players rolling mages and playing them like if it was a close combat melee warrior is not a good idea; if my main offense abiltiy is a fireball I will cast the spell from a distance; if the mob gets too close cast an illusion spell or run away, summoning an atronach in the beginning is a good idea; of course that's not everybody's play style; but people playing pure mages and unable to keep distance are not effective and will be face rolled more than a mage that keeps mobs crowd controlled or away from close range

This. Thank you. :foodndrink:

You've missed the point.

You need to go read the thread as with the quoted poster.

I haven't had many problems at all with my Breton mage (on master difficulty, level 62 now). The only difficulties I encountered were from levels 15-25 (roughly), when enemies started to get tougher but I hadn't been playing long enough to fine-tune my strategies for defeating them - now that I have they are not much of a problem. I have no complaints about destruction or mages - in fact I never liked playing as a mage much in TES, but it's been a lot of fun in Skyrim.

You keep repeating that a mage is untouchable...

We keep telling you that nukers are not.

You keep telling us that Conjuration is like a warrior's armor, we keep telling you that nukers dont use Conjuration.

I don't know how this concept would be so freaking hard to grasp: not everyone wants to play the same build as you. Destruction + Conjuration is fine, because conjuration more then makes up for your low damage as Destruction. Destruction + anything else just does not work at high levels, and that is a problem for a lot of us.

Again: we don't want to be playing a summoner, but a nuker. Not only is it an extremely common and traditional archetype in every kind of RPG, but we are talking about a game that advertised "Be what you want". There are no classes for a reason: we don't want to be forced to play a certain way, and with the current situation, that is what the game does.

Now of course, you'll tell me "but warriors can't go without armor!".

No, thats true. Every build needs to be somewhat balanced by having Offensive and defensive tools. No other build, however, forces a specific tool on you: as a melee, you can use light armor instead of heavies if you want, or another type of magic defense/utility if you are into the spellsword builds.

As a mage tho, right now, using destruction as main damage, you dont have a choice: eventually, you will be forced to pick up Conjuration. If you want to know what is wrong with destruction, simply ask yourself why. The answer? Destruction doesnt offer enough damage, so you need an additional damage source, unlike any other offensive tree in the game.

No one is talking about using only destruction, we know there are other perk trees to invest into. But we sure want to use it as our only damage source, like a warrior with his sword. Forcing us to use summons is like forcing warriors to use bows: sure, we can... but then we are no longuer playing a nuker/warrior, we are playing a summoner/archer.

It doesn't take 2 minutes to kill a Deathlord dual casting Thunderbolt, which is an expert level spell by the way, you could do it in approx 6 to 7 shots, so about 20 seconds and that's the most powerful mob of it's type in the game. On a side note, i always wonder how many people take the Necromage skill in the Resto tree; it gives 25% more damage against undead, pretty useful considering they are some of the most powerful and numerous mobs in the game. Makes all the difference in large fights.

As for enchanting to reduce costs, that's why it's there, for people to use to make themselves more powerful, pretty much like everything else in the game.

Maybe not, but it does take significantly longer than melee or archers take to kill the same enemy.

But this is the point. The damage of weapons is mitigated by playstyle. Daggers aren't very good in a stand up fight when compared to swords but are monstrous with sneak attacks.

Simply saying: "Destruction doesn't scale with weapons. It needs to be buffed" ignores the fact that the mage playstyle is about constant damage and distance. You cannot remove the playstyle from the equation because the damage totals are decided by the playstyle.

Since I haven't played a "destruction mage" (wtf is that anyway?) I'm not gonna be too suggestive. When I play as a fighter I cannot rely on a single skill to survive, I bloody have to use several. Like archery to soften them up before they reach me and retain my stamina, then sword and shield combined with some armor knowledge. Note that I'm still very weak against powerful magic due lack of resistances.

I can't rely on a single skill. If that was allowed to happen for "destruction mages" I would say that destruction was too powerful. Combine with other schools of magic, shouts, even fighting and stealth. If you think you can rely on a single school of magic because you want to play a "pure class", then why don't you lower the difficulty?

edited

Actually, I don't use summoning. I use Illusion. I used summoning as an example for the options available to mages. I don't use weapons (bound or otherwise) except in the absolutely rarest of occasions. All my damage comes from destruction, dragon shouts and mayhem.

Are you saying that because I use Illusion, I am not a nuker?

But you keep getting better spells all the way to 100, and then it stops. That's the same as with weapons. Once you hit 100 and have the perks, you never do more weapon damage no matter how many levels you gain either. Levels only give you health/magicka/stamina.


