It's been a while since I've played Skyrim. I can't wait for the Remastered version. However, my question lies within magic. Did they ever do anything about it? The problem people used to complain about was it not scaling. Everyone said they were under powered. I tried playing them, but could never make it work. Most likely user error.

We don't know if SkyRem will have that... probably not. Skyrim v1.9 without mods does not have any such buffing to Destruction damage.

Besides adding 3 specific dragon priest masks in DB dlc, that add an extra 25% to either of the 3 elements, no, they didn't.

We kept employing master spells in conjunction with the Become Ethereal shout -those of us with the stomach for it, at least. We continued temporarily enhancing our damage output with fortify destruction potions -these can go fairly high. And if/whenever we felt lucky and decided to go scroll hunting, we'd also add 50% more damage (also temporarily) through Shalidor's Scrolls.

That's pretty much it.

That just sounds like a headache. I don't understand the thought process behind making weapons scale, but not spells. There's not really an incentive to play a magic based character unless you want a challenge and to put a lot of time into it. Destruction seems to be the only issue. Conjuration is fine. Restoration was alright. Illusion was a thing of beauty. That destruction, though. Breaks my heart.

That's why very few of us have been able to play destruction mages "in all their glory and splendor" -these few who could handle the headache

I play a Destruction Mage and he works just fine. I like it, and don't use much in the way of gameplay mods either. A few caveats though, e.g. I don't play on Legendary Difficulty (usually Adept or Expert). With a full perk tree (including the Impact perk), Archmage Robes (I just happen to like them) and most of the rest of my gear custom Enchanted to be relevant for a mage, I have a lot of fun with it.

Same here. My Destruction Archmage is one of my favorite characters; she uses the other schools very sparingly. Fully perked, and at Adept, double-cast fireballs work just fine. It's all a matter of having a deep enough magicka pool with fast regeneration.

The game was balanced for Adept. Any different setting, in either direction, will throw off the balance somewhere. Legendary difficulty was added long after that balancing was done. If we're playing a mage at above Adept, it becomes necessary to use a lot more Conjuration and Illusion.

There are just some "builds" that are really hard to play at high difficulty. Skyrim favors the hybrid-type character.

My first and main char, Sandor, is a full destruction mage and conjurer.

I've beaten Karstaag at legendary level with him, but I've never met the black knight.

The playtrough was fun but often painful. Certain bosses, like Queen Potema, and dungeons like Forelhost were really tough. Forelhost almost gives me shivers.

I must add that casters classes in Skyrim (I don't really know in oblivion and morrowind, I never managed to play them) aren't well equipped: only staves and poor variety of cloth armor.

Novice Difficulty
Adept Robes of Destruction
Circlet and Ring of Major Destruction
No armor

100 in Destruction
Player level 17
Destruction fully perked
All level-ups into magicka

Lord Stone
Agent of Mara
Necklace of Waning Magic


Plays quite well.

This will probably sound counter-intuitive, but I played more towards the debuffs and mob control aspects of Destruction than its... well, destructiveness. I could often force mages into knife fights with lightning spells (if they weren't carrying staves, that is), and could even keep Nord warriors from spamming power attacks with ice - not to mention stun-locking dragons with Impact. Archers and staff-wielders were my bane, but all in all, my Destruction mage felt much safer than my mercenary archer.

As glargg said, magicka management was key. In addition, fights could be long without a follower, and it was certainly a struggle to level the skill (I played on Expert, so less xp per hit due to lower damage). Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun with that character, and only stopped playing her in the mid-forties when genuine challenges became fewer and farther apart (I also discovered modding at this point, which led to a host of other issues...).

What issues?

He propably meant that he used that character to try mods out, without keeping backups and he ended up breaking his save. That's what I understood.

..Or that getting into modding leads to more modding, which leads to more modding, with modding becoming a whole pursuit in itself.

All of the above, really - plus modding opened up a host of new character ideas that I'm still playing through. Even my old archer has been "on hold" for quite literally years now.

You wanna know what's really keeping destruction down compared to physical damage (bows, one handed, two handed)?

