I'll chime in. Early on mages flat out svck. Part of the problem is the over reliance on cost reducing enchants. In the earlier levels there is no way you are obliterating rooms of enemies....simply not possible. I can blast all my mana away and hardly dent some enemies. The real problem is the fact I run out of mana ridiculously fast. I think in the later stages it might reverse itself and with enough enchanted items I may become like a infinite spell slinger. I am level 15 now and it can really svck as a Destruction mage. I use a companion and heal him, and thus I can get by. They need to reduce the costs of spells and lower the amounts of % reduction you can put on enchants. That way there would not be such a huge disparity between lower level weakness and higher level god mode.

BTW I play on expert as well. The real problem is enemies have way too much HP for the damage I can push out with my mana bar. I end up running around with oom trying to kite. This usually means I use the low level flames and just tap it to set the bad guy on fire over and over while trying to get mana back. It looks and plays ridiculous though I have to kite around kitchen tables, ledges, a fallen tree...anything to exploit the stupid AI so I can get mana. IMO this is bad gameplay.

He's not advocating single skill characters. He's saying "all things being equal", destruction magic scales significantly less effectively than melee / marksman. Take two characters with 0 in everything. Give character A fully perked 100 One Handed, and another fully perked 100 Destruction. Now compare the speed with which they take down the same high level encounter

Thats why.

Thats really all you need.

But the reason for concept one IS concept two. Proponents of bulking up destruction damage say that it is unbalanced. But it isn't. What you are seeing IS balancing. Warriors need to hit harder to remain alive. Why? Because they are constantly taking damage. Assassins need initial strikes to be deadly. Why? Because they can't survive prolonged engagements. Mages' individual strikes aren't as damaging. Why? Because they are masters at keeping distance.

Damage output for mages is lessened because if you are good with mages, you can't be hit. But you will be causing constant damage to enemies.

No you aren't getting it, destruction is the sword, alteration/restoration are the shield and armour. (Edit: or you can even use the same armor and shield)

It isn't complicated, mages "sword" does not scale.

You cannot make a straight damage comparison because all damages are applied differently, magic damage should be less damaging than melee damage, because ideally you use magic at range, and kill the enemy before it even gets close to you.

Don't even talk about archery, archery is a lot slower than swinging a sword, so you only get to apply that hit every few seconds. DPS is the key here, not the single damages of any particular attack, whether it is archery, melee or magic.

Seriously now. All you idiots, yes idiots I'm being very kind here, who disagree that Destruction is not underpowered need to read these two posts. Your inane arguments of: 'Well use another tree', 'You shouldn't be able to nuke a whole room', 'You're supposed to be squishy' show how little you are understanding what is being argued.

It isn't about utilising multiple trees, it's about having the only damage output of a mage being equal to an Archer/Melee character, hell I'd even settle for having HALF the damage output of those playstyles. Example, I can hit harder with an Ebony sword, with NO PERKS in one handed, then using an adept level spell with ALL PERKS. What's worse is that you can increase the output of the sword by simply GAINING SKILL POINTS, this doesn't happen in Destruction. You get the spell, that's it for damage for the ENTIRE GAME.

I caps-locked the more important bits so you 'Destruction is fine' people might be able to grasp the issue

Numpties.

You can do everything else you just stated with one-handed, two-handed or archery in place of destruction, but better as they will have more damage output (archery being preferred mostly since it's ranged). Destruction's main difference is its AoE spells, and that is has some form of Crowd Control. AoE I generally didn't care much for as it affected my follower, and CC was done better using illusion or conjuration.

I liked my mage for his variety of spells for different situations, I didn't much care that when it came down to raw damage in defeating an enemy, it was more efficient to pull out a bow or use a weapon in conjunction with the other spell schools. Also, it still doesn't excuse the fact that there is zero difference between a Novice mage and a Master mage's spell power.

Why does it need to scale if it's viable?

You seem to think that mage = destruction when that's not the case at all. MAGES are fine because they have all those other spell schools that are powerful, especially conjuration. It's destruction that's not up to snuff.



This is nobody's argument.

How about this as an example of what we're saying. Heavy armor + Smithing + 1 handed (dual wielding) works just fine and needs no support to kill enemies at any level. But Heavy armor + Smithing + Destruction doesn't.

If the difference is on the order of a few seconds, I don't see a problem. Especially since the Destruction caster has more utility, with runes, walls, impact, etc. People are saying it takes "hours" to kill something but like I keep saying, for me it's four or five hits... maybe my game is just broken and everyone else is playing a different version >_<

Well look at how fast stamina bars regenerate, and compare that to the mana bar. One is power for physical attacks and the other power for magic attacks. The real problem is the mana issue. You cannot keep up in combat at all...literally within seconds you have no mana and an enemy who is at 90-95% health often enough. Its good to have a few staves fully charged...which is what I do. Because having enough mana pots seems impossible in a long dungeon or exploration trek.

