I'm not going to go over the arguments for why destruction is underpowered since I know it's been argued to death, and this specific topic probably has been as well, but I thought I'd go ahead and make it clear for people who think it's not underpowered.

DESTRUCTION DOESN'T SCALE. Again, this point has been made as well. It's probably the main point that is made. But let me summarize: once you get your expert level spells that hit for 90 damage with perks, or your master levels ones that hit for somewhere in the mid 100s depending on the spell, that's it. Your damage will never ever go up again. Now, someone in a thread before calculated that destruction can do around 146 or so damage per second with these numbers compared to 500-600 or so for one handed. That's fine for lower levels since, as many people have argued, 146 dps is more than enough to kill pretty much anything the game throws at you, and so the discrepancy doesn't matter.

But once your enemies start actually scaling in appreciable amounts, it becomes easily noticeable how weak destruction is.

I realized this as I, a level 60 mage, was running through one of the dungeons with a dragon priest at the end. These dungeons are in general supposed to be much harder than your simple bandit dungeons that you crawl through for miscellaneous quests. At the final fight, the dragon priest popped out of his tomb/sarcophagus along with about 3 draugr deathlords. Eh fine, no problem.

But then, more started coming out in a staggered fashion. I expect this was meant to spread out the amount of enemies you would have to fight over a longer amount of time, but it was taking me around 15 incinerates (the highest damaging single target spell you can get) to kill a single deathlord. Because of this, they started coming out faster than I could kill them, and I ended up with 6 deathlords + the dragon priest on me by the time they had all come out. That's over 100 casts to clear the entire room of them, which is not only ridiculous but impossible to manage without the -100% casting enchant from a fully maxed enchanting tree. One tree shouldn't absolutely need another tree to function, much less require 100 skill in that tree (which is required to get -100% magicka reduction).

To kill them all, I had to either back track through half the entire dungeon to keep them all from piling on top of me as I tried to kill them, or use the mass illusion spell mayhem, which caused them all to fight each other leaving me to sit there and watch. Which wasn't a problem, mind you, but it made me realize how ridiculously weak and slow at killing things destruction is at higher levels.

This is why scaling needs to be addressed. Again, for the majority of people who will never level up that high, 90 damage is more than enough to roll everything and complete the main quest without trouble. But if you like to explore or train other skills at all, and level up fairly high in the process, you will see why destruction needs to be fixed. Please address this Bethesda.

At that high of level you should really use mods for improved destro scaling (theres a few)

If you're on console, well sorry . I guess you can use alchemy potions every fight and/or power level conjuration. So many requirements for Destro to work, its silly really.

Level 50 is considered "end game". The game is balanced for levels 1 to 50, and anything beyond that is at the mercy of the systems properly scaling beyond their original design.

I really hope they patch it so it scales as otherwise console players end up pretty screwed without being able to fix it with mods.

Destro from 40-50 on Master is just as annoying. Can also be bad in the 30's too, if you don't use a very strict set of gear/crafting.

I think this game is actually in greater need of an "OOO" style mod than Oblivion was, as the leveling goes so much faster and can happen accidentally from picking a random lock or opening a skill book.

Uhm...keep wishing that they will "buff" destruction in a patch. They've never done this in any TES game. They mainly fix bugs. Changes to gameplay, atleast for PC, they leave entirely up to the modding community. Keep wishing for them to 'fix' destruction. Highly unlikely, though I would be incredibly surprised.

Then what is the point of including so many side quests and the so called radiant quest system which supposedly allows for an infinite number or quests to be generated? If Bethesda intended for people to complete those at all (which they do because otherwise why include them?) then you will level up while doing them. Eventually, you will level to higher than 50. If what you say is true, then Bethesda really should be criticized for essentially abandoning scaling at levels over 50. As it is, it certainly looks like this is the case for at least the destruction tree.

The game is theoretically balanced around 1-50. In practice, it's all over the map depending on what skills you use. It's either way too easy or way too difficult.

I use it as one of three ways to kill, destruction, summoning, and one handed melee. Between the three the job should get done

:D

Destruction is fine..... bliviongate:

Nah but really, this is the 5000000000+ thread on this, couldn't you just add a reply to one of those.

Frankly, I think the fix would be really simple, just make it so each level (Novice, Apprentice, Adept, Expert, Master) also gives you 20% more damage. Then it be exactly like the other combat skills. They sort of tried this with the ability to go into specific schools like frost, fire, lightning, but that's actually a liability because everything is resistant to something. You need six perks to get plus 50% across all schools where combat needs 5 perks to get plus 100%.

A 20% boost per experience tier would be best because it would keep other mages from becoming too godly and allows the damage output to scale for higher levels which is really important. Also, you can't attack without magicka, you can attack without stamina by using regular attacks. That would mean the 50% cost reduction isn't really an issue or OP with the damage boost.

Just get 100% cost reduction, dual cast and impact and it doesn't matter if it doesn't scale because whatever you are fighting can't move anyways.

How about... the combat is just horrible (again). I love Skyrim - might be the best RPG ever but their combat and AI is terrible (like always).

The damages on my destruction spells is going up as I level. Not much, but going up. Level 26. I'll let you know what's up 25 levels from now.

I would be happy if they just released the constuction kit and left balancing to the modders, it will get done much quicker that way.

I heard that monsters don't level above 45.. guess we'll see, I'm level 52 and game only getting a tad easier as I gain HP and from what I can see other things aren't.

Is there a new monster tier at 55?

I see you dont have a problem with exploiting the system for meele build and like to use secondary skills to buff you meele damage so I propose that you get alchemy as a secondary skill and buff your destro magic damage. Make some fortify destro potions and make some weakness to element poison and buy some 100% weakness to magic poison and start dishing 600-1000 dmg with dual cast thunderbolt.

Too low on mana ? enchant some stuff for more mana reduction cost ( no need for 0 mana casting )

P.S Let me tell you a secret every weapon type has a static base dmg value that never gets better (same goes for any other weapon/armor). Its only your enchants,skills,perks,smithing,pots,exploits that makes you dish more dmg with meele, weapons dont get better on they`re own so dont think destro spells are going against the game system.

Someone is actually, yet again, quoting that horsecrap 146 dps metric again.

This thread is now uselessly inaccurate theorycraft. GOGO

So destruction spells doesnt scale, PLUDS magicka regeneration is reduced with 60% during combat?


This is ridiculouse!

naw dog, just power level + exploit enchanting and farm alchemy for every battle and use a bow before you start killing and its perfectly fine!



or, just take conjuration instead of destro so you don't have to do all that cheating/annoying meta-gaming crap - since its actually a good skill.

What about using AoE spells like Firewall and Flame Cloak and Chain Lightning? Those could have helped manage many enemies, no?

fort destruction pots (not exploited) would have taken away this problem. crafting is not an option on high levels. fort destruction pots or enjoy your long wait to win that battle. same with any other class. SMithing, Enchant, Alchemy. Use them. (and no, you do not have to exploit to get realistic dam levels.)

Has Bethesda said anything about addressing any of these problems people have come up with? Outside of bugs and glitches of course.

naw booheads, just power level + exploit enchanting/alchemy/smithing and exploit the stamina bug for every battle and go with meele its perfectly fine!