As any pure magic user in Skyrim will tell you, playing a "Pure" caster is not nearly as fun as it should be, and this is largely in part from in-game magic mechanics.


#1 - Even with 100% of your level up points invested in Magicka, and all of the end tier College of Magic gear (+250% magicka regen, +100 Magicka), you run out of magicka after killing a single NPC and regeneration is a joke.

#2 - "Dual casting" (The "Power attack" for mages) only gives you 10% more damage/health/duration than casting both hands individually yet it costs 40% more mana to do so! (yes, it does stagger single opponents for destruction spells, but so do melee power attacks for considerably less effort)


The solution to make Pure mages viable and balanced in game? ...


#1 - Magicka should ALWAYS regenerate (during combat, while casting, while "holding" a spell, etc). This would fix the poor magicka problems all mages face AND make magicka regen a practical stat.

#2 - "Dual Casting" (The "Power attack" for mages) should do 25% more damage/health/duration than casting 2 hands individually (up from 10%) and cost 25% more magicka to cast (down from 40%).


That's it! Problem solved... Please patch this in Bethesda!

On a side note, spell durations for buffs need to be CONSIDERABLY extended. 60 seconds for mage armor is just sad. All buffs need to be 10 minutes at minimum, preferably 30 minutes to an hour. Recasting mage armor every minute is taxing, and doesnt add to the game in any way.

Well, back to the amazing world of Skyrim! I think I will re-roll a melee or hybrid character and put my mage to sleep until playing a pure mage is viable

Feel free to comment if you have any additional suggestions to improve / fix magic in game.

On another side note, potions should get a duration increase from 60 seconds to 10 minutes.

I do think it should regen faster but and dual casting should be stronger but that's it.

Hint: Try some items with mana reduction to destruction spells and you problems are solved.

At high level Enchanting you can actually craft gear that will allow you to cast destruction spells for no cost at all.

Dual-cast has stagger effect, which is by far the most important feature of dual-casting. Making it do even more damage would just make things perhaps too easy.

The magicka could, IMO, regenerate much faster if it's close to 0 (for example, from 0% of total magicka to 10% total magicka, it'd take 4 seconds. But from 60% total magicka to 70% magicka it'd take 15 seconds, you get the point).

I'm a level 30 conj/alt/dest pure Mage playing on adept and I am absolutely unstoppable. Every now and then I will be 2 hit killed out of nowhere, but only if ebony flesh is down. Twin souls ftw!,

Aaaaaaaaand destruction spells should scale, what's the point of having a 10pts flying matchstick (fireball) on a lv25+ battlemage?

Simply give destruction a 5-rank-perk that increases damage by 20-100% as every other damage skill has...magicka regeneration isn't the problem.

I suggest you use enchanting to reduce the costs of Destruction and Healing Spells.

I was thinking of changing the way regen rate boosters work to be exponential instead of linear (quadratic when combined with max magicka increases). And reducing the number of slots that could have casting cost reduction enchantments on them.

But certainly normalizing magicka regeneration would be good. My magicka regenerates both in and out of combat, but sometimes it regenerates at half the speed of other times (does not correspond to in/out of battle, or at least not very well). It does seem bizarre that holding a single spell prevents magicka regeneration despite the fact that I have two different hands I can cast with. I could understand though if it instead only prevented magicka regeneration beyond max magicka minus the casting cost of the held spell though.

I think that dual-casting destruction spells should have more of a damage increase than their magicka increase. I mean, if you're dual casting a destruction spell, I would think that you could instead be casting one destruction spell with one hand and another destruction spell with the other hand, right? That would be 2x the damage for 2x the casting cost, and it would not require a perk. So dual-casting should be either more than 2x the damage or more damage per magicka than the regular casting, maybe 1.5x damage and 1.2x casting cost.

I think that (non-dual-cast) alteration spells are about the right duration.

i agree that the damage of the destruction spells absolutely has to scale with your skill points also a +%damage for spells enchantement would make sense in my book.

on a different note why do all the shouts have such cool effects and magic doesnt. for me they could lose those shouts and roll them into the magic schools in fact thats a mod im making as soon as the construction kit comes out.

Im completely baffled as to why bethesda decided to make melee and archery scale but not spells...

That is how every other TES game handled it. The other games, however, had spellcrafting, so it was not an issue.

I agree with all your statements besides 10 minute durations for buffs and such. Seems too long IMO.

Dualcasting should do 2.5x to 3x damage for 2.2-2.5x magicka cost. Damage wise it is absolutely worthless to dual cast destruction spells, while the chain stagger on the other hand is broken.