Well, I haven't run into 6 Deathlords at the same time like the one guy said he did. I'm 42 and haven't had any ridiculously long fights in the entire game. 15 incinerates takes about 15 seconds, maybe 30 seconds if you miss or move around a lot. Is that what you guys mean by "ridiculously long"? I don't have a max level warrior yet, but at low and mid levels I had some fights that took at least 30 seconds with archery or melee.


Using items you find in game, especially the ones you get for doing the Winterhold quests, can't be considered an exploit on the same level as the crafting exploit. I got by fine without custom enchanting until the late 30's.


Like I said, I'm 42 currently and haven't had any problems at all. I've been "scaling" the whole time, getting better spells and lower costs / more magicka. I guess I'll have to wait to 50+ to see what the fuss is all about, but I don't imagine I'll even be playing this character for that much longer than 55 or so; I'd like to try a few others. I think if the game is fine all the way through the main quest and past the soft level cap and only starts to have problems well past the end-game, then it doesn't bother me that much. This isn't an MMO where you spend most of your time at max level; you need to look at the gameplay for the whole journey.

If anything, the mage playstyle dictates that they should do more damage than melee, not less. A well-armored melee character can rush into battle headfirst and, as long as he doesn't do anything stupid, he can just slash away with impunity, and be rewarded for this playstyle with high damage. A mage, on the other hand, who must carefully maintain distance and utilize all of the tools at his/her disposal to stay alive, is somehow rewarded by doing poor damage? This concept is completely backwards.



Actually, you get your best spells at 70, because the master spells at 100 do even less damage than the expert levels ones, and requires long cast times as well. Also, melee get more than one damage-increasing perk. There is the straight-up % damage increase as with destruction, but there's also, for example, critical strike chance, armor ignore, or bleeding. You can also "level" your weapon as well with smithing. If you choose to go the enchanting route, you can enchant 4 items for +% damage for your damage type. Destruction really is capped at 70 and the one 50% damage increase.

It isn't weak at all for me. It's just that it is no longer the god mode that it used to be.

I'm having fun with a destruction focused mage also, but I'm using a mod that makes destruction damage scale better. Before I used the mod it was a tedious game of stun-lock enemy while drinking potions.

The mod makes the destruction perks not just lower magicka cost but also increase damage, it also makes dual casting do more damage, take more magicka, and take longer to cast (so it's much harder to stun-lock).

This turned fights from a stunlock snoozefest to a fast paced strategic battle, maneuvering around, casting lightning runes and walls, using spells like paralyze and fear out of necessity instead of just to break up the monotony.

I've also found it helps to rigourously control your leveling. Aside from the occasional point in speech from bartering, I've only ever leveled this guy in Destruction, Alteration, Illusion, and Restoration.



Someone else who doesn't understand the arguement at all, just what we need. :banghead:

One handed + Armor + Smithing = perfectly fine
Destruction + Armor + Smithing = barely usable

Again, you are just playing deaf/dumb.

You are talking about builds that choose an offensive method, then builds defense.

And then you compare it to a build that needs two offensive methods.

Oranges and birds. Strawberries and cats. Not the same thing at all.

You seem to think that there are still classes in this game. Its not the case. There is no "mage" class, it doesn't exist, no more then a "warrior". Just like you have two-handers and one-handers for melee combat, you have conjuration or destruction for magical combat. Just like the warrior is able to choose between 1h or 2h, mages want to be able to choose between nuking or summoning, as those are two VERY DIFFERENT GAMEPLAYS.

Now it does not mean we want to invest our pts into destruction and ignore the rest. That would be [censored] dumb. But we want destruction to be strong enough so that it doesn't need conjuration to function. We want to be able to invest in OTHER, DIFFERENT, trees. We want to invest in perks that will support our playstyle (nuker) instead of perks that will completely change it into something else.

P.S. daggers dont have a tree per say. Sneak IS the offensive tree, and daggers are just the tools. Notice how they dont level anything as you use them?
P.P.S. let me put it this way: bow + Conj > Destruction + Conj. Bow + illusion > Destruction + illusion. etc

I'll play devil's advocate, although scaling would be preferable to me. One aside would be that Master level spells would *still* be broken with scaling since they could never advance.

Without stating any of the problems:

The philosophy is to gain DPS by perks and also by spell tiers, with new spells replacing the old ones.

My DPS goes up between level 25 and 50, again at 75 and (for one spell--sort of) at 100. New spells obviate old spells, and provide for a new tactical approach. The Impact perk is the biggest difference maker in the perk tree, and (to a much lesser extent) the Intense Flames, Deep Freeze and Disintegrate perks.

Some of the earlier spells maintain their usefulness for awhile, such as Flames used against Ice Wraiths, which are difficult to hit without some sort of AOE effect. Runes are still useful for emergency scenarios where the caster runs out of mana.