Exactly! The problem (for console users anyway) is an issue of non-scaling destruction magic while every other weapon does. I don't understand what the confusion is all about? Destruction magic may be 'fine' for some but that doesn't mean that there arent issues, it just means that the issues do not bother THEM. Hence, they think it is ok but it is not for those expecting it to be their weapon of choice down the line.

Nobody uses runes once you get expert level spells, unless you want to intentionally waste time.

But yes, "hours to kill" is clearly exaggerated. Maybe good 20 ~ 30 seconds on ancient dragon on master, but nothing over a minute. And it gets shorter with alchemy.

Because I want to use the new hyped spell types past level 25.

That is certainly a possibility. I'm just trying to bring clarity to what the complaint actually is, rather than what many people are choosing to make it.

Yea then yours is broken. At level 15 very often encounter enemies that just don't die. Sometimes they go down in 4 hits, but a lot of the times they don't take much damage at all or they can heal...you know enemy mages have infinite mana which I find appalling. Nothing like seeing how Bethesda has once again cheated to make up for poor enemy AI. Point being there are a ton of enemies who do not die in 4 or 5 hits at level 15.

It's not fair to compare an Ebony Sword (nearly the highest tier weapon) with an Adept spell... You should be using an Expert or Master spell. The Adept spells are Area of Effect spells, so they should do less damage than a single-target sword. Seriously, I'm just not seeing it. I have used bows and swords occasionally and they don't do more damage than my spells. I can do some damage with a dual-weild power attack, but in the amount of time it takes to do that, I can cast three spells, and do it from range while stunning the enemy and draining all his stamina, and it does just as much damage.

Runes and wall spells (and sprays/cloaks) are terrible and are probably the biggest red flags for scaling problems.


As for master spells, I honestly don't even know where to begin...a train wreck really.

Because it is no fun getting progressively weaker after level X, where level X is when you get 100 destruction (or more accurately 75, because only expert spells are really worth using).
Because your maxed enchanting can only allow you to cast more spells, not make those spells stronger.
Because being limited to a few viable spells is also not a fun mechanic. Why can't I have a scaled flames spell doing respectable damage at 100 destruction?

This is not about viability, it is about fun and about feeling like you are getting stronger.
Getting weaker as you level up is not a good (fun) mechanic for an RPG to have.

There isn't any confusion. You are placing destruction in a bubble. Destruction isn't as damaging as two-handed, dual-wielding, etc. If you take two naked characters and equip one with destruction and one with two swords, yes the dual-wielder will outdamage the mage.

But that isn't how you build the combat system. You build it around playstyles. Destruction damage is lessened because the playstyle makes mages ranged characters. Well played range characters are not getting hit. Ergo, to keep combat challenging, you have to assure that mages aren't downing enemies in one shot. You can't remove a skill tree from the playstyle it was intended for. My daedric two hand sword doesn't do as much damge as a daedric knife sneak attack. Should we bulk up two-hander damage? No, because the implementation of the two-hand perk is built around a specific playstyle.

I'm pretty sure they don't have infinite mana. I've killed quite a few by draining all their mana with the Staff of Magus and having it automatically switch to draining health because they're at zero mana.

It sounds like maybe you're fighting mages who have their Ward up? You need to cast something to break the ward first (generally doing no damage) and then quickly hit them again before they can get the ward back up. Or sneak around and hit them from behind.

Yeah but if damage scaled then there would BE no incentive to use new spells once you got them, you could spend the entire game spamming flames or frostbite.

Spells are supposed to be similar to weapons, you ditch the old one when you get a new one.

In this case the problem is not that spells do not scale, but that the higher level spells don't have as good utility as the low ones.

Based on the current opinions expressed in the forum, the actual facts and figures in balancing are irrelevant. Destruction magic simply does not give most players the “OOOMPH” they want in play and were attracted to trying it out for. They want nukes. They got kitten paw spam. And I can’t blame them for being unhappy when I compare it to the one shot potential of archery. It is what it is.

And on an aside I am still curious if anyone else encountered that odd scaling issue I noted too. Just so I'll know.

You - still - don't - get - it...

No one is asking for a walk in the park but a walk in the park should be possible in game no matter what your focus is if you so choose it! Like smithing/enchanting/natural scaling makes melee and archery a wet dream. Modders have already made it possible for destruction to scale while not being overpowered. That is simply all that anyone is asking for. A FAIR way for destruction spells to scale. I myself use mods so I HAVE what I want but others who use console are sol.