No enchants exist that actually raise your destruction damage, only reduce magicka cost. Smithing, as far as I know, doesn't benefit magic damage in any way either. Only alchemy provides any bonus to destruction damage, and even that is tedious because of the sheer amount of potions you'd have to make to have enough for every single battle. On the other hand, enchanting, smithing, and alchemy all give damage bonuses to melee and archery.

So basically, if you include all three crafting trees, destructions gets 1/3 the benefit the other playstyles do.

I shoudnt have to force levelling crafting skills just so I can be a magic user.

If you think that destruction is too weak go play a warrior with a big axe, problem solved. Me personally? I use Destruction, Illusion, and Restoration on my mage and play on Master difficulty. I have no trouble really, the fight you're talking about seems to me like its supposed to be a bit of a long and epic one anyway. And I'm just using the Gauldor amulet, Arch-mage's robes, steel plate boots, Nordic Steeel gauntlets, mage's Circlet and A custom enchanted ring that decreases the cost of Destruction spells by 30%... Overally my gear isn't that good, but I wear what I think looks cooll really..... And haven't found good enough enchants for my Boots/Gauntlets yet... Heh heh... Oh by the way, my mage is level 57.

I'm pretty much saying that if I can handle it at level 57 on master with -that- gear, you should be fine to.

But with that one crafting tree your dmg gets on par with the meele build that needs 3 crafting trees and with enchanting you can get your mana cost to a level where you wont have to stop to regain your magica bar before a fight ends.
Yes you need to make pots but you dont need to use them every battle for gods sake, just use the dmg pot for bigger fight and add the poison on really hard bosses/dragons.

Nobody expects to be successful using only one skill. You can't expect a build that focuses solely on destruction to be as effective as a more diverse build. You could use illusion to turn the Draugr against each other and even the odds. You don't have to mindlessly blast enemies with fireballs.

At level 81 all forms of magic svck (Except for Restoration and I guess maybe alteration).

Wait.

There IS +destruction damage potions??

There are already mods which greatly improve Destr damage scaling.

Yeah its called a fortify destruction potion and contrary to the fortify destruction enchant it dosnt reduce your mana cost but upgrades your spell damage.
There are poion called weakness to magic/shock/fire/frost you can use to make enemies get double the dmg from your spells. And different posion effect stack so you can have a weakness to shock and magic combo.

Remind me that the next time you need a jump to get to work, I should just roll by your house in my truck, throw a bike out the bed onto your front lawn, and then peel out.

Except the damage isn't on par. At all. Besides, you need a weapon for apply poisons.



That's true for any skill. The thing is, though, other damage trees like one-handed, two-handed, archery, etc., can do fine (though not optimal) on their own. Destruction in comparison is gimped on its its own and barely ok with other trees.

Ah, of course. Using archery alone should never get you as far as using one handed and blocking, yes? After all, you're just relying on ONE skill instead of TWO!

:facepalm:

Please, people. Start to think: If I can't use Destruction without using the other magics, what's the point of using Destruction at all? You can use that Illusion spell to turn Draugrs against each other, and once you do that, do you even NEED to do anything else? Other than reducing the amount of time lollygaging?

It's like saying that I can't progress through the game by using dual wielding alone: I have to use archery to make it out alive. What's the point of dual-wielding then? Why not just use archery from the very beginning? And scrap dual wielding completely?

High Level and started using Chain Lightning only due to it being more efficient than weapons. I even stopped using armor because the enemies can't even get close to me.
With right Perks, Destruction is powerful, especially if you boost it with Enchanting or Alchemy potions (and game expects you to use at least one crafting skill).

I would thank you for the new bike. You see, mine's an old rusted piece of junk. But I guess that's what happens when one's had it for thirteen years.

Seriously, free bike!

So if I hit a dragon with a dual cast thunderbolt for 1k dmg every hit (takes a second to cast) without exploiting the living [censored] of alchemy/smithing/enchanting then that is not on par with your meele sword ~500 dmg. Do I read it right ?

Sure, if thunderbolt really did hit that hard.

Sorry, but still not buying it. Its an old argument that I don't see carrying any truth to it. The game isn't meant for you to be able to dominate with a single skill. The complaint that Destruction alone by itself should be able to lay waste to that scenario would be akin to me complaining that my Two-handed sword wielding barbarian should be able to take that room while wearing only a loin-cloth. Can you imagine a warrior complaining that they should have to be "forced" to wear armor to beat a hard combat on master level difficulty?

Destruction is a single class of spells. A good mage will learn to diversify a bit. I am currently playing an illusionist and that one spell group isn't enough for every situation. Sometimes I have to approach situations a little differently. Destruction is no different. You should have at least two spell classes for ANY mage. Restoration? Do a mass turning and all those undead will be fleeing around the room while you burn them. Illusion? At 100 in illusion you can have them all fighting themselves instead of you. Playing a mage is also about CONTROLLING the flow of combat, not just doing damage.

You don't need them for every single battle.. You do realize that you will 1-shot Thalmor death squads with a fort destro potion up?

Next personal question for you, what difficulty are you playing on and exactly how many incinerates were you imagining it should take to kill, say, a death lord or dragon priest on that difficulty level?

Is destruction broken?

Ruined your game? Worst thing to ever happen to you?

Thanks for sharing. Hadn't heard that one.

Magic is for sissies any way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYGZ_G2_NWM

Take a look master difficulty using a master spell that can not be dual cast and does 112 dmg a second. A standard thunderbolt dual cast does 200 dmg a second. Kills an ancient dragon in a matter of second when I actualy manage to hit it

112 dmg x 2 ( dmg to magic ) x 2,62 ( dmg destro pot ) = 586 dmg a second.
200 dmg x 2 x 2,62 = 1048 dmg a hit if I used thnderbolt.

I thought it just fortified your destruction skill, which doesn't help damage at all.

Are you sure it actually increases DAMAGE and not just the destruction skill??!?!?!?!

read the post above and open the youtube link in 1080p and pause when i browse the pots and magic dmg.

Yes, and that's all fine and dandy. I'm not asking for destruction to be able to kill everything on its own, but for its damage output to be on par with other damage-dealing methods in the game. I found an ebony bow in a chest recently and I figured I'd test it out just for giggles. It did a tiny bit less damage than one of my incinerates, without me putting any perks into the tree or using enchants to increase its damage. I found out a little later that you can put 4 +40% damage enchants on your gear, and the first perk in the archery tree gives you up to 100% increase in damage as well. That's nearly a 300% increase in damage by using just the archery tree and enchanting, which is way more than using destruction tree and enchanting.

This is my big criticism is that the master spells svck. Expert bolts are much better. :/

Not giving them the dual-cast bonus was a major goof.

Also how did you get 100% weakness potions? Strongest I can get mine is 97%.

Also what is the recipe for that fort destro potion? o_O some serious buffage there!