Stoneflesh saves my ass. Extra time for it would save my ass. 10 minutes doesn't seem a good middle of the road for a half 'n hour to an hour dungeon.

its called up grading your spells. if you look at steam statistics only 33% of skyrim players have gotten the achievement for joining the college of mages, which is where you basicly need to go to get destruction spells that have better power to cost ratios.

so pretty much 66% of the people who are complaining about not having powerful enough destruction spells need to play a bit more and realize that TES games have a learning curve, it will be very difficult at first but you will learn how to adapt, its been this way with morrowind, not quite as much so with oblivion and it has been this way for me in skyrim.

i had similar issues with pure mages at first, but i learned quickly that i needed to use a different strategy and different spells.

This...



This...



...and this. Dual casting should give an actual benefit on its own, without needing Impact to make it worthwhile. Why on earth dual casting has a worse damage:magicka cost ratio than single casting is beyond me. Impact is a bit too good, but I don't mind it staying as it is.

10 minutes is far too long for buffs and potions though. Maybe 2 or 3 minutes, but I don't actually mind 1-minute durations.

Yeah, I just deleted my mage (only level 7). Going to wait for mods or an update.

I agree with everything you have written.

Sadly, with the demise of spellmaking the magic has been removed from TES and we are left with this.. embarresment.

There are three archtypes. Mage is one of these.
So, 33% of people joined the college of winterhold, and 33% of people are mages. Makes sense to me.

Btw, nothing has a better cost/damage ratio than flames, which you start with. Every spell after that does better dps but costs 2-4x as much magicka as the spells before it.

Example:
Incinerate does 90 damage, firebolt does 37, Incinerate costs about 8x as much magicka. That is not a better ratio.

And again, Morrowind and Oblivion had spellcrafting. There are simply not better spells to get after level 40.

LMAO, how do you pull that conclusion out of your ass! Amazing what you can do with stats.

Who says the 66% of players who haven't joined the college are the ones complaining?

Meh, I can pretty much kill anything with my pure mage on master difficulty. It all depends on your enchantments and technique

while some points risen are perfectly valid; most complaints are rather clueless, and people should really learn to look for guides and ask to advice rather than complain and declare stuff broken just because they dont know how to use it.

"spells dont scale" FALSE, what doesn't scale is their damage (you can increase their damage by 50% with perks tho so no need for perks there as someone sugested), would it be nice to have some +fire/ice/lighting damage gear? yes I would agree with that, in low amounts (like 5-10% base).
but heres the truth: base spells are MUCH more powerfull than bows and weapons, and their scalling is their mana cost(you have difficulty casting master rank spells without 100 skill + enchants for further reduction, but once you do, you can freely sling these spells nonstop), they do more damage and have added effects that are invaluable in fights and synergize well amongst each other, like aoe, ranged, drains, crowd control etc.
more mana efficiency = more spells slinged = more damage and more CC

"pure mage isnt viable" FALSE, you just dont know how to build it and/or how to use it, I play a 50 mage focused almost entirely on destruction, using restoration and alteration for support and defence, and I own groups of mobs with ease and rather spectacular effects, even when there are leader mobs in the mix.

"destruction is weak damage" FALSE, if you are narrow mindedely comparing your highest rank single target spell (thunderbolt or icelance 90 damage) to melee and bow, sure they can easily do 50-100% more damage than that (in relative normal conditions, I dont care less about exploits of crafting); thing is bows and swings can only swing one at the time, as a destruction mage you SHOULD NOT be using one spell to take out targets, yeah I know its hard... but make some key binds for spells and use them...
you can basicaly put a 50 damage trap on the floor, cover it with another 50dps(ifm emory serves) dot on top of it and THEN shoot the target with the single target spellS (note the S) synergizing fire spells with other spells will make thet arget take added damage from the fire debuff.
do them ath and you can have one hell of a burst to a target that is after you that goes way over 200 if you use multipliers such as dual casting, poisons and the fire debuff.
also all this can be done AOE, you can take out large groups of mobs with ease like this, good luck aoe'ing with that kind of power, even with a full perked 2 handed build.

another thing people complain is they are squishy and cant use spells cuz of mana...
yes a pure mage uses cloth and even ebonyflesh isnt enough to cover you from power attacks that can one-two shot you, but here again... you should not be using destruction for defence, (tho in this case you should beu sing frost to drain their stamina and prevent power attacks), alteration becides the armor buff, has paralysis and mass paralysis (love it)
mana... ye thats a problem, thats actually where spells DO SCALE, and where you should focus on early on in the game, use whatver makes it more fun to you, to have more mana to use in combat, enchanting is the best bet, get -spell cost enchants mixed in with +mana and + mana regen, and you will be getting sustainable mana pool (you can even exploit and get spells for free, but like I said I dont care for exploits)

No, not every other game. In Arena and daggerfall there where also a level based magnitude. For example 8 pts. of damage + 1-2 for every other level for some early spells. As we have fixed set of spells now I would be glad to have this back into the game. This would make even low level spells beeing usefull on higher levels to some extend.

Oh, whoops. Haven't actually played Arena or Daggerfall. Even more case to make destruction scale with the limited spell set, then.

Ever heard of the law of diminishing returns?