Adept tier provides for some better AOE spells, replacing the Novice tier spells.
Expert tier spells replace ranged, targeted attacks from the Apprentice tier.
Master tier spells - The Lighting Storm spell does a respectable 75dps, permastuns (with Impact) and drains magic--try casting it in a corridor and let enemies examine the disturbance and try to rush you. The other two spells appear to be focused on spellswords, as do some of the Adept tier spells.

I haven't used the 'wall' spells and assume they're meant as a replacement for runes.

Okay, so that's the good--or at least, that's how it works. Assuming that I want to stick with this philosophy instead of scaling damage to the skill level, I would want to see these changes:

Perks

1) Set the Master level perk to allow three points. Point #1 gains spells. Point #2 = 75% modifier. Point #3 = 100% modifier

2) Change Intense Flames, Deep Freeze and Disintegrate so something more useful, and I'd take either of these two options:
a) Weakness to [element type] (additional dps modifier)
b ) flames have longer burn duration and enemy collapses with low hp, cold increases stamina drain for cold spells, with a stun effect on anything out of stamina, lightning does the same except for magicka (or prevents mana regen if enemy is out of mana)

Either option would combine with spells better than the current perks.

3) Rune Master - make it 10x or 20x to allow for some stealthy fun options.

Spells

Add ranged AOE replacements for the Adept spells. Moar splode radius please!
Add new replacement for Flame/Frostbite, with greater range and (obviously) DPS. Keep Lighting Storm
Add new runes
Keep the spellsword fire/ice spells, and add a mana drain lighting spell

The fact that these destruction complaint/overly-defensive threads are so frequent and so long says enough about how bad the skill is.

But by "barely usable", do you mean "it takes 10 more seconds to kill the hardest creature in the game at level 55+" or do you mean that it's actually barely usable? That's what I'm not getting. Some people are acting like it's actually difficult or really time consuming or something, and I haven't had that experience at all. If the difference is on the order of a few seconds, people are freaking out about nothing.

But a warrior can't summon or vanish. He can't use a crowd control other than a Dragon Shout or racial.

Warriors have to kill faster because they receive more damage. Just like assassins have to do more sneak attack damage than other classes.

Should there be an attack that allows warriors to throw their weapons repeatedly? My warrior is utterly outdamaged by your mage at long distance after all.

Every time you gain a level in sword, your swords do more damage. Every time you put a +% sword dmg enchant on, or any enchant on your weapon, you do more damage. Yeah, there is a maximum base-damage sword out there, just like there is a maximum base-damage spell. But there are multiple ways to enhance that sword's damage even without crafting loops, while there are none to enhance destruction's.



Yes, 30 seconds on a single fight is very long. Its not at the ridiculous level yet, but remember that every time you level you become weaker, so as you gain levels, it will take you longuer and longuer. You are only at 42....



Then you are the exception to the rule. Oh wait... you have summons. Thats a lot of really cheap (manawise) damage, much more then you seem to account for.



The problems start at different levels depending which builds you play. Right now on my non-crafter warrior at 28 I still strugle on some fights, while my archer/conjurer at lvl 38 is trolling through the game with both thumbs up its nose without even trying, on master. Everything is so unbalanced that the difficulty slider has become a tool for players to work around the terrible design by adjusting the game, instead of one that actually sets the game's difficulty.

I can argue the exact opposite. Because warriors can absorb damage more successfully than mages, they should kill things more slowly. Mages, who have to kill the target before it reaches him or her, should kill faster. This also brings archery into the equation. Archery completely destroys my mage at range. Plus, archers according to the archetype wear light armor, so they're also more resilient than my mage.

The fact is, melee damage + defensive tools or archery + defensive tools will always be better than destruction + defensive tools.

Actually barely usable unless you also rely on conjuration or exploits like 100% magicka cost reduction.



A "warrior" CAN summon and vanish if he takes Conjuration or Illusion. We're not talking about mages here, we're talking about destruction as a damage dealing skill.

There are no classes mate. This isnt DA:O. There isnt the warrior class and the mage class. There are various trees, some offensive, some defensive.

So its not Warrior vs Mage, its (ex:) 2h vs destruction.

Someone with a 2h out can still use summons or vanish.

Someone using destruction spells can still use heavy armor.

Thats why Destruction needs to be on par with 2h or 1h: because otherwise it forces you down a specific path, which is against this game's design philosophy as it was explained to us.

P.S. if you think magic are the only utility trees in skyrim... have you met Archery? Paralize, ranged poisons applications, a slow-time zoom, a high % stagger proc and better kiting (run faster while shooting).

This logic is like saying be a One Handed fighter with no armor. Pure destruction is possible but it's not easy.