Enemies have both health and armor rating, with destruction magic bypassing the latter, so it should deal more damage in theory. Most enemies however, have garbage armor ratings (even bandit chiefs when you're higher level and they all start wearing steel plate/carved nordic) and instead enemies are built around their health, which scales very sharply with leveling. Add to this how the 'effective health' increase by armor increases exponentially, and no enemy NPC will make use of this because they wear low-tier armors, have low heavy/light armor levels, few perks, and most bandits wear just 2 pieces. A 40 damage sword and a 40 damage fireball end up dealing about the same damage. If anything, nord/breton/dunmer racial resistances will cut down your spell damage more than that some fur armor will cut down sword damage.

TL;DR: Bethesda has forgotten how to do gameplay design

When they gave bandits good armor and armor stats in Oblivion everybody and his brother complained about that, too.

How many of you have been one-shotted during combat? Me? Countless times.

I still remember an episode: I was fighting a dragon near Riften, when I stumbled into some bandits. Damn. It was already tough, it became worse, much worse. Then, from nowhere an arrow killed me instantly. I had triggered the bandits inhabiting a fort nearby. After a first moment of anger, I realized the awesomeness of the events that can happen in Skyrim.

If you aren't well aware of your surroundings, you can really end in a real mess of a fight.

You shouldn't give bandits glass and daedric armor like Oblivion did, just make them actually take the armor perks and wear full sets (most have just the main piece and boots, gauntlets and helmets are rare)

Clothes and expert difficulty become very difficult after a while, like Sybelius said, sometimes you just die from an arrow or something you hardly see coming. The game feels like it is meant to be played with armor, not clothes and destruction combined with a weapon. Or just melee instead of spells.

I remember the first time I encountered a necromancer at level 18 in Ilinalta's Deep, playing on expert and wearing mostly clothes instead of armor. I just couldn't take him down, his ice damage did so much damage and my adept spells hardly hurt him.

As MarkedforDeath pointed out, armor wouldn't have helped you against that necromancer. Armor only affects physical damage, not magical.

While I agree that wearing cloth is a dangerous game, there are two things that can reduce the danger significantly. First, as Sybellus said, situational awareness is key - but this includes being able to rank threats according to your character's abilities and plan accordingly. For example, my Destruction mage was aces against single-target threats, thanks in no small part to the Impact perk, but multiple ranged targets were deadly. Conversely, a room full of archers or spell-casters is a cakewalk for my Illusionist, but she is forced to rely on a follower (or a summoned Atronach) to bring down single, powerful foes.

Second, the Mage Armor and Magic Resistance perks in Alteration go a long way in providing protection. Granted, a dual-cast -flesh spell with Mage Armor won't provide more protection than the best-in-level armor, but it's not insignificant. However, as MarkedforDeath mentioned, the best armor in the world can only mean so much if your Health pool is low. Whether protected by -flesh spells or Daedric armor, a mage with low Health can only hope to not get one-shot by the higher-end NPCs in his/her level bracket.

...but we're getting a bit removed from the topic of Destruction, so I'll stop rambling.

It's not rambling at all! It's wise reasoning in a topic about Destruction limits and its survival issues!

Anyway, I often use heavy armor with my full destruction mage (I'm full smithing and enchanting, so I can improve the stats of my equipment at the best possible). The problem is, I got one-shotted many times regardless! XD

But, as a good friend of mine pointed out, even the heaviest armor doesn't defend the player from mortal arrows!

With Clothes (not counting Shields) you can have 300 Armour. That's more than half what you can effectively get with physical armour. Even on Expert, that's doable with skilled play.

its actually less than half because of the hidden 100. The "cap" when wearing no armor is 667, it's 567 if wearing four pieces of armor.

And let's not forget that effective health increases exponentially while damage reduced increases linearly, so a 75% damage reduction is twice as effect as a 50% reduction.

Yes. That's true. I was going to mention that but couldn't figure out how to explain it succinctly as you just did. There is a http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:SR-graph-Armor_and_Durability.pngon the UESP that shows the exponential curve in graphical form.