass".

Now MP FPS balance is something beth doesn't have to worry about... but FFS, the difficulty settings are there for you to toy with. You want to play on master with all characters? So you don't want to tune the settings down because you want to complete teh highest difficulty? So you both want a challenge and can't hang with how challenging it is?

I get that magic needs tweaking, but as for now... changing the settings works.

Why.

By the same rules, if I choose to be a merchant, max out my speech, then I should also have the option to talk the dragons into settling their differences over a game of dragon scrabble. The most infamous and most dangerous board game in the world.

Just imagine. A game where you spell a word and the room bursts into flame.

As a unrelated issue, did anyone else chuckle at the loading screen quote which stated that fights between dragons are in fact, just a heated debate?

Okay, but enough of that. Back to basics.

Get over your ego. Just that.. take a deep breath, and realise that difficulty is relative, and your innate need to beat a game on its hardest difficulty is, while a worthy goal, is getting in the way of you enjoying the game as it was meant to be. Let go of the ego, and the fun will begin.

Loved your bit about the dragon scrabble. Hilarious!

As for your other comments, though: I would say that while difficulty is relative, and is largely based upon the choices the player makes and the player's overall skill, balance should also be considered relative to each encounter. For instance, if there were lots of opportunities for Speechcraft to give you an edge in combat by convincing someone to help you, changing the way the combat plays out, etc. then I would say it would be balanced despite making you weaker overall in terms of level scaling. In the same way, if Destruction magic allowed me to sometimes shine more than a warrior under certain challenges, I would also say it would really differentiate the playstyles and make it feel more than just "dealing damage".

While it's true that there are some monsters that are resistant to physical damage, and have weaknesses to magic, I really don't get that feeling like "Oh, this is where being a Destruction mage makes things interesting!". Never am I swarmed by enough enemies to warrant unleashing a ton of my AoEs, especially at the risk of killing/pissing off my companion. I of course still have lots of fun with my mage, but I secretly wish there were more challenges tailored to Destruction magic's strengths. I would have loved to have had more variety, like spells that could cripple the performance of enemies... Alas, I miss a lot of the old spell effects of yore.

Ultimately, I want to feel like any combination is viable (at the same difficulty) and unique, all while leading to a different set of obstacles. Skyrim does have this to a degree, but I feel like some more work could go into tweaking things like perks and the skills themselves. I guess I'm just the type who obsesses over balance to the point where it may break my immersion if I find out that many combinations are outclassed by others. In the past, what I did was just download mods, so I don't see this being any different. I'd take downloading a mod any day as opposed to tweaking the overall difficulty. The reason is that why I may want to be stronger (or at least have more interesting options) in Destruction, I don't want to take less damage from a lower difficulty, or have my companions kill faster. It's just one teeny, tiny aspect that I would like to change, and I feel that simply sliding the difficult up or down affects more than what I'd like.